Theme Of Illusion In The Great Gatsby

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In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), the upper class and Daisy were portrayed as being “a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but [Daisy] came out with a perfect reputation” (77). Despite this attribution, the upper class is characterized as living in an artificial, ignorant world of illusions and a distorted reality, with an appearance that contrasts their hollow interior. Fitzgerald emphasizes through their false appearances and feigned identities the true corruption of New York’s high society. Although those in Nick Carraway’s world were portrayed on the outside as young, rich, wild, and beautiful, on the inside, they were all just “hollow” and empty–always demonstrating the image of a perfect life yet damaged on the inside. Carraway describes Gatsby’s party as a place where the high society of New York puts on fake personas to hide their cold loneliness on the inside. At Gatsby’s party, Carraway describes how “the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meeting between women who never knew each other's names” (40). Here, Carraway hints at the artificiality of the people at the …show more content…

In his novel, Fitzgerald emphasizes that the upper class is corrupt by the fake personas the people us that are just for show or to social climb with the ultimate goal of gaining wealth in mind. In The Great Gatsby, everything is hollow; the people, their values, their promises, and their dreams. Gatsby fails to make real connections with people because of his feigned personality and his desire to move up in society through money and Daisy’s affections. Through this story, Fitzgerald indicates that this hollow state of artificial facades and manipulation will end in isolation, either physically, emotionally, or

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