Anthony In The Great Gatsby

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Anthony aims to fulfill his incomplete psychological structure the same way a child does; by finding a person who positively acknowledges his achievements. Normally a child learns to provide his or her own mirroring as he or she grows up, but because Anthony's parents never provided sufficient mirroring, he developed a narcissistic personality and cannot establish a sense of self-appreciation. To Anthony, his newly acquired status and outgoing lifestyle are the key components to maintaining his rather erratic self-esteem. Parties and people shortly become such a necessity to him that he begins to shun his own company in a fear-like manner: ''He who had grown up alone had lately learned to avoid solitude. During the past several months he had been careful, when he had no engagement for the evening, to hurry to one of his clubs and find someone.'' (Fitzgerald, p. 36.) However, these randomly chosen individuals only act to enhance Anthony's spirit and are otherwise insignificant to him. …show more content…

Maury, being the top of his class back at Harvard, is an ideal selfobject to Anthony, who, in order to maintain a balanced state, requires a parent-like character to look up to in every situation. When Maury is not around, Anthony becomes ''nervous as a will-o'-the-wisp'' (Fitzgerald, p. 29), but calms down when the two meet again, indicating that Maury is the supporting structure in his life. Maury is the man ''whom he admires and, to a bigger extent than he likes to admit to himself, envies.'' (Fitzgerald, p. 29.) Envy is mainly caused by Anthony's lack of self-confidence, which prevents him from becoming the kind of person he would want to be like. Anthony's reaction to Maury's success is also a sign of narcissism, because a narcissist commonly envies qualities or materialistic objects that he cannot

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