Universally, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby is recognized as a literary masterpiece. There is one aspect of the book, however, that continually puzzles many readers’ minds: why such a simple title? To be completely frank, it is really the only title that truly fits each of the book’s innumerable facets. Fitzgerald intended to write something without precedent: “I want to write something new—something extraordinary and beautiful and simple & intricately patterned.” (VII). Through writing The Great Gatsby, he accomplished just that: something that is beautifully, simply, intricately, and eternally great.
Greatness itself is omnipresent in the novel, first and foremost manifesting itself through the main protagonist, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby’s entire persona is shrouded in an air of fantasy. Be it his lavish parties, his mysteriously-acquired wealth, or simply his immaculate personality—greatness is the overarching constant to his entire composition. Originally known as James Gatz, a poor boy from rural North Dakota, the ideas of wealth and luxury captivatingly present themselves to...
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby provides the reader with a unique outlook on the life of the newly rich. Gatsby is an enigma and a subject of great curiosity, furthermore, he is content with a lot in life until he strives too hard. His obsession with wealth, his lonely life and his delusion allow the reader to sympathize with him.
The Great Gatsby, a novel by Scott Fitzgerald, is about the American Dream, and the downfall of those who attempt to reach its impossible goals. The attempt to capture the American Dream is used in many novels. This dream is different for different people; but, in The Great Gatsby, for Jay, the dream is that through wealth and power, one can acquire happiness. To get this happiness Jay must reach into the past and relive an old dream; and, in order to do this, he must have wealth and power.
When looking at Jay Gatsby, one sees many different personalities and ideals. There is the gracious host, the ruthless bootlegger, the hopeless romantic, and beneath it all, there is James Gatz of North Dakota. The many faces of Gatsby make a reader question whether they truly know Gatsby as a person. Many people question what exactly made Jay Gatsby so “great.” These different personas, when viewed separately, are quite unremarkable in their own ways.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, tells the story of a man of meager wealth who chases after his dreams, only to find them crumble before him once he finally reaches them. Young James Gatz had always had dreams of being upper class, he didn't only want to have wealth, but he wanted to live the way the wealthy lived. At a young age he ran away from home; on the way he met Dan Cody, a rich sailor who taught him much of what he would later use to give the world an impression that he was wealthy. After becoming a soldier, Gatsby met an upper class girl named Daisy - the two fell in love. When he came back from the war Daisy had grown impatient of waiting for him and married a man named Tom Buchanan. Gatsby now has two coinciding dreams to chase after - wealth and love. Symbols in the story, such as the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock, the contrast between the East Egg and West Egg, and the death of Myrtle, Gatsby, and Wilson work together to expose a larger theme in the story. Gatsby develops this idea that wealth can bring anything - status, love, and even the past; but what Gatsby doesn't realize is that wealth can only bring so much, and it’s this fatal mistake that leads to the death of his dreams.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby was born into a life of poverty and as he grew up he became more aware of the possibility of a better life. He created fantasies that he was too good for his modest life and that his parents weren’t his own. When he met Daisy, a pretty upper class girl, his life revolved around her and he became obsessed with her carefree lifestyle. Gatsby’s desire to become good enough for Daisy and her parents is what motivates him to become a wealthy, immoral person who is perceived as being sophisticated.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby demonstrates what Marie-Laure Ryan, H. Porter Abbott and David Herman state about what narratology should be. These theorists emphasize the importance of conflict, human experience, gaps and consciousness, among many other elements, in order for a story to be considered a narrative. The Great Gatsby shows these elements throughout the book in an essential way. This makes the reader become intrigued and desperate to know what will happen next. The Great Gatsby is unpredictable throughout the use of gaps, consciousness and conflict.
The novel, The Great Gatsby focuses on one of the focal characters, James Gatz, also known as Jay Gatsby. He grew up in North Dakota to a family of poor farm people and as he matured, eventually worked for a wealthy man named Dan Cody. As Gatsby is taken under Cody’s wing, he gains more than even he bargained for. He comes across a large sum of money, however ends up getting tricked out of ‘inheriting’ it. After these obstacles, he finds a new way to earn his money, even though it means bending the law to obtain it. Some people will go to a lot of trouble in order to achieve things at all costs. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, conveys the numerous traits of Jay Gatsby through the incidents he faces, how he voices himself and the alterations he undergoes through the progression of the novel. Gatsby possesses many traits that help him develop as a key character in the novel: ambitious, kind-hearted and deceitful all of which is proven through various incidents that arise in the novel.
It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness. Jay Gatsby, the cryptic main character from F. Scott. Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, is a man who has traveled through many rough roads throughout his life. These troubles that Gatsby had to overcome range from fighting in the war, losing the love of his life, and many shady dealings to obtain finances. Despite Gatsby’s life of controversy, many unanswered questions, and a plethora of luck, Gatsby is considered a man of many successes. Nick Carraway, Gatsby’s neighbor and close friend, considers Gatsby to have achieved greatness. Nick sees a greatness in Gatsby that he has never seen in any other man; unfortunately, all great characters do not always have happy endings. Gatsby’s
“Money can’t buy happiness” is a saying that is often used to make one understand that there is more to life than wealth and money. Jay Gatsby was a man of many qualities some of which are good and bad. Throughout the book of “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, we learn of his past and discover the true qualities of Jay Gatsby. Starting from the bottom, with little money, we learn of why Gatsby struggled so hard all his life to become wealthy and what his true goal in life was. When reading this story, the true reasons behind Gatsby’s illegal actions reveal themselves and readers can learn a great life lesson from this story and the actions the characters take. Readers can see through Gatsby’s contradictions of actions and thoughts that illustrate the theme of the story, along with his static characteristics, that all humans are complex beings and that humans cannot be defined as good or bad.
While The Great Gatsby is a highly specific portrait of American society during the Roaring Twenties, its story is also one that has been told hundreds of times, and is perhaps as old as America itself: a man claws his way from rags to riches, only to find that his wealth cannot afford him the privileges enjoyed by those born into the upper class. The central character is Jay Gatsby, a wealthy New Yorker of indeterminate occupation. Gatsby is primarily known for the lavish parties he throws every weekend at his ostentatious Gothic mansion in West Egg. He is suspected of being involved in illegal bootlegging and other underworld activities.
Jay Gatsby, taken in by a bittersweet fruit, drags himself through filth. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby becomes wealthy to achieve his American Dream, but he fails to achieve it because of the corruption and disillusioning effects of materialistic society.
Titling is a very important part of the fiction-writing process. It is important for authors to be careful in choosing their titles because the titles often can have great influence on certain aspects of the story. In the book, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the title was formulated with the intention of heightening characterization through the use of irony. When readers start to read this novel, they immediately see a man who seems very glamorous and powerful while they have already been predisposed to seeing him in an alluring light due to the book's title. However, this perception of Gatsby is eventually completely transformed as Fitzgerald continuously divulges the flaws within Gatsby and his way of life. Having given his book the title, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald has created a level of irony that enhances Gatsby's character and serves as a basis of contrast between how Gatsby appears to an outsider and what he really is.
The Great Gatsby, a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is about the American Dream, and the demise of those who attempt to capture its false goals. For Jay, the dream is that, through wealth and power, one can obtain happiness. To get this happiness Jay must reach into the past and relive an old dream and in order to do this he must have wealth and power.
Jay Gatsby is the epitome of a tragic hero; his greatest attribute of enterprise and ambition contributes to his ultimate demise, but his tragic story inspires fear amongst the audience and showcases the dangers of allowing money to consume one’s life. To qualify as a tragic hero, the character must first occupy a "high" status position and also embody virtue as part of his innate character. In Fitzgerald’s novel, the tragic hero Jay Gatsby was not born into wealth but later acquired social status through bootlegging, or selling illegal alcohol during Prohibition. When he was a child, James “Jimmy” Gatz was a nave boy from North Dakota without any family connections, money, or education who was determined to escape his family’s poverty through hard work and determination. Once he enrolls in the army, however, Gatsby gets “’way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I didn’t care” (151) when he meets who he believes to be the girl of his dreams—Daisy.
Jay Gatsby’s mansion is the quintessence of the idealized American Dream; it shows all that true about the fact that from nothing, something great may come, but sometimes, this greatness can come at a price. “‘I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people – his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all’” (104). James Gatz, Gatsby’s real name, was born into humble roots, he was not wealthy, and sometimes did not even have food on the table; but the one thing he did have was his imagination and determination. Those are the characteristic which took him so far, and eventually even led to his downfall. His humble origins are the place from which his story starts, and will eventually catch up to him, as he had nothing when he was young, he dies truly with nothing. “Then he drifted back to Lake Superior, and he was still searching for something to do on the day that Dan Cody's yacht dropped anchor in the shallows along shore… And it was from Cody that he inherited money-a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars” (107). This is where James Gatz ...