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Social in 1920s america
Social in 1920s america
Social in 1920s america
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“I found myself on Gatsby’s side, and alone” (172). In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby was a very wealthy man in East Egg who came from a poor family in the south. However, he was unsuccessful in the way that he achieved his wealthiness. Also, he was not necessarily someone who could be trusted because of his skeptical actions throughout the book. Clearly, Gatsby does not deserve his title of greatness because he is not well liked, he is unfaithful, and he is involved in illegal activities.
It is evident that no one should have intimate relations with a married man or woman. However, Gatsby clearly does not get the message. A cite from The Great Gatsby that shows Gatsby’s inappropriateness is when Tom, Daisy, Nick, Jordan and Gatsby are in a hotel room and Gatsby says to Daisy, “Daisy, thats all over now. It doesn't
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No one knows where Gatsby got his riches, but they do know it had to be illegally. So many people thought he was involved in illegal activities because of what happened in the book where, “He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter.”(141).This shows that Tom along with many other people are very curious as to how Gatsby earned his money. Tom is just the first to find out what the "drug stores" that Gatsby mentioned are. When Gatsby tries to get Nick involved with him and Wolfshiem, Nick turns it down leading to an awkward confrontation. “This is just a friend. I told you we’d talk about that some other time.”(75). Wolfsheim gets Nick confused with someone wanting to get into their “business”, but Gatsby quickly interrupts, not wanting Nick to find out about his work. Gatsby gets so many phone calls, no one really knows his story, and his fame and riches came almost overnight. These all confirm that Jay Gatsby was indeed involved in
“He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it … It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.” (Fitzgerald 48). In chapter 4, Gatsby was riding into town with Nick, and then a police came, all Gatsby did was raised a little white paper and the cop apologized for stopping him. This isn’t only about corruption in 1920’s, but how he was above the law. He has the reputation of the president. He can get away with anything he wanted, he loves the power and the respect. When people say Gatsby it’s like he’s an imperial. The spreading rumors of Gatsby are horrific by the sense that, they were so out of this world you don’t know how people really believed them. Everybody had different point of views of Gatsby, he loves each one if the rumor didn’t contain the truth, or him being poor. His actions seem that all he wants people to do is think of him as an opulent man. Gatsby loves recognition. This makes him lose the idea of his past life which he hated. He strived to forget how he grew up, and where he came
There is a fine line between love and lust. If love is only a will to possess, it is not love. To love someone is to hold them dear to one's heart. In The Great Gatsby, the characters, Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan are said to be in love, but in reality, this seems to be a misconception. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald portrays the themes of love, lust and obsession, through the character of Jay Gatsby, who confuses lust and obsession with love.
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.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby many characters are not as they seem. The one character that intrigues me the most is James Gatsby. In the story Gatsby is always thought of as rich, confident, and very popular. However, when I paint a picture of him in my mind I see someone very different. In fact, I see the opposite of what everyone portrays him to be. I see someone who has very little confidence and who tries to fit in the best he can. There are several scenes in which this observation is very obvious to me. It is clear that Gatsby is not the man that everyone claims he is.
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.
Jay Gatsby is a morally corrupt figure that should be watched. He is a dangerous and manipulative man that you should distance yourself from. As the story unfolds, we learn that Gatsby is a bootlegger who makes his money illegally. This was shown when Tom said, “I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him and I wasn’t far off” (Fitzgerald 143). Even when accused Gatsby doesn’t try to oppose Tom’s remark, he just goes more in detail about how he has “helped” people make money when they needed it. Also, the book doesn’t go much into detail about who Gatsby is. The author only tells us small sections of Gatsby's life and even then there is no way to tell if they are true, especially when it’s from Gatsby’s perspective. All the people
Gatsby is not so great because he is a liar. From the very start Gatsby is said to be an alumnus from Oxford, who fought in WWI, hunted big game, and had parents from the Midwest. He even justifies himself when Nicks asks and Gatsby pulls out a picture of him at Oxford and a WWI medal that he carried around in his pocket. He even changed his name, James Gatz to Jay Gatsby, but why? “James Gatz – that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career” (6). Gatsby is mysterious and mystifying, known for his large parties yet no one knows why he has them. Keep in mind this is the prohibition era, but at Gatsby’s parties there is always plenty of alcohol to go around and no one knows where it comes from or how he acquires so much, one of the many mysteries. In attendance at these parties there are people like Meyer Wolfshiem “the man who really did fix the 1919 World Series” (118), to the mayors and governors. More questions arise in this company as to how Gatsby is associated with gangsters and why they attend these large parties. It is completely ironic how so many attend these parties but none ...
“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.
Jay Gatsby shows he doesn't deserve his title through multiple events and especially through his untrustworthiness. Examples include how he told Nick he was,”A German Spy during the war”
Gatsby was a man of great accomplishments who rose from poverty to immeasurable riches. Gatsby is loved by those who haven’t even met him because of the extravagant parties he hosts at his mansion in West Egg. Although he is loved by many, Jay Gatsby keeps to himself. Even those who attend his parties don’t know where he comes from or how he became rich. Gatsby is a man of great characteristics driven by his great ambition and love for Daisy.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was very clever in choosing the word "great" in describing such a complex character as Jay Gatsby. It is clear that this word is being used facetiously as Fitzgerald continuously reveals more and more weakness within Gatsby. At first glance, Gatsby is portrayed as glamorous and magnificent. The reader himself learns to appreciate this man who is the classic example of an American hero- someone who has worked his way up the social and economic ladder. He is a man who has completely invented his own, new, inflated image. Throughout the novel, this glorified facade is slowly peeled away. Gatsby eventually gets killed in pursuit of romance with the beautiful, superficial socialite, Daisy Buchanan. Havi...
Jay Gatsby is dishonest to himself to and those around him which ultimately leads to his failure. He lies about his past, his family, and his accomplishments in order to achieve his version of the American dream, which ...
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.
Starting at a young age Gatsby strives to become someone of wealth and power, leading him to create a façade of success built by lies in order to reach his unrealistic dream. The way Gatsby’s perceives himself is made clear as Nick explains: “The truth was Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God… he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty” (Fitzgerald 98). From the beginning Gatsby puts himself beside God, believing he is capable of achieving the impossible and being what he sees as great. Gatsby blinds himself of reality by idolizing this valueless way of life, ultimately guiding him to a corrupt lifestyle. While driving, Nick observes Gatsby curiously: “He hurried the phrase ‘educated at Oxford,’ or swallowed it, or choked on it, as though it had bothered him before. And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces…” (Fitzgerald 65). To fulfill his aspirations Gatsby desires to be seen an admirable and affluent man in society wh...
Gatsby is a mysterious man that no one really knows of. There are only rumors of him floating about at the lavish parties he host. Some saying he has committed a murder and others saying he was an American or German soldier during the war (WWI). Gatsby can also be depicted as a hardworking and honest man. Although he earned his money in an illicit way, his strive to be wealthy and achieve the American Dream exhibits his determination and his pursuit of happiness and material success. As Gatsby’s past is revealed, we learn about his bootlegging, “He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter” (Fitzgerald 141). Gatsby does not deny this and confesses the truth to Daisy. We also learn that Gatsby legal name was James Gatz and he was from North Dakota. We are also informed that his parents were unsuccessful farmers and attended college St. Olaf college in southern