Similarities Between Othello And The Great Gatsby

Othello and Gatsby both drive themselves to become accomplished and successful standouts who changed the world around themselves— in a word, heroic. Jay Gatsby was a self-made man who came from an impoverished childhood in North Dakota. His long-term goal was to overcome poverty and become wealthier than even a poor country boy could dream of being. By the time he was thirty years old, he owned a customized Rolls Royce and lived in a mansion that everyone could see from hundreds of miles away, marking his success with visible and tangible signs. However, this meant that while everyone around him could see how far he’d come towards success, they could also see just how far away he’d gone from his natural state. In the same manner, Othello was

For instance, as a young adult James Gatz realized that he could not accept living an unremarkable life with the farming people of his community and therefore “invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end”(Fitzgerald 98). Fitzgerald demonstrates that Gatsby was a man who driven to reinvent himself, to explore his dreams, and to go beyond his limits. What’s more, Gatsby’s self-empowerment, meaning his ability to make his own choices and own goals, was bound up in his ability to define his own identity. Gatsby’s fixation on living this fiction suggests that he hated his former life and was unable to consider himself successful if he was living the ordinary existence than his life began with. Gatsby was driven to become better because “he was faithful to the end” to his own personal conception of what it meant to live at the height of high society.

Secondly, Gatsby’s intense heroic ambition is paralleled by his high social standing, which Gatsby has worked hard to maintain. This idea is exemplified in the description of Jay Gatsby’s luxurious

For example, when Iago states that “[t]he Moor is of a free and open nature, / That thinks men honest that but seem to be so” (1.3.381-2). This guilelessness ultimately means that Othello is able to easily be manipulated and persuaded to suit whatever ends Iago desires. And based on this fact, Iago’s jealousy and hatred for Othello is allowed to flourish unobstructed, built on the catalyst of his great reputation, and ultimately leading to the hero’s death. For example, after the truth unfolds and uncovers all of Iago’s evil deeds, Othello states, “Of one that loved wisely, but too will; Of one not easily jealous but being wrought, / Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand. Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away / Richer than all his tribe” (5.2.340-4). Othello compares himself to a base Indian because of his ignorance to the value of a precious gem that is so hard to come by, referring to Desdemona and his treatment of her. The pearl which was Desdemona was worth more to him than anyone else in the world, but Othello confesses that because of his too-intense love and jealousy, he has transformed his internalized hatred of himself into suffering for others around him. Yet his last request was that the story be told truthfully so his reputation lives on forever, heroic to the end. His ambition has been fully realized because he died at peace with himself. And like