The Great Gatsby

Nostalgia, the bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past, is the dominant feeling throughout The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is an eloquently written novel filled with intricate details and written to evoke the romanticism in anybody. The love affairs evolving throughout the story add substance as well as emotions to the author’s message, a moral lesson concerning how people think and behave. I found numerous instances in the book that aroused soul-searching questions that every person asks him/herself at one period of time or another. Mr. Jay Gatsby, the self made millionaire, is desperately seeking to reunite with his first and only love, Daisy Buchanan, who is already married to Tom. The story unfolds through the eyes of Mr. Nick Carraway, who lends a moral standing to the story, remains more distant than the other characters, and is more a spectator than being actively or emotionally involved in the situations. Fitzgerald’s use of Carraway as a spectator, and how brilliant it is, is one aspect that all literary critics seem to agree upon. The first literary critic, Jeffrey Steinbrink, primarily focuses his analysis on the element of time. He states, “the notion that the flow of history can be arrested, perhaps even reversed, recurs in The Great Gatsby as a consequence of the universal human capacity for regret and the concomitant tendency to wish for something better” (Steinbrink 179). The inability to recover the past as well as the tendency to try and correct it is most evident with Jay Gatsby. He is insistent upon Daisy admitting that she has never been in love with her husband. Gatsby says to Daisy, “just tell him the truth—that you never loved him—and it’s all wiped out forever” (Fitzgerald 7,139). Jay Gatsby believes, with all his heart, that his dream of recapturing his long lost love is dependent upon erasing and forgetting the past five years. Nick tells Gatsby that the past cannot be repeated. Gatsby foolishly denies this and continues to believe that he can fix what has already occurred. Gatsby is only thinking with his heart and not with his mind. Gatsby feels as though his past with Daisy can be recreated if he could hear that he is the only man who Daisy has ever loved. Unfortunately, Gatsby is not Daisy’s only love; she has also loved Tom. Daisy informs Gatsby that he is asking too much of her and it devastates him.