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Self-Deluding Fantasy In The Great Gatsby And The Far

828 Words4 Pages

A dream is defined as one of two things: a cherished, aspiration, ambition, or ideal, or an unrealistic self-deluding fantasy. To begin, the dreams demonstrated in both Thomas Wolfe’s short story, “The Far and the Near” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby express the second definition of a dream, a self-deluding fantasy. Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous quote, “To travel hopefully is better than to arrive” reflects a similar theme in both Thomas Wolfe’s short story, “The Far and the Near” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby because in both writings the characters express a similar longing for a dream that they have such high expectations for, but the reality turns out as less than what is anticipated.
Moreover, The …show more content…

Gatsby and the engineer both built up their dreams to such high expectations they will never be able to reach. For example, in the novel The Great Gatsby, Nick metaphorically describes Gatsby’s dream to be with Daisy by saying, “He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather…” (Fitzgerald 95). In essence, Gatsby continued to put Daisy on such a high pedestal, she couldn’t even live up to what he wanted her to be. Not to mention, The engineer from “The Far and the Near” had also put so much hope into this one women, who couldn’t even become close to his desire. Wolfe portrays the engineer’s dream as the following, “All the brave freedom, the warmth and the affection that he had read into her gesture, vanished in the moment that he saw her…” (Wolfe 2). The engineer thought of this woman to have “brave freedom”, “warmth”, and “affection”, but in reality she had nothing he had expected her to have. After all, Gatsby and the Engineer asked for too much from what they had thought to be their lovers, in actuality they have been disappointed by the truth. On the other hand, Gatsby had once become aware that life might not always go as planned, and let go of all of his high standards of a perfect life. For instance, when the text states, “He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God” (Fitzgerald 110). After all, at one point in Gatsby’s life he was able to let go of his high expectations, and allowed himself to live an unpremeditated

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