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American Dream In The Great Gatsby

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In the Novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald takes us through the lens of Nick Carraway, who provides his insight and perspective on the life of Jay Gatsby. Throughout the story, we certainly see many aspects regarding the American dream, and the pursuit of the American dream; which seem to be the largest dilemma as well as the strongest purpose in Gatsby’s life. Aspects can be seen in the image of Gatsby’s life such as the endless pursuit of his American dream, the achievement of this dream, and the false illusion that this dream was truly desirable and valuable to Gatsby himself(paying the costs). All of these facets come together to create a laudable, yet controversial, life for Jay Gatsby.

Jay Gatsby is a picture-perfect embodiment …show more content…

With an arrangement that had been made through Daisy’s cousin and Gatsby’s neighbor, Nick, the two former lovers were able to rekindle through awkward stages, without reproach to Daisy’s relationship with her husband, Tom. “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart”(Fitzgerald 74). Tom’s acknowledgment shows the true “eternal flame” that burns within Gatsby toward Daisy. “His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. 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 85). The vivid descriptions that the author provides helps the reader to paint a picture of the romantic tensions between Daisy and Gatsby, exemplifying that Gatsby had felt that he had achieved his ultimate goal; what he had been longing for, what he had worked so hard for. By representing the entanglement of Gatsby and Daisy, it can be clearly seen that Gatsby believes that his pursuits would no longer be a concern on his mind. Gatsby had not to worry whether his efforts would go unappreciated and unvalued, for now his American Dream was closer to his reach than it had ever

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In this scene, Gatsby is trying his hardest to win back Daisy even though previous attempts were unsuccessful. In this attempt, Despite Gatsby’s efforts, he watches Daisy vanish into her, “rich, full life,” (Fitzgerald 149), Gatsby in this scene is left with nothing but his own feeling of still being married to her even though shes not there with him. With these feelings, Gatsbys emotions begin to show when he comes to the realization that he'll never get her back. Gatsbys dream of getting Daisy back to fall in love with him is seeming to be getting further and further away from reach as he watches her basically having her best life. Gatsby's obsession with Daisy goes beyond reason and he becomes nearly consumed by his own illusion, as he writes, “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

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By attracting Daisy, “Gatsby sees the potential for future happiness, acceptance, and the resumption of a stalled love” (Heise 58). Gatsby also attempts to remove Daisy’s husband, Tom, by arguing that Daisy has never loved

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Although, he still achieved his original goal, Gatsby’s vast ambitions took a different route when his goals begun to solely revolve around getting Daisy back. After one of his parties, Nick discovers that Gatsby aspires to go back to the days when Daisy and him were deeply in love without anything hindering them, “He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy,” (110). Gatsby’s life, which he had spent pursuing his dreams of mass prosperity, now centers exclusively on Daisy and his continual pining after her. Unlike Daisy who has Tom, her husband, to fall back on, Gatsby only has Daisy and has spent the past five years of his life utterly devoted to seeing her again.

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In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby, known to all as a wealthy man, portrays a sympathetic character as society dismisses his American dream of reuniting with his love, Daisy Buchanan. Although Gatsby’s goal is to recreate the past when the two were deeply in love, his goal relies too much on Daisy’s selfishness and at times, concerning her priorities rather than his own. Specifically, Daisy’s indecisiveness holds Gatsby’s dream in jeopardy. During the gathering at the Palace Hotel, Gatsby urges Daisy to display her commitment to their relationship by confessing that she never loved Tom, but she believes that Gatsby “[wants] too much” and that her love for him is “enough” (Fitzgerald 130). Daisy has a right to doubt a future

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Jared Caplan English 11a3 Mr. Dunton 5/11/15 The Great Gatsby: unit essay In the novel, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the protagonist, Jay Gatsby, portrays the American Dream. Jay Gatsby believed that achieving the American Dream is not complete unless you have the one you love to share it with. It was this part of his American Dream that led to Gatsby’s ultimate tragic failure.

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“Gatsby goes to spectacular lengths to try to achieve what Nick Carraway calls “his incorruptible dream” (Sutton1). Gatsby’s moral decline through his life shows his failed attempt at the American dream. “The collapse of Gatsby’s attempt to win Daisy proves that dreams, money, and blind faith in life’s possibilities, are not enough for a man to reach his goals”

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The recklessness of Gatsby’s evaluation of Daisy is lackluster at best, he has failed to realize that her love for him is artificial, thus Gatsby’s pursuit of her is inadvertently flawed due to the love being not mutual. Her artificialness of love is evident when she admits half-heartedly as “having loved” both Tom and Gatsby, this expedites the

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The desire for love impairs the moral judgment of the individuals, especially Gatsby in the novel. As much as the readers of 1984 wish to cast Gatsby as a great man for his love for Daisy, his attachment to Daisy is actually nothing more than an illusion as he cannot distinguish his feeling as desire or love. True love is a deep attachment to someone in an unconditional and a sacrificial manner where one is selfless to put the other before oneself and is understanding of the other’s flaws. Yet, Gatsby possesses none of the characteristics. Although Gatsby knows that Daisy is married to Tom Buchanan, he hosts dazzling parties and even “[buys] the [mansion] so that Daisy would be just across the bay” (Fitzgerald, 78).

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(p. 100) Accordingly, Daisy’s statement differentiates the intensity of Gatsby’s long-lived love in comparison to Daisy’s recent dilemma of her own emotions. All considered, the difference between the perspectives of love demonstrates the unrequited love that Gatsby was undeniably determined to

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In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, the love that the titular character, Jay Gatsby, feels for Daisy Buchanan serves as a driving point for the plot as a whole and for Gatsby’s character. His feelings for her dramatically alter the course of the lives of all characters, and most notably that of his own life. However, this essay argues that Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy is more of an act of obsession than a love. His relentless and ambitious personality blurs the thin lines between love and obsession, specifically in his plan to take back the woman that he once loved. In his quest for Daisy, Gatsby goes to extreme lengths just to gain her attention, the most obvious examples being the parties he throws at his mansion that sits right

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F.Scott Fitzgerald is an American novelist and a short story writer. He is the author of the famous novel “ The Great Gatsby”, which is written in the 1920’s. The period of the 1920’s is well known as the roaring twenties due to lack of morales and the lowering of standards and expectations, people intended just to have a good time not caring about the outcomes of their and how they will effect their lives. Fitzgerald wants to prove in his novel the death of “The American Dream” it’s just a myth. The author of this novel shows the death of the american dream through the events surrounding Gatsby, and Daisy.

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Gatsby “paid a high price for living too long with a single dream” because the longer he held onto his unconditional love for Daisy the more distorted his perception of her became. The more Gatsby longed and was apart from Daisy the more idealized his perception became of her to the point that Daisy’s identity in Gatsby’s mind transcended who she is as a person: “it had gone beyond her, beyond everything.” Thus, Gatsby sets himself up for utter disappointment as he destines Daisy to “tumbled short of his dreams” because of the “colossal vitality of his illusion”of her. Nevertheless, Gatsby still attempts to preserve his illusion of her because by insisting that she claim she never loved Tom, however, this does not come to pass.

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This indicates that Gatsby was a man who believed in the “orgastic future” and a world that was superior to the one he found himself in. Furthermore, Gatsby 's attempt to pursue the American Dream is seen through his struggle to reach for the “green light” which symbolizes Gatsby 's dream of being with Daisy, This is demonstrated when: He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness (5).

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Despite Gatsby and Daisy's physical distance, his unceasing hope is symbolic of the distance between his unrealistic aspirations for the future and reality. Five years prior, Gatsby describes falling in love with Daisy as a defining moment in his life: "His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. 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). In this instance, Gatsby gave his rational thoughts away to every unceasing future want of Daisy. From this point forward, he dedicated his life to regaining Daisy's love despite the moral sacrifices he made.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is a reflection of the American Dream. Written in 1925, the book tells the story of a man named Jay Gatsby, whose main driving force in life is the pursuit of a woman called Daisy Buchanan. The narrator is Gatsby’s observant next-door neighbor, Nick Carraway, who offers a fresh, outsider’s perspective on the events; the action takes place in New York during the so-called Roaring Twenties. By 1922, when The Great Gatsby takes place, the American Dream had little to do with Providence divine and a great deal to do with feelings organized around style and personal changed – and above all, with the unexamined self .

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