Appearance Vs Reality In The Great Gatsby Analysis

The Great Gatsby Appearance vs Reality The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is about how a man by the name of Jay Gatsby tries to win the heart of Daisy Buchanan, the woman he loves. The entirety of The Great Gatsby is told through the narrator, Nick Carraway. At first, Nick views the lifestyle of Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan and Daisy Buchanan in awe, but soon discovers that these people are not who they appear. Fitzgerald uses his characters and literary devices in The Great Gatsby to demonstrate the theme of appearance versus reality. One way Fitzgerald demonstrates appearance versus reality is through his characterization of Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Fitzgerald characterizes them as wealthy aristocrats who live in East Egg. They are considered as the old money and due to his status, Tom is well known around East Egg. When Nick first visits Tom in East Egg he states that, “their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay”

Gatsby is a wealthy man who lives in West Egg. He tells Nick that he is “the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West” (Fitzgerald, 65). He later states, “I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition” (Fitzgerald, 65). This is what Gatsby wants Nick to believe but, in reality, Nick tells the reader that Gatsby was a man by the name of James Gatz and he was the son of unsuccessful farmers. He helped a wealth named Dan Cody who took him in. The name Jay Gatsby came from when Gatz “invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby” (Fitzgerald, 98) meaning that Jay Gatsby was an enhanced reiteration of himself. Overall, Gatsby appears to be this wealthy mogul that had a great past but, in reality, Gatsby is really a man who was fed up with his unsuccessful life and wanted to be more than a