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Essay On The Great Gatsby Not Really Great

1159 Words5 Pages

Daniel Le
Mrs. O’Donnell
English II-10
12 May 2023
Not So Great

What is the point of money without spending it with your friends? In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby is a figure of undeniable wealth and power, capturing the image of those around him with his lavish parties and extravagant lifestyle. However, beneath the mask of his dazzling persona lies a morally flawed character, whose actions and motivations raise questions about his worthiness of the title "great." The term “great” is measured by the integrity of a person and their willingness to do good without beneficial gain rather than extreme wealth. As the book progresses, it becomes clear that his title of “great” diminishes by his blindness for love, …show more content…

Though Gatsby makes a lot of money through bootlegging, this causes him to pry away from his friends, it states, “The Great Gatsby falls into the 19th-century tradition of "great expectations" and "lost illusions," as two of its greatest exemplars termed it. Such a fiction chronicles the lure of worldly success and the gradual education of the hero as he comes to measure the moral cost involved in secular achievement.” (Fiction as Greatness: The Case of Gatsby, 3). Gatsby has a superficial lifestyle which shows that he is not able to balance his personal life with his business life. Although Gatsby throws lavish parties for his guests, his inability to connect with them shows that his guests only come for their own enjoyment. Also, Gatsby has an obsession with materialistic things which leads to the false recognition of love. It states, “It should be noted that Gatsby is “a son of God”, however, not the God of divine love, but the God of material love—Mammon. Rather than an "inverted Christ" or God, Gatsby is a perverted God; one who is dedicated to the physical rather than the spiritual world. Gatsby has come to espouse the gospel of the corrupted American dream. His existence is founded on a lie, a delusion, and he terms this monstrous lie "God's truth" in relating to Nick his past” (Gatsby: False Prophet of the American Dream, …show more content…

Nick states, “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he 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, 145). This statement shows his mask of wealth and extravagant lifestyle is to cover up what his past is. He wants to gain the impression of higher class celebrities to show he has social status. Gatsby is living a fake life which shows his lack of confidence in himself. This lack of confidence hinders his status of “great” because he knows what he is doing is wrong, but will not fully grasp the idea of being himself rather than this rich figure of power. His pursuit of wealth diminishes his title of “great” because all of the money is made through illegal bootlegging. The passage states, “bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold illegal alcohol over the counter” (Fitzgerald, 157). Gatsby has an “any means necessary” attitude that makes him fraudulent and not worthy of the title “great.” Gatsby is willing to break the law

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