Evil In The Great Gatsby

Good intentions do not always lead to positive consequences. Jay Gatsby, even with the extraordinary smile he wore, was no exception to this statement. This notable character, featured in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is one of the most acclaimed characters in literary history. He spent years agonizing over an idea he could never quite move past. He did not let anything get in the way of any of his wants or dreams, and this determination cost him not only his happiness, but his life. What started as the pursuit of class escalation masked as romantic desire ended up resulting in Gatsby’s disregard for reality and in his death. Jay Gatsby serves as a symbol of the unsuccessful American Dream to show the dangers of blind determination.

Pink embodies Gatsby’s now blotched moral character against the white steps of high moral standing. The use of pink instead of plain red depicts Gatsby’s morality as stained rather than compromised by the vulgarity of the East. Because his intentions were never evil or thoughtless, but his actions portrayed corruption, he cannot be described in the same way as the rest of the ‘Easterners’ in the book, especially from Nick’s point of view because of his conflicted admiration for Gatsby. However, pink as a color also shows Gatsby’s naïveté when it comes to actually holding wealth. Pink suits at this time period did not correlate with wealth and by no means did they scream pretention which is what Gatsby really longed for. Fitzgerald’s use of the word “rag” also suggests Gatsby’s status as a common man, rather than a wealthy man. The way Fitzgerald weaves both “gorgeous” and “rag” together to describe the suit shows how careless Gatsby ended up treating the wealth he worked so hard to attain. Class

Through Fitzgerald’s specific wording in this scene, readers see that Gatsby never actually attained his dream of class escalation. This specific excerpt demonstrates the dichotomy of the American social landscape during the 1920s and how it truly affects certain individuals. Nick goes on to think, “…The lawn and the drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruption—and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them goodbye” (Fitzgerald 162). Fitzgerald masterfully used both “incorruptible” and “corruption” in the same sentence to portray that corruption helped Gatsby on his path to achieving his “incorruptible dream”. By manipulating the sentence to contain both of these words, Fitzgerald points out that the only part of Gatsby not infiltrated by darkness was what fueled the darkness in the first place. Jay Gatsby worked on class escalation for the better part of his life and from the outside he achieved this “incorruptible dream”. Nothing mattered if it excluded his plan to acquire a pretention that,