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Examples Of Disillusionment In The Great Gatsby

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Throughout the pieces of literature that we have read this year such as The Great Gatsby, The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock”, and “The Egg”, there has been one recurring theme in all of them. That theme is disillusionment, when a character realizes that everything that they want and dream for is not going to happen, or that nothing can be as good as you wished it to be. Without disillusionment, these stories would not have had a developing plot line or would not have had led up to anything merely important. In The Great Gatsby, for example, it is told that Gatsby wants to recreate the past. “Can’t repeat the past, why of course you can!” (Fitzgerald 110). With this dialogue, we can infer that Gatsby is obsessed with this dream he has and …show more content…

“He was clutching at some last hope and I couldn’t bear to shake him free” (Fitzgerald 148). He knew his dream was failing, but he just wanted to see a little longer if he could make it possible. It also shows how Nick truly cares about Gatsby, and wants the best for him even though he knows as well that everything is over. This feeling is shown again later on when Nick thinks “She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby - nothing” (Fitzgerald 149). Even though Gatsby has everything anyone could ever hope for, everything that really mattered was Daisy. Now that she was gone, it was like Gatsby had nothing. All that he had done resulted in him losing everything, no matter how hard he tried, even though when in reality he had what any normal person would wish for. In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Prufrock comes to the conclusion that he will never be able to converse with society around him and be like “a normal human being” that people will respect and talk to. “I do not think that they will sing to me” (Eliot 4). Prufrock is explaining that because society won’t talk to him, even the mermaids won’t either. In a way, mermaids are being related to sirens, which lured everybody close to them because they wanted to hear the siren’s song. But they didn’t even attract, or lure,

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