Examples Of Greed In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald embodies the American Dream in a sense where it shows the way that the concept had been twisted by greed, self-satisfaction and near or full obsession. No one in The Great Gatsby ever truly obtains the “American Dream” as it is a fantasy- never having been a dream but more of a name for the failure of so many that try to better their lives but wind up making it worse. Dreams are unattainable and, though for a moment, it might seem one has grasped the dream, no one truly holds onto it. Jay Gatsby takes the American Dream as it is, a warped sense of self-improvement in one's life, and twists it further in a way that better exposes that the “American Dream” is just that – a dream. Greed is a seed of destruction

Maybe Gatsby's family were really upset that their son just decided he was too good for them. Nick left a perfectly good woman behind in his pursuit of happiness in the city. Tom and Myrtle hurt their spouses with their actions. Tom doesn't care, he openly visits Myrtle and doesn't really hide that relationship. None of them seem to actually realize the slope they are on to their own damnation is quite slippery until it is too late or almost too late. Nick starts the book as an honest man, but as his time with the new crowd he finds himself in, he slowly loses the honest and nonjudgmental sense. At the beginning, he imparts that his father said: “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.” Nick seems to hold to this pretty well at first, but it is suddenly dashed when commenting that Gatsby represents everything that makes him feel “unaffected scorn,” Tom and Daisy are “careless people” and Jordan is “incurably dishonest.” It isn't until Jordan points out that he has changed that he seems to snap out of this bubble of dishonest carelessness that he had been scooped into. He gathers himself together telling Jordan, “I'm thirty... I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.” Nick is the one to point out how Gatsby's obsession with Daisy – the Daisy he knew years before, the

Perhaps, if Gatsby had not been blinded by the image of Daisy he could have truly loved her in a safer way. Instead, Gatsby built up an empire to impress her and refused to see the flaws in her. "There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams-no through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion...No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.” Gatsby met Daisy years before when he was poor and stupid, so as boys do, he did what he could to try and make a life that she should want. Bootlegging, making himself proper and fancy, and then hosting huge parties all to impress this one woman. In the end, Gatsby was willing to go to jail for Daisy after the death of Myrtle, because of love. "He couldn't possibly leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to do. He was clutching at some last hope ... " Perhaps he could have lived if he had been willing to give Daisy up, but he had built everything around her, around the idea of her love but it wasn't enough in the end. Daisy didn't choose Gatsby in the end, so what else did he have to live for. Yes, Gatsby ruined the idea of the American Dream through his bad behavior, but in the end, it was a fantasy anyway. One can never build life blinded by a dream and not expect reality to throw