Examples Of Hope In The Great Gatsby

How the Memory of the Past Created a Sense of False Hope for Jay Gatsby

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a classic twentieth century story of Jay Gatsby’s ambitious quest to recapture the past and the love of a woman he once had. Despite his financial success, Gatsby’s primary goal was to make Daisy Buchanan the sole focus of his future. The past exerts a powerful force over Gatsby’s actions and he develops a romantic hope to relive the past and believes he is destined to be with Daisy. Fitzgerald introduces also into his novel the central idea of hope. Gatsby has such a strong, optimistic outlook to obtain the unattainable and he will go through any lengths to achieve this. Not only does Gatsby try to perfect his faults, but

Jay Gatsby’s fatal flaw is his inability to release the past as well as to distinguish between romantic illusions and reality. Nick contemplates about the force that drove Gatsby to live his life as he did when he thinks, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…” (Fitzgerald 180). Gatsby surrounded his life with the hope to recover a love he cannot surrender. In other words, he has made his past love affair his pilgrimage to try and recapture that special moment in time with Daisy. In addition, he is so lost in the past that “Gatsby, … never once designs to recognize time. He is prepared to wait years for Daisy, and to unlearn those intervening years when he thinks at last he has her” (Parker 2). Gatsby fails to acknowledge the importance of Daisy’s experiences during the years they were apart. In his mind he denied himself to realize and acknowledge the intervening years Daisy had without him. As a result, “Gatsby lives in the past, but his dream is still about future prospects” (Giltrow 3). Gatsby longs to recreate the past with Daisy and make the past a part of his future. Furthermore, nothing can sway Gatsby from relinquishing his goal to gain back a time in his life when he was the happiest.

Although Daisy is a wife and mother, Gatsby refuses to see this as an obvious reason to relinquish his dream. Hence, his obsession to rekindle the past has made him blind to face the reality of Daisy’s circumstances. Gatsby expects Daisy to sever all ties with Tom and erase the four years she had been with him. Fitzgerald explains this when he writes, “He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you’. After she had obliterated four years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken. One of them was that after she was free, they were to go back to Lousiville and be moved from her house – just as if it were five years ago” (Fitzgerald 109). Gatsby’s desperation drove him to believe Daisy would leave her present life and continue their love affair as he remembers the connection they once made in the past. The reality of Daisy’s new life is brought to light when Nick and Gatsby see Daisy’s daughter, Pammy, for the first time. Fitzgerald describes Nick’s observation of Gatsby’s reaction when he writes, “Gatsby and I in turn leaned down and took the small, reluctant hand. Afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don’t think he had ever really believed in its existence before” (Fitzgerald 117). Therefore, for a brief moment Gatsby is brought out of his