he Great Gatz - Magician Extrodinaire Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat. -Ben Hecht By definition, an illusionist is a person who performs tricks that deceive the eye; a magician. A coin pulled from behind an ear, while clever, turns out to be just a careful flick of the wrist. The coin didn't magically appear, pulled from nothingness into this world, rather, it was just a trick. A deception. But if you look past the origin of the coin, look beyond the misdirection and theatricality that was its genesis, is it not still a real coin? Are we not entertained and filled with wonder by the skill of the Illusionist? In the book The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzerald, the titular Jay Gatsby is a master magician, a truly prodigious prestidigitator. Gatsby's sole goal, his entire reason for the smoke and mirrors that is his life, is to convince everyone, perhaps even himself, that he IS somebody. He wore his illusions like the many fine tuxedos that were in the closet of his mansion, looking the part but never truly being comfortable. In truth, he did not care …show more content…
He brought himself to life like a conjurer who makes doves materialize out nowhere. Beyond just a mere magician, the Great Gatsby was elevated to an almost godly nature, "The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself...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."(76). He invented himself, he made himself who he is, and he gave himself power over his own life. Through sheer force of will, dogged determination and perhaps more than a little bit of showmanship, we can appreciate how his rise from North Dakotan poverty to excessive riches is what leads to his title "The Great