Examples Of Materialism In The Great Gatsby

Fantasies, Materialism, and Lack of Purpose: The Absence of Direction in The Great Gatsby

In his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald exposes themes of human nature, desire, delusion, materialism, and purposelessness. Writing during the modernist period, Fitzgerald explores the lives of characters who fit the description of those whom Gertrude Stein calls “a lost generation”. In the materialistic, superficial post-war society Fitzgerald explores, each character has a hard time finding direction and meaning. The Great Gatsby is a portrait of an age where the young people don’t have any real purpose – they are weary of everything, useless and miserable. With a sense of failure and lack of direction, characters Nick, Gatsby and

Gatsby is obsessively infatuated with a woman named Daisy. He and Daisy fell for each other one summer five years prior to the setting of the novel. The two were described by Jordan as “engrossed in each other” (74) that summer – but with Gatsby going off to war, the two lost touch and Daisy married Tom. Ever since those times they spent together years ago, Gatsby’s mind has become one with a limitless capacity to create fantasies about Daisy that never live up to the reality before him. The first time he kissed Daisy, he “forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath” (110). At that moment, he became trapped into an obsession with Daisy that would last the rest of his

No matter how perfect Daisy was, the reality before Gatsby would never live up to his dream of her. Nonetheless, Gatsby has detached himself from the real world – a reality where Daisy has moved on from Gatsby and gone back to Tom – and his obsession continues. The night of Myrtle’s death, Gatsby waits for Daisy outside her home – in the “dark shrubbery”(143) of her yard. Although Daisy has already chosen to go back to Tom instead of him, Gatsby intends to take the blame for Daisy’s crime. Her wellbeing continues to be the only thing on Gatsby’s mind as he holds on to his dream of being with her again. When he stands outside Daisy's house, watching over it and protecting her even though she chose to stay with Tom, Nick describes it as a “vigil” (145). Nick leaves Gatsby “watching over nothing” (145); at this point in the novel, Gatsby is left detached from reality and his dream of being with Daisy is merely a figment of his