The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates a morally ambiguous character that can’t be defined as strictly good or evil. Moral ambiguity is the driving force towards Gatsby’s actions. The character Gatsby demonstrates morally ambiguous qualities that initiate plot throughout the whole novel. Morally ambiguous choices can be viewed towards Gatsby’s character throughout the novel. The first glimpse of Gatsby is introduced in the first chapter while Nick is “exempting him from his reaction” of a “uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever” already placing Gatsby in a position of moral ambiguity (Fitzgerald 2).
“Show me a hero and I 'll write you a tragedy”. In his novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald does just that; taking a successful businessman and putting a bullet in him. However this isn’t a spontaneous murder. It could have been prevented which raises the question; Who is to blame for this moral lapse in judgment? Obviously George Wilson, the person who pulled the trigger but how about Daisy Buchanan who lied to George to get “off the hook”?
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald portrays love, obsession, and objectification through the characters Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. Some might say their love was true and Gatsby’s feelings for her was pure affection, while others say that he objectifies and is obsessed with her. Perhaps Gatsby confuses lust and obsession with love, and throughout the novel, he is determined to win his old love back. At the end of the novel, Gatsby is met with an untimely death and never got to be with Daisy. The reader is left to determined if Gatsby’s and Daisy’s love was pure and real, or just wasn’t meant to be.
Just like most novels, The Great Gatsby has a mixture of admirable and despicable characters. There are three characters that stood out the most for having one trait or the other. Jordan Baker, Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby have certainly earned the titles given to them. Jordan Baker is one of the more despicable character. Although she is not one of the major characters of this novel, she is the easiest to pick out for being a rotten person.
In many books, some characters are both likable and unlikable. To make a character likable, they must be positive minded and try to do things to make other people happy. One who may be unlikable, will be mean and rude to friends and family, also who would try to put down other people. Throughout The Great Gatsby there are many characters. Some characters are hated or loved by each other due to their flaws.
Someone once said,”there is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.” Love can lead people to fulfill their desires but love can also hurt. The idea of love gives an image of happiness and one yearning for what they do not have. In the novels “The Great Gatsby” by F.Scott Fitzgerald and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, written during the 1920’s, introduces key characters striving to obtain their goals in life of love. Fitzgerald illustrates love towards the main character, Jay Gatsby, seeking the love of Daisy Buchanan who struggles to recreate the past love with her.
F Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby circling around the roaring 20’s and the economic boom that followed. In the novel there are despicable characters and admirable characters. Jay Gatsby was an admirable character out of the novel. Gatsby is the most admirable character in the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald because he spends his whole life working to prove his love for Daisy. Gatsby shows multiple small romantic gestures towards Daisy, and shows his natural courtesy towards women throughout The Great Gatsby, which makes him an incredibly admirable character.
Do people only think of him or herself? If given the opportunity will people hurt others in order to gain what they want? The Great Gatsby proves that people will chose him or herself and lie instead of being honest. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby the story follows a man named Nick Carraway and how he spent his summer of 1922 between parties, lies, feuds, and even a couple murders.
However, although the opposing side agrees that Jay Gatsby is admirable, this cannot be true due to Mr. Gatsby’s dishonesty throughout the novel toward the other characters. For Mr. Gatsby to feel approval from others, “he does not want others to think that he was some nobody” (Fitzgerald 67) and lies about himself, his past, and how he earns his income. Mr. Gatsby mainly does this to have people like him and impress his past love, Mrs. Buchanan. In all honesty, trying to get close to other characters still gives Mr. Gatsby no excuse to be dishonest, among all other
Jesus Parra Smith English 11-2/Period 6 8 March 2018 Road to Moral Decay “If they couldn 't be bought they wouldn 't have the job.” This is an excellent quote made in the 1920’s by Al Capone, a very corrupt mobster who was living during the time period that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his great novel, The Great Gatsby . This quote is important because it reveals how Jay Gatsby, a main character in the novel who used to be poor then gained great wealth ,but then lost all of this wealth just to get the help of a corrupt mayor to gain it back again. This shows how common government corruption in the 1920’s was. In the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the mayor and Mr.Gatsby are partners in a crime organization that they use to get rich.
“What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story…” The eighth paragraph of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk,The Danger of a Single Story demonstrates how seeing the lives of characters in the novel through only Nick’s eyes affect the feelings of the reader. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is written from a first-person point of view, which generates a single impression of the lives of those in the novel. Fitzgerald fabricated Nick with a moral code, which creates a biased story – Nick believes he is non-judgemental but continues to judge others on what is morally ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Therefore, the reader is left only with a guess at who ,in the story, truly is what Nick says they are.
The relationships that intertwine with each other in the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald all have motivations for either Love, Desire, or Sex. All the major relationships in the book are not stable and have their falling out periods. So begs the question, “What is love?” And “Does money buy love?” as it could be argued for the relationship between Tom and Daisy Buchanan.
Love is an intense feeling of deep affection. In the Great Gatsby, true love seems as if it is a prevalent theme. As readers take a closer look, however, we are able to uncover that all this love, these characters long for, is unrealistic and a fantasy. Throughout the book F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the relationships of Daisy, Tom, Jay, and the rest of the characters to help readers understand the significance behind what others refer to as true love. Fitzgerald sets his story in the 1920s, an era of excessive entertainment, prosperity, and greed.
Characters throughout The Great Gatsby present themselves with mysterious and questionable morals. Affairs, dishonest morals, criminal professions, weak boundaries and hypocritical views are all examples of immorality portrayed in The Great Gatsby. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, lies and mischief fill the lives of many and significantly damage numerous relationships. First, Jay Gatsby's whole life is consumed into a massive lie. His personality traits set him apart from others and the attention he accumulates motivates him to falsely portray his life.
The characters in the novel pretend that they have their lives all figured out, but through their successes their downfalls and emptiness can be seen, to prove that money cannot buy happiness. Jay Gatsby is the newest and upcoming star in New York during the 1920’s. Through his business and inheritance he is one of the richest men of his time. One may think that his abundance of wealth would lead him to be eternally happy, but he is the opposite. Gatsby longs for his love of Daisy, which is his personal American Dream.
