Examples Of Platonicism In The Great Gatsby

Thesis: In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays Jay Gatsby as an obsessive pursuer of materialism and love for Daisy, this in turn results in his tragic death, the ultimate failure of his dream and conveys the Modern disillusionment of the Platonic Idealism.

Selected techniques are illustrated to support the argument of Gatsby asa chaser of his Platonic Idealism dream. After Gatsby’s death, Nick describes the belief of Gatsby and other Americans, who trust that if they “ run faster, stretch out [theirs] arms farther. . . .” (154), they can reach the green light. The author employs the metaphor of run faster and reach farther to expresses the desire of American as well as Gatsby to achieve the Platonic Ideal of themselves. Since human’s arm have its length limit, no

Scott Fitzgerald employs an analogy of ” boats against the current”(9.153-154)” to illustrates the impossible Platonic form. The boats represent the people who are striving to achieve their Platonic forms yet they can never do so since it’s not the life goes, hence being push back by the current. I added small boats going against the big waves to indicates the impossibility of being able to obtain their wishes of perfection and to present the powerful of nature. The blue of the waves are colored to explicate truth and nature because they can’t never surpass the truth of nature cycle, and will stuck in the same place.
After the first dinner at the Buchanan’s, Nick Carraway recalls Gatsby was reaching toward the green lights and he “was trembling (1.152)” while doing so. Gatsby’s action of trembling exemplifies him as a hard worker individual because he’s trying his best to reach for what he wants. Also,trembling can also indicates coldness and represents how Gatsby disregard the hardships to fight for what he wants. His actions define him as an obsessive pursuit of his Platonic Ideal of himself. In the drawing, I highlighted this aspect of Gatsby