Examples Of Reality In The Great Gatsby

Aiden Dunphy

Mrs.Dirkson

Advanced American Studies

4 November 2022

Flawed reality

Imagine a person who had a rough childhood and went into war hoping for a quick end, but they experience a quick turn and end up being the wealthiest person in the New York area. That is exactly what happens in the book The Great Gatsby By F.Scott.Fitzgerald. Jay Gatsby is the core of the story and is portrayed as a mysterious man who falls into a deep hole. He is first shown to the audience as a man who suffered misfortune in his life before entering the war. This all turns around when he begins to follow a series of very unfortunate events even while he is just trying to please everyone around him. Examples of how Jay Gatsby fits the role of the tragic hero

While inside the war and because of his illegal schemes, Gatsby lost almost all of his previous relationships with the people he knew. Because of the fact, he was sent away, and as he spent the remaining years building up his wealth instead of his relationships, he was not able to make a lot of personal connections. However, he is able to maintain a mental connection to his previous love, Daisy Buchanon who is currently married to Tom. This transitions to the fact that he has very few underlying relationships when he is first introduced. This is most likely because he had a rough life before the war which is signaled when Gatsby relives his past when telling Nick the story of how he “tried very hard to die, but I seemed to bear an enchanted life” (Fitzgerald 66). The suicidal actions mentioned from his past signify

“But Gatsby's failure has a deeper and more complex motivation in a subtle interplay of human and social conflicts, and his constitutional weakness finds a tragic counterpart in them. Gatsby, too, is a hopeless dreamer,” (Perosa 36) from this, it is easy to determine that Gatsby’s inner conflicts and self-induced suffering is caused by his unrealistic view of reality. This proves how Most of his suffering is self-induced which is a direct result of his tragic flaw of being unable to control himself while around Daisy. This quickly turns into an obsession that goes both ways with Daisy. This can be inferred because Daisy is the only person that seems to make him happy at the time. However, he does not realize that this false sense of joy will soon turn into an act of hatred, causing an argument with Tom over Daisy, and tries to convince her that she “never loved him” (Fitzgerald 132). This refers to how Gatsby is so insecure that he tries to force Daisy into saying that she never loved her husband. The trauma that this action caused becomes unfixable when Daisy decides to try to drive home while intoxicated after the argument inevitably leading to the death of Myrtle, the shop owner Mr. Wilson’s wife. This being a direct result of Gatsby’s unthoughtful actions shows that he truly does not have the strength to control himself and