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Examples Of Repetition Compulsion In The Great Gatsby

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"You can't repeat the past", as Nick Carraway, the narrator of "The Great Gatsby" says. Nick told Jay Gatsby that he could not make Daisy Fay, his former paramour, go with him back to five years ago when they once loved each other. Gatsby is stuck in the past and wants Daisy to help him achieve his American dream. Gatsby feels he can only achieve this by marrying Daisy and moving back to their old home. Gatsby suffers from repetition compulsion, and Gatsby like Langston Hughes has "a dream deferred weighing heavy on his mind". Although, some may argue that Gatsby had everything, friends, a mansion, a car, and was always smiling. The readers can not see past the smile and realize that he was hurting for Daisy. Gatsby hurting for Daisy and still …show more content…

Gatsby was unaware of what he was going through and unconsciously doing a foolish thing. "Repetition compulsion is an inherent, primordial tendency in the unconscious that impels the individuals to repeat certain actions, in particular, the most painful or destructive ones... Repetition compulsion is thus initially a defensive, an attempt to bind, assimilate, and integrate undesirable experiences that are incompatible with other experiences". Gatsby does not know that he is throwing his time away for a woman that has moved on. Gatsby is trying to bind or assimilate the present Daisy Fay with the past Daisy to fill in the hole he has in his heart. Repetition compulsion may take a toll on a person mentally, and that is what it did to Gatsby. So, repetition compulsion is what Gatsby is suffering from and is why he is going through a painful point in time. Gatsby is in fact going through an unhealthy phase and repetition compulsion is causing catastrophic damage to …show more content…

Gatsby acquired a mansion, a car, a pool, and could afford a party every weekend. None of these things helped Gatsby win over Daisy, therefore making it all worthless for him. "I think he half expected her to wonder into one of his parties, some night," went on Jordan, "but she never did." Gatsby set up lots of parties expecting Daisy to walk into one just so that he could see her again. This proves that Gatsby went out of his way to even get Daisy's attention. So once he failed, the reader knows much this would impact Gatsby's mind and

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618 Words | 3 Pages

While Gatsby tries to obtain a romantic life with Daisy, he is portrayed to be rising above all the corruption to be with Daisy. Daisy is in an emotional state because she is stuck between her past and present, she cries to Gatsby, “Oh, you want too much!" "I love you now—isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly.

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1662 Words | 7 Pages

Gatsby was determined to win Daisy over completely through the book. HE knew that he could always just be with her and treat her perfectly because he had the wealth. The wealth is what made him so likeable and

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1376 Words | 6 Pages

He wants not only wants to erase the past but also wants Daisy to confess that she has only loved him. This would give him confirmation that repeating the past is obtainable. Gatsby reluctantly criticizes Nick on his way of thinking with the phrase, “Can’t repeat the past?... Why of course you can!” This passage shows how strongly Gatsby lusts for the idea that he can repeat the time in which Daisy only ever loved him and she did not have a family of her own.

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412 Words | 2 Pages

Daniel Crites Mrs. Michaud English III 18 April 2023 Disillusionment in The Great Gatsby Finally achieving goals is underwhelming, the feeling that more could be done always present, the chase of the goal is significantly more entertaining than reaching goals. This concept is portrayed beautifully in The Great Gatsby, Gatsby has wanted Daisy for nearly 5 years and once he has her he is underwhelmed by her and misses chasing her. Gatsby was completely disillusioned with Daisy. When he was younger he was chasing money and status, when he was older he was chasing Daisy.

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527 Words | 3 Pages

Gatsby spent his time throwing endless parties in order to achieve Daisy’s attention in hopes for them to rekindle their love, “On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight” (page 43). Although he is proclaimed one of the richest man around, Gatsby does not interact with any of the guests attending his party, they are all but his beloved. Gatsby wished to re encounter Daisy again, presenting himself in the fashion it seemed he would be able to give Daisy everything she would ever desire. His parties are not for him to hobnob with the upper class, but his plan to flaunt his wealth, so that when him and Daisy would meet once again, it would be in a way that she would want to spend the rest of her life with

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1317 Words | 6 Pages

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.

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1014 Words | 5 Pages

In the book, Gatsby is very foolish, his actions are unreasonable and unrealistic. “He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: "I never loved you."” (125) Gatsby had expected Daisy to be the same girl she was five years ago, but the truth is that she isn't. Many things had happened to the both of them and he had set up a foolish expectation that Daisy was willing to leave Tom for him. Gatsby’s foolishness originated with Daisy.

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470 Words | 2 Pages

Gatsby invests his life to winning Daisy that his ambition turns into an obsession of having Daisy. Gatsby builds up a facade of his life to look more intriguing for Daisy. Gatsby throws parties to try to attract Daisy, but these parties are host to many guests that “came and went without having met Gatsby at all” (41). Gatsby’s death erases the facade of popularity when no one who went to a party of his shows up at the funeral. Gatsby is alone in the end.

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666 Words | 3 Pages

Jaco’Bee Campbell Ms.Thornton English 3H-0 18 September 2015 The Madness of Loving in the Past Finding love is hard but, once an individual finds love and then loses that special person the conflict is inevitable because the moments and memories were unforgettable. Although a person may convince himself that he is over his feelings, it is easy to drive himself crazy over something that should've been left behind. In the novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, portrays the main character Jay Gatsby as a person that is obsessed with his past which leads him to madness.

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839 Words | 4 Pages

In The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald, one of the characters is “stuck in the past”. Throughout the novel, Gatsby is constantly longing for a past relationship he had with a woman named Daisy, who moved on from Gatsby and married another man when Gatsby left for the war. Gatsby’s view of the past is used to develop a major theme of the novel: the moral decay of society. The novel begins with Nick, the narrator saying how the events that happened in New York, where the novel takes place, caused him to leave, and how he doesn’t like any of the people he was involved with.

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542 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, there are many characters in which each symbolizes their own life lesson and message. The book's main character Jay Gatsby, loves to simulate and relive the past. Gatsby is a nostalgic character who throughout the story has a moral ambiguity with his obsession with trying to prove that he can recreate past triumphs, believing that the past held everything that was great about his life, but it’s impossible to re-spark past emotions and memories. Nothing can be as it once was, people grow each day. Each new day a person has a new outlook on life, they have new feelings, emotions, and opinions.

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1122 Words | 5 Pages

Daisy however, very heartbroken and anxious to start a family, failed to wait for Gatsby while he was at war and she vulnerably fell in love with Tom and his money. Throughout the time Gatsby was away she grew and developed mentally, leaving him to love someone that no longer existed. When Gatsby says “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!”(Fitzgerald 110)it shows how his imagination has affected his sense of reality. He became lost in the idea that he could get Daisy back and things would automatically return to how they were before he went away.

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739 Words | 3 Pages

A tragic hero is defined as a literary character who makes an judgement error that inevitably leads to his/her destruction. These criterias categorize Jay Gatsby, the protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby. Gatsby's tragic flaw lies within his inability to realize that the real and the ideal cannot coexist. His false perception of certain people of ideas lead him to his moral downfall and eventual demise. Gatsby's idealism distorts his perception of Daisy.

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1047 Words | 5 Pages

This essay will make the case of being against government regulation of businesses and what affect it has on the business environment for example consumers. This essay will be split into different sections. The first section will be the argument against government regulations of businesses and the effect it has. The second section will then go on to describe how businesses are over-regulated, over-taxed and how regulations can cause unemployment/loss of jobs within the economy or in businesses. The next section will be a comparison with the argument in support of government regulations of businesses.

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542 Words | 3 Pages

As much as Gatsby is seen as a romantic he could also be seen as though he is stuck in his own fantasy. Gatsby is so hung up on this old idea he has of Daisy from five years ago, that he can't see that she has moved on. “Can't repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”.

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