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How Is Jay Gatz Portrayed In The Great Gatsby

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Through the Facade
The America dream, once rife with assurance and affluence, consumes the innocuous dreamers into greed and corruption. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, James Gatz is captivated by the empty promises of the 1920s American dream and love story, especially that of Daisy Fay. To pursue his ambitions, Gatz sacrifices his values, as a means of personifying his idyllic rendition of Jay Gatsby. Through the failures and successes of Gatsby, James Gatz persists underneath the façade with no success in embodying Gatsby. As such, Gatz’s representation of his idealistic self falls short of the expectations of the West Eggers and the East Eggers, failing to assimilate in his new lifestyle. Although it was Jay Gatsby who dominates …show more content…

Through Gatz’s “Platonic conception of himself,” his apparition of the ideal man steams from carefully crafting his demeanor, appearance, and values (Fitzgerald 98). This artificial rendition does not serve as a representation of James Gatz because Gatsby does not coincide with the hard work and perseverance that goes into achieving Gatz’s dreams. As a result, the “James Gatz of North Dakota had dreamed a special version of the American dream,” and Gatz’s aspirations becomes contorted as his synthetic embodiment of Jay Gatsby brings corruption and effortless means (Trask). As such, the conception of Jay Gatsby does not serve as an apparition to James Gatz’s values which he holds …show more content…

The girl that Gatsby has once loved has been “short of his dreams- not through her own fault, but because of the constant vitality of his illusions,” and it is James Gatz who has gone into loving Daisy, but the high expectations of Jay Gatsby which ruins that love for her (Fitzgerald 95). As such, Gatsby’s hope to salvage her love proves to be meaningless as "his gift for hope, as it turns out, is Gatsby’s curse as well as his blessing," and so "it insulates him from the rational and experiential restraints" which causes him to be blinded by any form of rejection in his conscious when it comes to Daisy (Steinbrink). Gatz’s love for Daisy encompasses the basic foundation that makes James Gatz more genuine than Jay

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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.

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Jay Gatsby knows this situation well. By any means necessary, Gatsby completely and single-mindedly modifies himself as a person. This evolution efficiently severs any ties between that of the original James Gatz that Daisy first meets, to the reinvented Jay Gatsby created just for her. Frustratingly, every bit of this is in vain. Gatsby brawls with Tom Buchanan, her husband, over who Daisy’s heart rightfully belonged.

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Fitzgerald reveals how American qualities like greed and dishonesty are morally wrong. In regards to wealth and success, Fitzgerald makes clear the progressive debasement of the American Dream by using Gatsby himself as a symbol of the undermined dream throughout

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Gatz is described as a runner after the American Dream that seems so close but yet so far. In the words Thomas Jefferson, “If you want something you never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done.” Gatz takes the words of President Thomas to heart; in becoming Gatsby, Gatz redirects his purpose and ultimately his destiny. Fitzgerald presents a riddle with the renowned name of the East, Jay Gatsby. One theory suggests Fitzgerald based the name on “gat”, slang term for a gatling gun.

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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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As defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a protagonist is “the principal character in a literary work (as a drama or a story).” The principal character and protagonist in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is most certainly Jay Gatsby, as defined by the title of the novel itself. Although Nick Carraway is the novel’s narrator, as the narrative is told through his thoughts and perceptions, it is Jay, who certainly is not the most upstanding person in the world, who facilitates the story, allowing Tom Buchanan to become the foreshadowed antagonist. Without Jay, there is no story to tell, as he is the driving force in the progression of the storyline and the character with who the readers can empathize with.

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