Ignorance In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Too Busy Dancing to Fall
Ignorance is bliss in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. Before the tragic conclusion of the novel, Gatsby does not realize that he is not chasing Daisy Buchanan for who she is as a person, but he is chasing the idea of Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby chased the Daisy Buchanan he had manufactured in his romantically delusional mind which is a parallel to how people were full of disillusionment and hedonism in the 1920s. Not only does Fitzgerald craft his characters to represent the brand of the 1920s, but he also implements that society’s ambitions were dependent on the idea of the “American Dream”. As Nick Carraway states, “life is much more successfully looked at from a single window”, but when Gatsby did that,

In the novel, Gatsby is adamant about influencing fate and merging Daisy Buchanan's future with his. Gatsby seemed to mistake his loyalty and persistence as his guide back into Daisy Buchanan’s life while in reality, Gatsby had no path back into her life. There were potentially multiple things that Daisy Buchanan might have considered undesirable of him, but Gatsby fails to notice them because of his delusional thinking. There were “nearly seven years during which men and women may be disillusioned by politics and religion and love”, and Gatsby’s lust for wealth, profile, and Daisy Buchanan is a prime example (Allen Doc C). The disillusionment that George Wilson suffers appears in a similar way. By convincing himself that Myrtle Wilson was killed by her secret lover, George Wilson uses the tragedy as an opening to decompress everything he had been bottling up within himself. Michaelis assures George Wilson after he finds out the news that Myrtle Wilson was killed by saying, “this has been a strain to you and you don’t know what you’re saying”, but unfortunately, George Wilson ignores him (Fitzgerald 166). Later, George Wilson continues to rant about how “God knows” what Myrtle Wilson was doing, and to Michaelis’s surprise, George Wilson is staring at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg (Fitzgerald 167). While it may seem humorous that George Wilson is so faithful to the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, the same foolishness can be seen in society during the 1920s because “business had become…the national religion of America” (Allen Doc E). For that reason, Fitzgerald uses George Wilson’s disillusionment towards his wife as a parallel to the business world during the