Metric Of Success In The Great Gatsby

Saint Alvin Neequaye

Mr. Hunt

English II Honors

23 March 2023

The Cost of Ignoring the True Metric of Success

In real life, success is viewed as a byproduct of wealth and social standing. In the article, “The Only Metric for Success That Really Matters is the One We Ignore” by Jenny Anderson, the lesson learned is that the true metric of success are the relationships formed with others. This metric is very ignored. Anderson lived a work-driven life, and had no time to smell the roses. It was a highly rewarding life, although she still felt the effects of loneliness. In the novel The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby ignores all his relationships in favor of building one with the love of his life, Daisy. When he finally reunited

Both Anderson and the titular Gatsby are heavily materialistic. Anderson explains that “Other people are often the first thing to fall off our list of priorities”(Anderson 4). What Anderson describes is what Gatsby does, and it is the reason why he ends up alone at the end of the book. With his goal of reuniting with Daisy again after five years, Gatsby does everything in his power to make sure that he is constantly with her, even if she doesn't know. Since he is so rich, Gatsby flaunts it in front of the Buchanans by having them visit the parties he had hosted. Along with his fame and popularity, he uses the traits that people associate him with as a way to woo Daisy. Gatsby uses his money to prove that he is worthy of Daisy’s love because he is just as rich or possibly richer than her husband,

In the article, Anderson talks about how “You can have friends and family and still feel deprived of community”(2). This is reminiscent of Gatsby’s situation because of the parties he has in his house. The parties that Gatsby hosted had a multitude of people attending yet he does not have any type of relationship with the guests. He isolates himself to make sure that he is not distracted from his goal of Daisy, showing a lack of a sense of reality concerning his connections with other people. This had a negative impact on him, one that he didn’t realize until it was too late because he was too focused on Daisy. Later in the book, Gatsby and Tom get into an argument concerning Daisy and at the end it is seen that Gatsby realizes what the reader has known this whole time: that Daisy was going to stay with Tom. He never realized that Daisy was completely fine without him because she had built a life separate from him. In his last few scenes, Gatsby seems almost melancholy, showing how he was truly deprived of social relationships. Anderson also quotes Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a psychologist at Brigham Young University. She said, “humans need others to survive”(2). Interpersonal connections are something that Gatsby severely lacks, and it is glaringly obvious at his funeral when a minute amount of people showed up compared to the hundreds at his