Nick Delay In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

In order for a person to live their life and grow, they must move on and widen their perspectives to various opportunities. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway narrates Jay Gatsby’s hyerfixatation on the love of his life, Daisy. He allows himself to continue chasing the potential of her love; even when she does not share his desire for a relationship. In addition, he spends his time and efforts cultivating a lifestyle that she desires, while neglecting the inhumane ways he got there. Jay Gatsby is not great because he does not build his own castle of wealth, and he wastes his life away on something that he will never grasp once more.

Gatsby does not deserve a title of importance, for he does not gain his success from his

‘Right you are,’ [agrees] the policeman” (Fitzgerald 68). Nick questions Gatsby on the interaction, to which he responds, “I was able to do the commissioner a favor once, and he sends me a Christmas card every year” (Fitzgerald 68). Gatsby gets away with illegal acts because of his status and relationships. Causing the level of trust someone may have in him to falter because it is unknown what else Gatsby will get away with. Nick soon learns about Gatsby’s relations with a man named Meyer Wolfsheim, a big time gambler that fixed the World Series in 1919. This ties him to the negativity of gambling world and by working with Meyer Wolfsheim while trying to get rich, it reveals that Gatsby does not gain his wealth from only his family. Instead he obtains it through illegal activity and all only to impress his former lover, Daisy. Later on, Gatsby tries to convince Tom that he and Daisy are

During a conversation with Nick and Gatsby over this matter, Nick mentions that the present cannot resemble the past, but Gatsby stumbornly responds, “[c]an’t repeat the past… [w]hy of course you can!” (Fitzgerald 110). Due to his inability to separate his past relationship from the new one he is trying to grow, Gatsby fails to consider that time and occurrences have remolded Daisy’s life. Her path with him that they have in the 1917 is not the same as the path she is on now. As Tom and Gatsby fight over Daisy’s love, she begins to realize the damage she has done and “with every word she [is] drawing further and further into herself, so he [gives] that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon [slips] away, trying to touch what [is] no longer tangible” (Fitzgerald 134). She chooses her husband and begins to tear Gatsby’s hope of them being together again apart. Even though he put so much effort into winning her over, she still chose the safe option: keeping her life the same and spending it with her husband and child. Due to the dilemma of a car crash late that evening, Gatsby is blamed for the death of a girl, Myrtle, who is Tom’s mistress. Tom tells Myrtle’s real husband, Wilson, that Gatsby was driving the car that hit her. Wilson, thinking it is Gatsby who kills his wife and is sleeping with her, shoots Gatsby in his swimming pool