Obsession In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Have you ever wanted to recreate the past so badly it became an obsession? In the fictional book, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the character Jay Gatsby to show how an obsession with the past can destroy the present. Through the use of symbols and descriptive language, Gatsby's longing for the past and the fact it is impossible to go back in time becomes a main theme of the novel.

Gatsby had met Daisy five years before the current setting in the book. They planned to marry when he returned from the war, but Daisy did not wait for him and she married someone else (Tom). Throughout the book, Gatsby is trying to recreate the past with a different identity by trying to be the person he thinks Daisy would have married. Chapter three

He even changed his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby because it sounds more like a rich man's name. The reader learns that Gatsby participated in illegal activities to get rich. This shows how desperate he was to become part of the upper class. In chapter five, Gatsby and Daisy finally meet after five years apart. Nick arranges the meeting and goes along when Gatsby gives Daisy a tour of his mansion. He watches as Gatsby tries to recreate the past relationship he had with Daisy. Nick notices “the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness”. Almost five years of experience! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams - not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion” (Fitzgerald 95). Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy as she was five years ago is not who the real Daisy is today, but he ignores

The car accident where Myrtle runs out to Gatsby’s car thinking it’s Tom’s car is the start of the events leading to Gatsby’s murder. Daisy runs over Myrtle, which causes George to go after Gatsby. Tom and Daisy leave town together without thinking about how many lives they destroyed. Just before Gatsby is shot, Nick thinks Gatsby “must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass” (Fitzgerald 161). Gatsby is finally waking up from his dream to see the truth about Daisy. His identity was created to win her back and when he sees he may never get her back he sees reality instead of living in his dream of the