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Obsession With The Past In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

977 Words4 Pages

Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course, you can!” (Fitzgerald 69). In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the tolerant narrator, Nick Carraway, explores the disastrous yet pristine life of his new neighbor, Jay Gatsby. As Nick and Gatsby’s relationship grows, Nick discovers the truth behind Gatsby’s glamorous life. Gatsby has a lethal infatuation with the past, specifically, his past with an old lover, Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby longs to resume his past life with Daisy as if no time had passed, clinging to their memories. Gatsby’s obsession with the past is instrumental in illustrating a theme of the work, that revisiting the past may never go as expected. Whether it be relationships or experiences, you cannot perfectly replicate …show more content…

He builds his entire life around finding Daisy again. From the moment he moves to his home across the bay from Daisy, he creates the perfect narrative of resuming their time together. However, nothing is perfect. Gatsby’s fantasy’s of resuming the relationship they had 5 years ago are unrealistic: “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 60). This section from the novel illustrates that Gatsby has put his expectations too high, hoping for something that is not possible. He wishes to have the past come back to life along with the feelings the couple once had, but even Nick recognizes that it is unrealistic for Daisy to exactly live up to his desires. Gatsby’s vision of how things should play out is not plausible. This demonstrates that although he attempted to reconnect with Diasy, things did not live up to how he imagined them, showing that things did not go as planned when trying to revisit his past. Gatsby creates an image in his mind of how reuniting with Daisy would go. He desires to find the version of himself, and of Daisy, that was alive years

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Although Gatsby cannot see it, Nick Carraway, Gatsby’s friend, can see the inalienable effect his past has on Daisy. Fitzgerald wrote, “He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to causal moths so that he could ‘come over’ some afternoon to a stranger’s garden” (Fitzgerald 78). After all these years without seeing Daisy, Gatsby concocts a perfect plan to reunite with her. As much as Gatsby wants Daisy, he cannot make her feel the way she once did. Fitzgerald wrote, “’You can’t repeat the past.’… ‘Can’t repeat the past?’

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Gatsby had spent so much time and effort pursuing this unrealistic view of Daisy that it became impossible for her to live up to these expectations. He never made a real effort to find out who she actually is, or even simply respect that she had created a life apart from him. It’s unsurprising that he is disappointed by reality; he has been living in an elaborate dream, deluding himself to believe that his plan to win her over will work just because he wants it to, and ignoring the real factors that would break this illusion until it is broken for him. Gatsby is aware of the factors playing against him when it comes to his dream of being with Daisy, such as her marriage and commitment to her family, but he creates a mental version of events that serve him when he cannot accept this reality. Subsequently, he suffers from realizing that his imagined perfect version of Daisy and their perfect life together is not real or reasonable.

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Gatsby’s own expectation influences his reaction to Daisy. " Daisy tumbled short of his dreams/colossal vitality of his illusion." (pg 96) he held such an unrealistic ideal for Daisy she falls short of what he constructed in his mind, his reunion with Daisy further disappoints him as he hoped Daisy would be who she was back then so they could start anew and fulfil his desire. Incapable of accepting the past Gatsby loses his composure when he realises Daisy does not like the party he threw, because Daisy

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838 Words | 4 Pages

Gastby’s romanization of the past with Daisy has been causing him to repeat the past to be able to impress her. Within The Great Gatsby, Gatsby has been romanticizing his past to Nick, while also trying to replicate it within the present. His way of looking at the past is through what is known as a Rosy Retrospection, which is known to give a person expectations that are difficult to follow. There are two parts of his past that make him the way he is today, in which he longs for Daisy.

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In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Tim Seibles Dolores Jepps, and Jesmyn Ward's foreword, all of the texts show how holding onto the past and not being able to change can lead to great disappointment. This can be seen through Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy and the author's memories from the poem. The foreword also highlights the importance of change and how it affects Gatsby's dream. Gatsby’s idea of the past and his inability to move forward is seen throughout the novel, but it is especially seen when Nick says “He wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy(Fitzgerald 85). This quote calls attention to Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy, which shows his lack of ability to move forward and accept changes.

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The past is something that is capable of shaping people into who they are, but the past is also an aspect in life that is unchangeable and permanent. In The Great Gatsby, the significant theme of “memories and the past are eternal” is portrayed through the idea that humans tend to remember the past positively via the characters Daisy and Gatsby, the regret within Daisy, and the naive thoughts of Gastby. Throughout the novel, readers receive a sense that is it human nature to remember only the positive memories of the past, rather than the negative aspects. For example, Daisy dramatically states, “Take ‘em downstairs and give ‘em back to whoever they belong to.

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Numerous accounts of literature display the significance of past events to the details of the present or future. Many novels show certain behaviors or actions of characters that are directly related to things that have happened in the past. This literary technique is evident in the novel The Great Gatsby, a book written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In this story, the lavish life in the 1920s is personified by a diverse group of people living in New York. The main focus of the story is a mysteriously wealthy man named Jay Gatsby.

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Scott Fitzgerald focuses on the past and trying to bring it back many times throughout the book. The sense of nostalgia is very present and seeps into the characters’ motivations. The story follows Nick Carraway as he tells how Jay Gatsby tries to recapture the love of his life he lost five years prior. The entire time Jay keeps talking about how he has to “...fix everything just the way it was before, (Fitzgerald)” as he said in the book. Daisy even falls under the influence of Jay’s nostalgic views.

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The past affects us in many ways, it shapes both us, and our future. While sometimes we may wish to relive the past, we need to keep our focus on the present and the future. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald presents an example of this idea through the story of Jay Gatsby. Through his story, we learn that living your life based on a fantasy will lead most often lead to tragedy.

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Manly says that when a relationship ends too soon in your mind, it fantasizes about “coulda-woulda-shoulda scenarios” that could have happened if you were still in the relationship (“Why Can’t I Get Over My Ex? 13 Psychological Reasons You’re Stuck in the Past and How To Move Forward”). As so, Daisy has an affair with Gatsby because she is attached to the past with Gatsby since he reminds her of her younger times. In Chapter 8, Nick describes how Gatsby viewed Daisy when they met for the first time. To Gatsby, “she was the first “nice” girl he had ever known”(Fitzgerald 155).

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724 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout the book Gatsby uses his actions and events that happened in the past to either bring it back or move on from it. His love for Daisy started in the past, and it is so strong that he wants to bring back what they had and not leave it. Nick takes us through his story as he learns more about this character who, for everyone else in the book, is a mystery and no one really knows where he came from and what his past really was. The way he started off getting his money doing illegal actions was not exactly the right thing. When Daisy leaves Gatsby for Tom he is devastated because Daisy was everything to him and he wanted to recreate what they had in the past.

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839 Words | 4 Pages

In The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald, one of the characters is “stuck in the past”. Throughout the novel, Gatsby is constantly longing for a past relationship he had with a woman named Daisy, who moved on from Gatsby and married another man when Gatsby left for the war. Gatsby’s view of the past is used to develop a major theme of the novel: the moral decay of society. The novel begins with Nick, the narrator saying how the events that happened in New York, where the novel takes place, caused him to leave, and how he doesn’t like any of the people he was involved with.

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2095 Words | 9 Pages

"I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before, he said, nodding determinedly. She'll see" (Fitzgerald 110). Gatsby had an idea in his head about Daisy and would not let it go. His need to repeat the past, the perfect image he had of Daisy, and the unrelenting need of completing his task of gaining back Daisy is awful for him and the people around him. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Gatsby's obsession with the past is what ultimately led him to his death.

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793 Words | 4 Pages

This hinders Gatsby from moving on and focusing on his own life and happiness. In the beginning to gain Daisy's affections, Gatsby accumulates extortionate wealth and displays extravagant gestures, such as organizing luxurious parties every Friday and showing her his grandiose mansion after the Tea Party with Nick. To Gatsby the memories of the past with Daisy are everything that he wants. Therefore winning Daisy back becomes his primary goal in life. When Nick tells Gatsby, “You cannot repeat the past,” Gatsby replies incredulously,“Why of course you can.”

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542 Words | 3 Pages

As much as Gatsby is seen as a romantic he could also be seen as though he is stuck in his own fantasy. Gatsby is so hung up on this old idea he has of Daisy from five years ago, that he can't see that she has moved on. “Can't repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”.

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