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