Passage Analysis On The Great Gatsby

This passage of the novel is very significant to the story as it is where many ideas and concept that have been prominent throughout the novel are finally pulled together. He ‘paid too high a price for living too long with a single dream’(Fitzgerald, 1993, pg 103); clearly Gatsby had spent so long living with the single goal of having Daisy fall in love with him, and to make her his own. But he had paid such a high price, both literally and figuratively. He spent so much money and invested so much of himself into this idea. But as he ‘looked up at the unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves’ (Fitzgerald, 1993, pg 103), he is finally seeing the world without his rose coloured lenses on. He was waiting for Daisy’s call, which he realised would

Fitzgerald was a firm believer in the American Dream not being as fantastic as many people believed it to be, and in this novel he used Jay Gatsby to demonstrate the emptiness of the rich and, in this passage especially, the faults of ‘living too high with a single dream’ (Fitzgerald, 1993, pg 103). Throughout the novel, Gatsby begins to lose the ‘enchanted objects’ (Fitzgerald, 1993, pg 60) in his life, until, in this passage, he realises that without Daisy, his life is hollow. He is surrounded by a vast amount of material objects that hold absolutely no value anymore; they are ‘material without being real’ (Fitzgerald, 1993, pg 103). But as much as anyone can say bad things about Gatsby, the one undoubtable thing is his hope, but in the final moments before his death, he loses his hope. His great ‘incorruptible’ dream has been corrupted. The extreme tunnel vision he has subjected himself to in his single-minded pursuit of the American Dream has left him empty and lacking in meaning. Even Nick, whose final words to Gatsby are that of praise, is only really a part of Gatsby’s life because his cousin is Daisy. Gatsby’s intense hope and belief that his salvation lies in attaining the American Dream leaves him with