Preston Lynch American Literature Tollet 19 April 2018 Jay Gatsby Jay Gatsby, the self-made philanthropist of the 1920s, from the novel The Great Gatsby is a character to question how truly “great” he is. Intriguingly, Gatsby, despite what he says about himself, is not a man born into wealth and actually made his own way in the world. Gatsby created his own destiny through his wealth and through his name. Jay Gatsby is at one point James Gatz and through this transfer of name he also undergoes his own self-actualization. James Gatz, a poor boy, wants more so when a man on a yacht takes him in, we then “have [Gatz] modeling himself on Dan Cody”(Lehan 58). Dan Cody is what James Gatz wants to be, so Jay Gatsby is who he becomes. Gatz always wants to be better than he is, whether it is his monetary value or his value in love and what …show more content…
Gatsby even starts to believe the lies he tells about himself, because Gatsby thinks that anyone would believe things about him because of the front facing demeanor he puts off. When Gatsby tells Nick the story about his family and the places he has been to, Nick remarks “although well rehearsed, Gatsby’s story is so romantically exaggerated,” which Nick can not believe due to its ridiculous image that Gatsby is trying to put off (qtd. In Lehan 60. Gatsby tells a story he should know is completely unbelievable, yet his romantic view of himself makes him think that this should not be a problem, and this preposterous story could only be accepted if told by Jay Gatsby himself. This sense of romanticism of himself, notably, stems from his love for Daisy. Gatsby would be nothing without his love for Daisy. He builds everything in his life around the fact that he must get Daisy to be with