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Sacrifice In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

693 Words3 Pages

“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out, even to the edge of doom.” These words were said by famous playwright William Shakespeare in Sonnet 116. Selfless protagonists in literature will make sacrifices regardless of their consequences for what they strive to achieve or for who they’re captivated by. In the infamous American novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald explores how making sacrifices for what you know is wrong won’t always lead to success through his characterization of Jay Gatsby, the symbolism of Myrtle and Tom adopting a dog, and his use of dramatic irony in the deaths of his two major characters Myrtle and Gatsby. Jay Gatsby marches forward to give up his reputation, time, and eventually, his life …show more content…

Myrtle Wilson, a wife living in the lower class living in the Valley of Ashes, complains about being married to George WIlson; he’s not characterized as a “larger-than-life” person, and it is exactly why she plans on leaving her marriage to pursue a glamorous life with Tom Buchanan. Myrtle expresses, “The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in and never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out.” (27). Living in the 1920s, women were chastised and shunned for leaving their marriages, and having Myrtle Wilson be so willing to start a new one with Tom, a man who’s reckless and doesn’t mind being spotted with multiple women at once, displays her largest of sacrifice of her livelihood and reputation for wealth. Furthermore, it becomes clear that Myrtle is attempting to domesticate the relationship that she established with Tom Buchanan. The dog that Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson adopt together symbolizes the future that they would have shared as well as a second life that they both agreed to lead behind their partners’ backs. Buchanan mourns her death, expressing, “And if you think I didn’t have my share of suffering — look

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