The book The Great Gatsby is a cautionary tale about what can happen if you dream of reaching unattainable goals or an illusionary world that is all good. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses characters like Gatsby to show that the “American Dream” just isn’t enough sometimes. He is showing us the dangers of always needing more and doing whatever it takes to get there. This book warns us about how the “American Dream” is an illusion. Within the first few chapters we see the carelessness and hope that these characters hold. We see how Nick preserves Gatsby, this businessman who is mysterious and intriguing. We also see how Gatsby seems to be limitless in the things he has been able to achieve. We see this when Nick says, “Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge,’ I thought; ‘anything at all. . . .’ Even …show more content…
Gatsby has everything, or at least that is what it looks like from the outside. However, he is still unhappy. Throughout the book, Gatsby is reaching for Daisy, but not the Daisy that exists now, the Daisy of the past. Gatsby is so stuck in the past that he is holding onto a person who no longer exists. We can see how Nick starts to see this when he says, “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”. Gatsby has dreamed of Daisy for 5 years but in that time he has created a bubble of perfection around her, thinking that she can do no wrong and she is still the same girl he met before. The ending scene of the book is Nick looking back at the events that have taken place and how dangerous the “American Dream” really is. Nick says,”Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms