The Great Gatsby Being Great Analysis

F. Scott Fitzgerald 's characterization of Jay Gatsby demonstrates the extent to which Gatsby transcends his own lowly roots and creates the impression of being "great." Throughout the procession of the 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, readers are exposed to Gatsby 's various amazing achievements, including his ascent into excessive wealth and reputation, his long-standing and eventually successful pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, and his tragic, galvanized death. However, as with the Great Houdini, Fitzgerald 's "Great" Gatsby emerges from a logical and almost karmic reality through the exposure of his ill-explained fortune and questionable social status, his fleeting and doomed-from-the-start relationship with Daisy, and his unmemorable passing;

From Daisy 's point of view, reuniting with Gatsby is miserable not only because of the inextinguished flame between the two past lovers, but also because Gatsby now has in his grasp, the upper-class lifestyle she so needs, yet she is not with him. This is the mindset that prevails when Gatsby first appears in the story. Now that he is rich, he deserves Daisy, the woman he has never stopped pursuing. His love for Daisy runs deeply and unfalteringly, and when he sees her again for the first time in five years, is even rekindled. The notion that after all the time and trouble, he finally gets the girl is stunning to readers because such a long, grueling pursuit being fulfilled is an amazing feat; Gatsby is extraordinary for having defeated insurmountable odds fro the woman he loves. However, as with his money, by the novel 's end, his relationship with Daisy, too, fails. In the confrontational scene between Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy (with Jordan and Nick as spectators), Gatsby demands Daisy admit that she never loved Tom; but she cannot. Distraught with emotion, Daisy, exclaims to him, "I did love [Tom] once -- but I loved you too," which does not suffice for Gatsby. Gatsby wants Daisy 's whole love, her unadulterated and exclusive love, but is jarred by the startling reality that due to the passage of time, and the cruelty of fate, Daisy loved Tom when she could not love Gatsby. Gatsby 's pursuit of her, of the past, is now a void because something has happened that he cannot -- and will never be able to -- control: Daisy and Tom 's marriage. Thus, the illusion of Gatsby 's successful, extraordinary possession of true love is also broken, and a harsher truth that "even alone [Daisy] can 't say [she] never loved Tom," revealed. Gatsby may have seemed great for getting Daisy back, but the clutch was only fleeting, and it certainly wasn 't for keeps; this ultimately marks his failure to possess her for good and to surface