The Great Gatsby, By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Skilled writers create captivating characters. In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story of a rich man who came from nothing. But, he has lost the love of his life in the process, and he will stop at nothing to get her back. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses multiple literary devices to develop Gatsby as unfulfilled, obsessed, and ultimately tragic. Throughout The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses multiple methods to describe Gatsby as unfulfilled. Gatsby is often portrayed as always unfulfilled, especially in his relationship with Daisy. One of the first times the narrator of the story, Nick, meets Gatsby, it’s late at night and Nick sees the dark silhouette of Gatsby standing on his lawn. The dark silhouette stands there and points to the dark waters of the bay where Nick “distinguished nothing except a single green light”, then Gatsby vanishes (19).

Later, while Gatsby is giving Daisy and Nick a tour, of his house, they look out his window at the rain. “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock” Gatsby says to Daisy, then he realizes that Daisy is no longer across the bay and is standing next to him, “His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.”(72). This symbolizes Gatsby’s lack of fulfillment, even though he has the girl of his dreams standing next to him. Gatsby and Nick discuss Gatsby’s past relationship with Daisy and Gatsby says that he can change the past. “He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving” is what Nick inferred from their discussion (85). This inference by Nick is an allusion to Gatsby wanting to change his unfulfilling past relationship with