The Great Gatsby Flaws

“At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower.”(103) Reading this phrase in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, you are probably picturing the kissing scene in the happy, cheesy romantic Disney princess movie you watched last Saturday. However, unlike Cinderella or Snow White, in Nick’s account of Gatsby and Daisy’s first kiss, their love implies something much more than that, and the chief way that Fitzgerald elevates their love to that level is through his miraculous descriptions. The author effectively reveals the flaws and insufficiencies of Gatsby’s idealized vision of Daisy and the American Dream through the use of numerous vivid imagery and sound devices.
“Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks

Since Gatsby is located at the bottom and Daisy, or the “milk of wonder”, is at the top of the ladder, the ladder is most likely symbolic for the hierarchy of the social classes in the 1920s. Consequently, after “climbing up” to the top of the social ladder and reaching material success, Gatsby believes that he would be on the same level as Daisy. In addition, the phrase and word “once there” and “could” depict Gatsby’s sureness that his material success would match him up with Daisy. This implies Gatsby’s devotion into the idea of the American Dream, where everyone has the equal potential of reaching success and achieving their dreams. However, in addition to imagery, the cacophonous sound used to describe Gatsby’s imagination also stresses Fitzgerald’s doubts in the American Dream. The cacophonous sounds such as “p” and “k”s create an unpleasant, or even false sound to the reader's’ ears, hinting that perhaps Gatsby’s dream is fanciful, and that his hopefulness in his dream is very unrealistic. Consequently, this discordance reveals that Gatsby's material success would not necessarily ensure his chances of achieving Daisy. In other words, Gatsby’s vision of the American Dream could be a completely erroneous assumption. Therefore, through the usage of cacophonous sounds, Fitzgerald adequately reveals his doubts in the commonly accepted idea of the American