The Great Gatsby Foolishness Analysis

Gatsby’s “Greatness”

Greatness is showed by the choices we make in life. From how we see the circumstances and how we react to them. Gatsby is not as great of a man as Nick claims that he is. Gatsby makes foolish, childish and delusional decisions and not at all great.

In the book, Gatsby is very foolish, his actions are unreasonable and unrealistic. “He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: "I never loved you."” (125) Gatsby had expected Daisy to be the same girl she was five years ago, but the truth is that she isn't. Many things had happened to the both of them and he had set up a foolish expectation that Daisy was willing to leave Tom for him. Gatsby’s foolishness originated with Daisy. His infatuation

“ “This is a terrible mistake,” he said, shaking his head from side to side, “a terrible, terrible mistake.” “You’re just embarrassed, that’s all,””(87) Gatsby is a self made man, he makes a big deal in getting Daisy to meet him “accidentally”. But when she gets there, he backs out like a child. His whole life (after meeting Daisy) was based around getting Daisy to be his, so I understand that he was nervous to see if his hard work in becoming a great person worked on her, but Gatsby should had passed his nervousness aside to talk to her, without Nick. Gatsby couldn't even talk to her without Nick’s presence. He needed Nick to be there and when Gatsby wanted to back out he needed the support of Nick to keep him there. For what he worked so hard for I don't understand why he keeps trying to run away like child. Nick had no “idea what “this matter” was, but [Nick] was more annoyed than interested. [Nick] hadn’t asked Jordan to tea in order to discuss [Gatsby]... and for a moment [Nick] was sorry [he’d] ever set foot upon [Gatsby’s] overpopulated lawn.”(67) Even Nick was fed up with Gatsby during this passage because Gatsby was being a child and had to have his message go through Jordan than to just own it and ask Nick himself in person. Even when Nick confronted Gatsby about it he said that he would just

“James Gatz — that was really, or at least legally, his name… The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God.... So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.”( 99) Gatsby was just a ideal, a dream that was conceived from James Gatz , a poor boy. He changed everything, lied about his past and truly believed that he was Jay Gatsby. He didn't even accept his own parents or any part of his past as his own. Gatsby’s past is full of lies, a life created from imagination that is not even real. “I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” [Nick] ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.” “Can’t repeat the past?” [Gatsby] cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”(110) As Gatsby truly believed that he was no longer James Gatz, he believed that Daisy still loved him and was the same from five years ago. But the truth of the matter is that Daisy had once truly loved him and she isn't the same as she was the years before, and there is nothing Gatsby can do to repeat the past and end up with the happy ending he dreamed of where “after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house—just as if it were five years ago.”