The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is an appropriate title for the novel because Gatsby himself is great. He is great because he is able to fool everyone that he is and always has been a person of high social and economical class, he is great because he isn’t like Tom and Daisy, he isn’t as careless. Remember you don’t have to be good to be great. And as the critic Matthew J. Broccoli notes, Gatsby “is truly great by virtue of his capacity to commit himself to his aspirations.” (Bruccoli 22) We celebrate achievement born of hard work and clarity of purpose because there’s a greatness in that success you don 't get by, lounging around your pool all day. There’s exactly one person who doesn 't get drunk at Gatsby’s parties: Gatsby. He’s a bootlegger who doesn 't drink, a swimming pool owner who doesn 't swim, a man of leisure who never engages in a single leisure activity. But as Broccoli …show more content…
So, is Gatsby doomed by his romanticization of Daisy, or by his refusal to accept that he just wasn 't born to be one of the wealthy men of leisure. Yes and yes. But more than that, the great Gatsby lives in a cold world that cares nothing for justice, a world that makes claims to fairness but really only further rewards those who have already been rewarded. Who even survives this novel? Only the idle rich: Jordan Baker, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Nick Caraway. They survive and they are allowed to go on being careless. As Nick writes, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.” They aren 't cruel or malicious, they’re just careless - they don 't care too much about Myrtle or Gatsby or their daughter or even each other. To live without a care in the world is supposed to be the dream, right? Everyone wants a carefree life. But Fitzgerald shows us the horror of this care-free life, how Tom and Daisy’s inability to care is in someways more monstrous then outright cruelty