A lot of people today get caught up in the past. They allow the memories to consume their minds, preventing them from moving on, living their lives. In the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby, and others, are stuck in their pasts - and it is preventing them from making real friends, second chances at love, and living their lives to the fullest - happy, and with purpose. Nick, along with others, had a hard time believing Gatsby about anything concerning his past. There was never anything factual, or proven correct, to trust. "The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his platonic conception of himself…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." (Chapter 6 p98) So in this quote, it proves that Gatsby had …show more content…
"He looked at me sideways - and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying. He hurried the phrase 'educated at Oxford', or swallowed it, or choked on it, as though it had bothered him before, and I wondered if there wasn't something a little sinister about him, after all." (Chapter 4 p65) This is after Gatsby was telling Nick about his background, his past. So, this story he made up, was being told to everyone - not the real story. People's past experiences can get in the way of love. Tom and Daisy were married, yet Daisy and Gatsby were having an affair. Gatsby and Daisy had some sort of history, before she was married to Tom, and it resurfaced when Gatsby came back to town. "'...both of us loved each other all that time' - five years - 'old sport, and you didn't know. I used to laugh sometimes' - but there was no laughter in his eyes - 'to think that you didn't know.'" (Chapter 7 p131) Gatsby and