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The Great Gatsby Really Great Essay

1390 Words6 Pages

Beau Supan
Mrs. Schmit
College English
May 9, 2023
The Infamous Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is an American classic taking place in the roaring twenties era. The novel’s narrator is Nick Carraway, an honest man who serves an unproblematic role in a means to deliver the story in an unbiased manner. The main dispute of the novel comes between Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, and Daisy Buchanan. Jay and Daisy were former lovers, and when Jay finds that Daisy has moved on and married Tom, he becomes obsessed with Daisy and revolves his life around getting her back. The main argument to be made about the novel surrounds its namesake. Is Gatsby really all that great? Greatness can be defined as being notably admirable in personality or …show more content…

One could debate that since Gatsby wasn’t born into wealth, it is quite amazing that he made a name for himself and attained such an estate. After his death, Gatsby’s father sheds some much needed light on his son’s childhood that provides some reasoning for an argument of his greatness. After he shows Nick one of Gatsby’s old schedules which recognizes his discipline, he says “‘Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he’s got about improving his mind? He was always great for that’” (Fitzgerald 182). This proof of Gatsby’s prior good motives may give readers a reason to believe that he was great after all. He lived a disciplined life and constantly pushed himself in a just direction to attain his goal of escaping poverty. With this in mind, the argument is easy to refute because it does not assess anything after his childhood. While he did achieve his goal of being rich, it cannot be said that he stayed on an ethical track to get there. The other flaw of the claim is that it neglects Daisy, who ends up being the center point for all of Gatsby’s actions when he is older. So although the claim that his childhood and his disciplined ways show beginnings of greatness, the story ends tragically in a manner that cannot be articulated as great in any

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