The Great Gatsby Research Paper

The roaring twenties present an environment where wealth, privilege, and social status are the illusion of a perfect life. This American dream was originally a symbol of hope for success and a better life, but is blurred into a goal of material wealth and status. With this glamorous lifestyle comes the devastating consequences of unhappiness, delusions, and harsh realities. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, characters such as Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick navigate between illusion and reality, each carrying different motives of the pursuit of happiness in relationships and achieving the American dream. Symbolizing the corrupt dream of the 1920’s, Jay Gatsby is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his fantasy of a perfect life. Similarly,

His love of wealth and material possessions is not only a personal interest, but also one of Daisy’s interests. Revolving his life around her, Gatsby only “bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay” (Fitzgerald, 78). He takes pride in showing off his expensive shirts, “throwing them one by one” (Fitzgerald, 92) In chapters five and six, readers sympathize for Gatsby, seeing that he is merely a love-struck human who is throwing his life away for a girl not worth his time. Nick Carraway, however, sees Daisy as who she truly is. Formerly the sweet girl who loved Gatsby in Louisville, Daisy will never desert her social class in the East Egg to be with Gatsby of West Egg. Gatsby takes off his rose-colored glasses and realizes the past cannot be repeated. “Only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible” (Fitzgerald, 134) He faces reality in chapter seven, when Daisy chooses Tom over Gatsby and proves her real nature. Unfortunately for Gatsby, he is unable to create a better life for himself without Daisy before getting murdered a few days after his epiphany. Already coming from a wealthy family, Daisy Fay’s dream is to live an easy life filled with riches and glamour. She marries Tom Buchanan of Chicago, who is from an aristocratic family and promises her the luxurious lifestyle of her dreams. “By the

“He hurried the phrase “educated at Oxford,” or swallowed it, or choked on it, as though it had bothered him now. And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces, and I wondered if there wasn’t something a little sinister about him, after all.” (Fitzgerald, 65) His lies about being an Oxford man and his previous criminal activity makes Nick mistrustful of Gatsby. He sees the flaws in Gatsby’s motives and desires to repeat the past. After Gatsby dies, Nick moves to Minnesota. While he is attracted to the fast paced and fun lifestyle of New York, he finds this lifestyle grotesque and damaging. This inner conflict is symbolized throughout the book by Nick’s romantic affair with Jordan Baker. He is attracted to her vivacity and her sophistication, just as he is repelled by her dishonesty and her lack of consideration for other people. “That’s my Middle West...the streetlamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark... I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.” (Fitzgerald, 176). Nick returns to the Midwest because he is disillusioned with life in New York and realizes that the reality of the American Dream is a destructive force despite its positive