The Ideal Future In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Rather than being driven by essential qualities of honest human nature, such as self-awareness or morality, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a Modernist, elegant tragedy, envisions a society grappled by corruption, restlessness, powerlessness, consequence, and abandonment. Amidst the bleak background of sin and criticism of illusionment, however, through poignant scenes of romantic idealism, the fragmented pieces, together, synthesize to evoke sincerity and, above all else, hope. Weaving the past together with the present and dreams within reality, Fitzgerald offers his judgment of the 1920s, moving readers from Jay Gatsby’s past to the failure of recreating his past self’s ideal future. In longing for our past selves, each generation

In reflecting on the past under the moonlight, Nick transports himself back to the old world and freely imagines that world through a fantastical lens, a state of unreality and immense vitality. By ending the novel at the beginning of time and during the night, Fitzgerald indicates that the start always begins with wistful hope and imagination. Nick opens with his reflections and commentary on Gatsby and fittingly ends in that same position, giving readers a sense of infinite continuity of Gatsby’s experience of transformation and dreams, applying it to all of humanity. Whether he consciously changed or not, his younger self dared to unwittingly fantasize so deeply that, “a universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his

Rather than noticing the reality of his own life, Gatsby’s narrow focus on the “green light” around Daisy pushes other people and reason to the background, and with the changes from the past five years out of sight, his vision consists of only his 1917 reality, not only with Daisy but also the person — James Gatz — he once was (180). Struggling to live within the tangible, real world, he clings to the desires that consumed his mind during the war and never strays far from his dreams. Even after reuniting with Daisy, he fails to look past himself and the “colossal vitality of his illusion,” which furthers him from any feasible relationship with her (95). The motif of vanishing also surrounds Gatsby: he disappears and appears on his own whim, fluctuates between dreams and reality, and fails in staying self-aware, which all culminates in his dissatisfaction with his life. After coming home from the war and revisiting Louisville, he had the chance to accept his reality, gain closure and regain control of his