A Labyrinth Of The Past In The Great Gatsby

A Labyrinth of the Past Amongst the battles that man must hopelessly fight is that against the fiends of his past, over which he has no sway. He is thus a victim of an irreversible past, relentlessly defeating and conquering his future. In the novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the well-known Jazz Age author employs one such man, Gatsby, to illustrate the fallacy of the “extraordinary gift of hope” prevalent during the so-called Roaring Twenties—a time in which ethics were absent, facades were mistaken for true souls, and hope was a double-edged sword. Gatsby loses his senses and identity to nostalgia as he reinvents himself in hopes of attaining the unattainable American Dream. His idealistic, wistful dreams ultimately lead to his downfall, as if cursed by the black wreath that once hung on the glittering facade of his mansion.

His hopeful quest for these ideals gives him a sense of honour and chivalry; however, it is the “foul dust” (4) of disillusionment and moral decay interfering with his dreams that leads to his undoing. Gatsby’s dreams are “great,” only they blind him from the cruel reality of humans’ inability to repeat the past. It is such disappointment that prompts his demise. Gatsby’s attachment to his past and desperation to attain the false notion of the American Dream compels him into an endless hurtle toward a dead end. Fitzgerald effectively highlights the fallacy of the American Dream through Gatsby’s sincere journey into the wealthy society--and eventually his traumatic decline--as he reaches out to Daisy’s ghostly heart. The devils of our past will thus constantly pull us into the maze of our history, a labyrinth entangling us, suffocating our fantasies and ambition, until we are left shattered into a numb pile of lost dreams and