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The Tragic Hero In The Great Gatsby

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A tragic hero is defined as a literary character who makes an judgement error that inevitably leads to his/her destruction. These criterias categorize Jay Gatsby, the protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby. Gatsby's tragic flaw lies within his inability to realize that the real and the ideal cannot coexist. His false perception of certain people of ideas lead him to his moral downfall and eventual demise. Gatsby's idealism distorts his perception of Daisy. He sees her as perfect and worthy of all his affections and praise, while in reality she is undeserving and proves she is more pathetic than honorable. Throughout the novel white imagery symbolizes purity and innocence, while yellow imagery symbolizes corruption and …show more content…

Gatsby does not see things as they really are and expects them to play out exactly as he thinks they will. When Nick tells Gatsby that he can't repeat the past, Gatsby responds, "'Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can!'" (110). This delusion blinds Gatsby to what is going on right in front of him. His disregard for reality is how he formulates his dream to rewrite the past and reunite with Daisy, according to his belief that sufficient wealth can allow him to control his fate. He establishes an immense fortune to impress Daisy, who can only be won over with evidence of material success. As Gatsby attempts to make his ideal a reality, things do not run as smoothly as he plans because Daisy can never live up to his dream. When Nick is reflecting on Gatsby's idea of Daisy he notes, "He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: 'I never loved you'" (105). Gatsby’s ideal life is not a realistic expectation because Daisy is already married and has a family to take care of. Furthermore, her religion prevents her from getting a divorce and marrying Gatsby even if she wanted to. These obvious factors block Gatsby from obtaining his dream and marrying Daisy, but he seems to be blind to

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‘You can’t repeat the past”’ (110). Gatsby responds with anger, “‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can’”

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Gatsby had spent so much time and effort pursuing this unrealistic view of Daisy that it became impossible for her to live up to these expectations. He never made a real effort to find out who she actually is, or even simply respect that she had created a life apart from him. It’s unsurprising that he is disappointed by reality; he has been living in an elaborate dream, deluding himself to believe that his plan to win her over will work just because he wants it to, and ignoring the real factors that would break this illusion until it is broken for him. Gatsby is aware of the factors playing against him when it comes to his dream of being with Daisy, such as her marriage and commitment to her family, but he creates a mental version of events that serve him when he cannot accept this reality. Subsequently, he suffers from realizing that his imagined perfect version of Daisy and their perfect life together is not real or reasonable.

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He “wouldn’t consider” leaving his house to protect himself from any possible consequence because of his “hope” that Daisy would give up her reality to live with him in his fantasy. He “clutched” on to this little bit of hope like a life line, as it was the only thing he had left to connect him to his one true desire (148). Gatsby is unable to separate what in his life is real and what in his life is not real. He seems to be perfect, but his only “flaw was naive idealism” making it even harder for him to accept the truth of the situation between himself and Daisy. There was no real love between them , just the vision that Gatsby had in his mind.

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Although, he still achieved his original goal, Gatsby’s vast ambitions took a different route when his goals begun to solely revolve around getting Daisy back. After one of his parties, Nick discovers that Gatsby aspires to go back to the days when Daisy and him were deeply in love without anything hindering them, “He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy,” (110). Gatsby’s life, which he had spent pursuing his dreams of mass prosperity, now centers exclusively on Daisy and his continual pining after her. Unlike Daisy who has Tom, her husband, to fall back on, Gatsby only has Daisy and has spent the past five years of his life utterly devoted to seeing her again.

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The Amer­i­can Dream is a lifestyle: the thought that if you put in hard work, you will gain wealth. Through this wealth, you will have happiness. In the nov­el The Great Gats­by, Jay Gats­by is quintessential of The Amer­i­can Dream: he start­ed off dirt poor and with dedication, he made himself into something; a rags to riches story. As The Dec­la­ra­tion Of In­de­pen­dence states: 'All men are cre­at­ed equal, that they are en­dowed by their Cre­ator with cer­tain un­alien­able rights, that among these are Life, Lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness.' In oth­er words, ev­ery person in America has the right to re­al­ly make them­selves in­to some­one, even if you start with nothing.

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This lead to him thinking everything was perfect and heading off to war, leaving Daisy behind. When he returned, he still had the same dream that he had once accomplished, but it had become unrealistic because Daisy was married. Gatsby’s dream began to cloud his reality and he didn’t give up on it. Despite it being unreachable, Gatsby’s dream continued to be very important to him, as he felt “that if he had searched harder, he might have found her” (152-153). He didn’t know how to win Daisy over, but that didn’t stop him from trying and searching.

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If Gatsby is to truly love Daisy, instead of destroying her marriage, he would have let her go. However, because of his extreme devotion towards Daisy, he dreams of a utopia where their feelings for each other is mutual. Thus, he demands her to say that she has never loved Tom to affirm that she loves him only, but Daisy does fall in love with Tom at some point in her marriage, in between the five years of Gatsby’s absence. Nonetheless, Gatsby does not give up. He “[clutches]

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In The Great Gatsby, there are characters that make naive decisions and think like children. Throughout the book, Gatsby is constantly chasing his past and he states, “Can’t repeat the past?... Of course you can!” (Fitzgerald 110). Gatsby wanted to return to his life with Daisy so tenaciously, it changed his whole life.

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As defined by Aristotle, “a tragic hero is a literary character who makes a judgment error that inevitably leads to his/her own destruction” (“Tragic Hero” 1). In The Great Gatsby, Great historical writers like Sophocles and the aforementioned Aristotle used this character archetype while manifesting their works to create characters that were both larger than life, but also were human. Like these dateless litterateurs, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses this timeless archetype to create the titular character Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald likens Gatsby to fellow tragic heros like Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and Odysseus by describing him to be both a common man and larger than life. Furthermore, similar to other tragic heroes, Gatsby has a tremendous fall from grace.

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To begin, while Nick and Gatsby are having a conversation at Gatsby’s house, Gatsby is taken back by what Nick has to say about going back in time by saying, “‘Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!’” (Fitzgerald 110). Gatsby firmly believes in the fact that one can go back in time and experience the events that had occurred already but Nick refuses to accept the idea. Gatsby is unwilling to listen to Nick’s view on being able to live in the past, and therefore, gets upset with Nick.

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