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Theme Of Ambiguity In The Great Gatsby

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In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby is proven to be a morally ambiguous character. Gastby can not be identified as purely evil or purely good due to his love and desire for Daisy being good, but how goes about trying to attract her being misleading and corrupt. Without Gatsby being both good and bad the stories theme of a positive hope or dream for their future would not come across as clearly. Gatsby's moral ambiguity can symbolize the end of the American Dream and the corruption of the upper class. Within this theme of ambiguity, Gatsby's morals and actions contradict each other because loving Daisy and changing all the things he didn't like about himself for her is a chivalrous action, but how he changes himself is knavish. Fitzgerald proves Gatsby is a good person when Gatsby …show more content…

Within all Americans their is a hope for a better future and Gatsby shows this hope through his love for Daisy and the green light. The green light symbolizes Gatsby's hope for his a Daisy bright future together. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.”, but when the light disappears that hope is gone because he realizes that his and Daisy's relationship had changed (Fitzgerald 180) Gatsby's ambiguity can be seen as a symbol for a loss of hope or a loss of the American Dream. The green light Gatsby obsesses over can symbolize hope for the future, but when it vanishes Gatsby realizes that “the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever...His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.” (Fitzgerald 93) Gatsby's moral ambiguity accentuates the theme of a loss of hope and the decay of the American dream. Gatsby's goal was to win Daisy and in doing so he had to build up a fake persona, so that nobody could know or judge his less than perfect self. His personality shows that he never lost hope for a better

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Fitzgerald attempts to make Gatsby appear as a compassionate and humble man who cares for everyone but fails at doing so by showing his many flaws and actions that go against the very idea of him being a compassionate man. At first, Gatsby appears to be perhaps the only compassionate man in the book and maybe even comparable to Christ. You see him opening his home to everyone, and taking people in and being kind hearted to everyone he encounters but later the reader begins to discover that everything Gatsby does, has an ulterior motive. For example, his kindness to Nick first appears to be just him being kind to his neighbour, however the reader later realises that the only purpose in Gatsby’s kindness towards Nick was to get him to assist him come in to contact with Daisy and be reintroduced to her. “I’m going to make a big request of you to-day” (Fitzgerald 52).

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The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates a morally ambiguous character that can’t be defined as strictly good or evil. Moral ambiguity is the driving force towards Gatsby’s actions. The character Gatsby demonstrates morally ambiguous qualities that initiate plot throughout the whole novel. Morally ambiguous choices can be viewed towards Gatsby’s character throughout the novel. The first glimpse of Gatsby is introduced in the first chapter while Nick is “exempting him from his reaction” of a “uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever” already placing Gatsby in a position of moral ambiguity (Fitzgerald 2).

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In a book about a tragic love story, one would not expect to find a deeper meaning behind the dangers of jealousy or peril of lust. However, in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, there is a deeper meaning beyond jealousy and love. In The Great Gatsby, the author uses an empathetic storyline as a symbol to unwittingly give a complex depiction of the nuisance that people create that not only destroy our world but our society and gives warning to what will occur if we continue the path of destruction. With this intention, the brilliant opinionated writer, expressed his opinion through symbols such as the characters he uses, the setting the story takes place in, and the objects he uses in the book.

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Gatsby’s dreams and aspirations in life are rather interesting and amazing as he goes about his life in the book. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald helps highlight the social, moral, and political issue that were very present during the 1920’s and today. Gatsby is the focus of the book as before the book began, he was an ex-soldier who came to wealth by some rather illegal ways. Daisy a married woman is his person of interest, who was his ex-lover 5 years before the book started. Gatsby’s actions, and words demonstrate a clear obsession with Daisy that seems to have no end.

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A symbol in a novel is a concrete object that represents an idea or a set of ideas. Choose 3 symbols in the book and explain what they mean and how they function together to support a central theme. The Great Gatsby novel has various numbers of symbols that are descried and each symbolise very different things. Three symbols that this essay is going to further investigate are the green light, Gatsby’s gold and silver suit and the Valley of Ashes.

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In the novel The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, the author insinuates Gatsby is a morally ambiguous character. Fitzgerald supports this claim by the description of Gatsby’s decisions, his words, and the way Nick describes Gatsby, resulting in a more complex and deeper story. Through the choices Gatsby has made, the words he used, and how Nick illustrates Gatsby, it is shown that he is an ambiguous character. First, Gatsby’s choices and actions reveal his moral ambiguity.

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Character Ambiguity in “The Great Gatsby” Throughout a large majority of fictional literature, the characters are constructed to act and react upon however the author fabricates them to be. Within the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Daisy Buchanan’s character can be interpreted in a variety of connotations; her attitudes and behaviors reflect on her morality. Throughout the narrative, Fitzgerald displays Daisy as a controversial character with examples of her ambiguous personality qualities and actions.

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The green light in Gatsby 's case, is his hopes to charm Daisy and be with her forever. Nick had referred to it as being a hopeless future that is possible only in our dreams, which drifts further every day. People are coerced into thinking that they will have a better tomorrow, fighting for a better future but it is hopeless. They will continue their struggles and face all the hardships of reality, against everything life puts them through, only to end up close to where they started. No matter what they do to convince themselves that they can change for a better life, in the end, their pasts are going to decree what they do in life and there is no other way about it.

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Humans, by our very nature, are always striving to achieve more in life. Unfortunately, our materialistic society, and that of the Roaring Twenties, interpret this as striving for wealth. That pursuit often becomes all-consuming, eventually hindering our pursuit of gratifying life goals. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts wealth as a fraudulent thief whose pursuit must be abandoned for the sake of tangible fulfillment. He illustrates the dangers of attempting to find gratification in wealth through the life of Jay Gatsby, who ironically sacrifices morality, identity, and love in order to gain wealth, which he attempts to use to justify his claim to these very things.

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However, as now Gatsby is dead, Nick visits the porch and looks across the water. Green light will still exist because Gatsby is not the only one who always try hard to reach dreams. It applies to the era of the whole book (1920s), and to us. People during the 1920s had the dream to become rich from the “American dream”, and we too, will also have dreams we would like to

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It was scary and uncertain, but it was all worth chasing after in order to grasp that final result of accomplishment. Nonetheless, according to Fitzgerald, our dreams are constantly in front of us and we continue to chase after them, therefore elucidating the impression that the green light is a symbol of the American dream to which Gatsby is reaching out for. Furthermore, at this point after Gatsby’s death, the light has ceased and completely has disappeared. His goals can no longer be accomplished and there is nothing left for him to reach out for. His desire for greed, the longing for Daisy, and the aspiration for the American Dream has also died with Gatsby alongside

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1312 Words | 6 Pages

“The Great Gatsby” and “A Streetcar Named Desire” both focus on the common theme of pursuing goals and living the American Dream. As well as leaving behind the past and “turn a new leaf”. The main characters in each story, Blanche and Gatsby, both have dreams of wealth and great living.

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This indicates that Gatsby was a man who believed in the “orgastic future” and a world that was superior to the one he found himself in. Furthermore, Gatsby 's attempt to pursue the American Dream is seen through his struggle to reach for the “green light” which symbolizes Gatsby 's dream of being with Daisy, This is demonstrated when: He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness (5).

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F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, "The Great Gatsby," portrays two significant contradictions that exist within the characters of the story. The first contradiction is the theme of affairs, which permeates the novel, and the second is the idea of being a gentleman, which the characters strive to embody. Symbolism and imagery are crucial in depicting these two contradictions in the novel. The theme of affairs is prevalent throughout the novel, with several characters engaging in extramarital affairs.

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Characters throughout The Great Gatsby present themselves with mysterious and questionable morals. Affairs, dishonest morals, criminal professions, weak boundaries and hypocritical views are all examples of immorality portrayed in The Great Gatsby. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, lies and mischief fill the lives of many and significantly damage numerous relationships. First, Jay Gatsby's whole life is consumed into a massive lie. His personality traits set him apart from others and the attention he accumulates motivates him to falsely portray his life.

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