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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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