The Great Gatsby Tragic Hero

“He had come a long way…and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him. Gatsby believed in … the orgastic future that year by year recede[d] before [him]” (180). In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby truly believed he could fall in love, rise to social grandeur, and achieve all his dreams. Yet his tragic end was the same fate as of the American Gangster. By chronicling the rise and fall of the criminal aspect of Jay Gatsby’s life, Fitzgerald characterized the American gangster of the 1920’s as a tragic hero, in order to show that man naturally succumbs to false optimism. [define the tragic hero so then I can just prove it and then return to it in my

Leaders of the certain criminal organizations believed their power should not be contained and murdered others to expand their power. On February 14, 1929, fake police officers assassinated seven of Bugs Moran’s Gang in an abandoned warehouse. Not only did Al Capone secure ultimate power over Chicago, he also brought the attention of everyone straight towards all his actions. Although Al Capone was never indicted on charges of the massacre, the St. Valentines Massacre led to his downfall and arrest. The St. Valentine’s Massacre does not explicitly occur in The Great Gatsby, but an event similar to the massacre destroys Gatsby. Returning from New York, Daisy murders Myrtle Wilson by running over her with a car. When Gatsby is asked who committed the crime, he knows Daisy was driving “but of course [he will] say [he] was” (143). Gatsby decides even though he was not the one behind the wheel, he will take the fall for Daisy. Thus, he was not the perpetrator of the incident and accepting the fault is to further his hope that he will achieve capturing Daisy. In the end, Gatsby is left with nothing because he destroyed all of it. After Myrtle’s murder, Gatsby watches the trust that he specifically built break down in front of his eyes. [introduce quote]. “I can’t do it—I can’t get mixed up in it… when a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it anyway. I keep out” (171)