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Who Is Jay Gatsby A Tragic Hero

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Aristotle once said “ A man doesn’t become a hero unless he can see the root of his downfall.” In order to label a character as tragic hero would mean that he/she must come across a fatal flaw which will eventually leads to demise. In a literary term, a tragic hero is a character who makes a judgement error that inevitably leads to his/her own destruction. Gatsby was always doomed from the start; his fate was determined by his own actions. It seemed that Gatsby knew exactly how he would approach his plan considering his behavior after leaving his family or was it still part of his fate? Gatsby qualified the role of a tragic hero due to how he achieved his position, obsessively retrieving the past, and his delusional love for Daisy. …show more content…

Gatsby’s weakness was Daisy. His love for her may be genuine but tragically misguided. The light at the end of Daisy's pier is the secret place where Gatsby hopes to climb. “ He could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and on ce there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder," (Fitzgerald Pg.110). This was his ultimate goal. The center of his world where green light is just sitting there, waiting for him to grab it. According to weebly.com, “The ladder symbolizes success as well as the climb to reaching the American Dream; that the American Dream is possible as long as people are willing to climb the ladder of success.” This quote states that Gatsby can only climb the ladder alone if he wants to have all the wonderful things that he could ever dreamed of. He must choose between love and success. However, he decides to try to achieve both and ends in destruction. One thing is certain: while Gatsby pitifully fails to grasp the light at the end of his peer, his confession of love is not a falsehood. When Nick asked him if Daisy was driving during the accident of Mrs.Wilson, he said ‘Yes, but of course I will say I was” (Fitzgerald Pg 143). Money, success, fame were important but once he learned that it will affect Daisy in a negative ways, he shuts down his parties and fires his staff to protect her from gossip, insists on the confrontation with Tom, and after the car accident is prepared to go to jail for her. At the end, he was close, close enough to grab it and dream on, but one fine morning, taking his last breath while still dreaming for green light, he

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