Essays About The Great Gatsby

Dreams can have a convincing effect in people’s lives. They are what makes people want to work hard to accomplish their dreams. In our country people believe that if you keep on striving ahead and don’t give up you can reach that dream. In the 1920s these dreams started to disintegrate and eventually they started fading away. The author F. Scott Fitzgerald used quite a bit of metaphors and background themes throughout this story to show unlikelihood of the “American dream” that people once had.

In this story, Fitzgerald’s metaphors help build an atmosphere that people so desired. Fitzgerald mainly uses colors to symbolize and communicate certain text to the readers. Yellow and green are entwined perfectly in this story that the reader doesn’t even notice. However, they are playing a huge role in shaping the story. Fitzgerald utilizes the primary color yellow all through his description of the situation, to symbolize deceitful and cowardly acts of the upper class. Fitzgerald made the color yellow and green an important keys in this story, just like the flashing green light that was at Daisy’s pier, it held a single importance in the story. When Nick says, “Gatsby believed in the green light …” (Fitzgerald, 180), Nick was talking about Gatsby’s “American Dream” and how Gatsby really believed that one day he’ll rejoin Daisy.

Assistant Professor Amy M. Green from UNLV provided her insight in “The Critical Reception of The Great Gatsby”, she said “The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock and the magic, how it shines over Gatsby as he tries to hinder the world into his own tale of the “American Dream” remains as a recognizable symbol of both hope and failure” (Green).

Green stands for Gatsby’s hope and as well as for his failure only because Daisy doesn’t want to be with him. Fitzgerald’s diversity in his sets help categorize between various social classes which happened in the 1920s. He used different kinds of settings to explore other people who lived in New York. The utmost prominent were East and West Egg, and the valley of ashes. Nick Caraway narrates the Eggs when saying, “I lived at West Egg, the – well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them … Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water” (Fitzgerald, 5).

In this text, Nick is voicing the differences among the two Eggs and how they were both places to the rich. The West egg housed the upstart people, or new money, as well as for Caraway and Gatsby. The West egg residents stand for people who gained fortune as to those who live in the East egg, like Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who came from old money. The discrepancy among the eggs is helping to create the levels of the societal ladder, implying that East egg citizens feel though if they are directly above those who hadn’t come from money therefore, they despised them. It also illustrates the negligence as well as vulgarity that goes with new money.

Tunc from University of New York wrote, “Fitzgerald compares the valley of ashes with the ‘Eggs,’ the two headlands explained by Nick that protrude out of Long Island ‘s north shore” (Tunc). “The valley of ashes” gives you a bleak distinction amongst your very first two sets letting you know that this is the homes to the impoverished, lower class. The ash emphasizes hopelessness, also sadness that the folks were felling currently. The variety amongst the sets is helping to divide the prosperous from the impoverished. Fitzgerald’s array of subjects helps him to bring greater implications throughout the text. The main subject of this story is hopelessness of the “American Dream”, its’ unavoidable disappointment. Fitzgerald reveals it in this story, “He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass” (Fitzgerald, 161).

Right here, Fitzgerald has Gatsby signifying sunlight and grass. Meaning he wants the sun to help the grass to grow in which in this scenario the grass is representing Daisy; nevertheless, the grass has refused to grow. At this point, Gatsby finally realizes deep inside that he’s never going to be able to achieve his dream. It didn’t matter how hard he tried. He knew Daisy was out of his reach. Fitzgerald describes this in the introduction of the story, while Nick sees Gatsby leaning forward towards a green light across the Lake in which he is never going to be able to grasp despite his attempts. Fitzgerald illustrates just how societies’ dreams remain constantly out of one’s grasp.

This repetitive idea establishes a relationship between the story along with the characters with the external world. A few people these days, think Gatsby did fulfill “the American Dream.” By not having little to no money, Gatsby had the opportunity to turn his own life around by establishing a great fortune. This was illustrated when Fitzgerald wrote, “The vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man” (Fitzgerald, 101), He’s implying that Gatsby did reach that goal in his life that he always dreamed of becoming, a wealthy man. Even though, Gatsby did turn his life around from impoverishment to prosperity along with fame, his goals irritated him. He was clever to attain prominence in some people, but as for the money Gatsby didn’t seem to care if he lost it and he didn’t consider himself to have accomplished his ”American Dream” because what Gatsby longed for the most more than anything in the world was his one and only true love, Daisy.

Nick Carraway talks about Gatsby’s disappointment while writing, “I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true, he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream” (Fitzgerald, 161). Nick describes how Gatsby finally realizes that he had squandered all his life on a woman who didn’t seem to care about him and lost his chance to really find love. By the end of the story, Gatsby seems to be a victim of Daisy’s, a casualty of the ambiguous “American Dream.” Though Gatsby attained some individuals’ desires, he was unsuccessful with his own.

Fitzgerald’s selection of settings and dearth of ethical beliefs are shown all through this story and that’s what makes it a masterpiece of Modernization. When World War I was over, folks started leaving normal and appropriate behavior then welcomed a fresh cheerful mindset. When this all happened, it changed the way of thinking and behaving, it created a fresh scholarly act recognized now as Modernism. Fitzgerald illustrates those modern societal norms when talking about the socialites at Gatsby’s residence. He’s writing, “… They conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with an amusement park” (Fitzgerald, 41). At this point, he will be voicing the dearth of ethical conviction that several people displayed at that time. This one-time era occurs during the Jazz Age phase. Fitzgerald blends this music into the story with a band at Gatsby’s party playing jazz. While Fitzgerald’s usage of people doesn’t have any moral principles the adding of jazz tunes becomes a piece of modernization in this story. In the opening of “The Great Gatsby,” Nick recalls a memory that he once shared with his father, he said “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one…just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” (Fitzgerald, 1).

Here’s the little fatherly advice, which hints to us that Nick will try to tell the story without criticizing the characters. Although following Gatsby’s fatality, Nick determines that the Buchanan’s are self-centered people. If their treachery is as deep as to have stunned Nick’s belief in his father’s advice, they must be truly unpleasant individuals indeed. But even that may well be going too far. Tom and Daisy hardly seem to be deliberately immoral. Both their actions are spiteful, but aside from Tom telling Wilson about Gatsby and thereby lead to Gatsby’s death – it’s hard to disagree that Tom and Daisy stand indifferent. Although Fitzgerald tries to make Daisy’s character commendable of Gatsby’s affection, at the end her true colors come out for who she really is. Regardless of her looks and charm, Daisy was merely selfish, as well as a hurtful woman.

Daisy’s character realizes that she has no ability to be independent, as she is a woman, and makes this obvious when talking about her daughter saying, “All right… I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool–that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” (Fitzgerald, 17). She is clearly upset, and she is voicing her frustration when she expresses this emotion. Daisy’s remark reflects what she thinks a woman should be like since she realizes that she had been made a fool of. Tom has had frequent affairs and has not given her the care and love she believes she deserves. It would have been better if she were foolish enough not to care about what her husband did. As far as being beautiful, Daisy is indicating that a woman who is beautiful would be able to catch any man, as she obviously did when she got Tom’s interest and married him. Daisy later told Nick about her suffering when she said:

“Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.” (Fitzgerald, 16). F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts Daisy as a weak-willed mother character.

George Wilson. Fitzgerald has Wilson representing the underclass. Wilson is also the only moral character in the story and one of the only characters with an upright job, also one of the poorest. He was an exhausted owner of an auto garage where he and his wife Myrtle lived above it by the end of the valley of ashes, he was led into madness when he thought that Jay Gatsby murdered his unfaithful wife, when in fact she had been killed by Gatsby’s lover, Daisy. “The Eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg” represented God’s eyes by George Wilson and before Myrtle’s death, he confronted her affair and told her ‘God knows what you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’ (Fitzgerald, 159). He determines that the eyes meant a moral standard and that God wants vengeance for the sin that Myrtle had done, being unfaithful. George is so adamant on finding out who killed Myrtle. His fixation with finding out his wife’s killer shows how loving and devoted husband he was to Myrtle and how he is starting to go crazy. George Wilson kills Gatsby out of vengeance for murdering his wife. He thinks the person to blame for hitting her with the car was her lover and Tom Buchanan tells him that it’s Gatsby who was driving the car. George then heads out to Gatsby’s house, then fatally shoots him. Following the shooting of Gatsby, George Wilson turns the gun on himself.

As for Nick Carraway he is a newly graduate from Yale. He travels to Long Island where he secures a job selling bonds. Nick is innocent and well behaved, particularly while as to the self-indulgent aristocracy where he lives. As time goes on, however, Nick develops quicker, also watchful, along with disappointed, but certainly not heartless nor greedy. The narrator in this story is Nick Carraway, he has several characteristics by being outgoing and good guy, as Nick being the innocent figure who goes through the most significant change in this story. Nick establishes a close and decent relationship with some of the characters, mainly with Gatsby and with Daisy. Nick happens to be Daisy’s second cousin, an old schoolmate of Tom’s, plus Gatsby’s current next-door neighbor and close friend. Nick becomes fascinated by Gatsby’s lavish gatherings then receives an invite inside the inner wealth circle. Nick becomes the middleman who helps get Gatsby and Daisy’s together which enables their ongoing affair. Shortly after, Nick is an onlooker towards the wistful cobweb of other characters in the story, then eventually is the only person in the world who sincerely loved Gatsby.

Soon after Gatsby’s death, Nick will be attending his memorial service, assuming that he’ll be seeing all the people who attended Gatsby’s extravagant gatherings to appear. But he and Gatsby’s father await anyone’s presence, and yet nobody comes… “I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsby’s father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously, and he spoke of the rain in a certain way. The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came.” (Fitzgerald, 174).

Eventually, the only individuals that show up to the funeral were Nick, Gatsby’s father, and Owl Eyes, who talks about all the hypocrisy about other people. Owl Eyes is a chap that noticed all of Gatsby’s books in his library were genuine books that had all the completed sheets; specifically, they possessed physical value, because they had never been read. Nick recognizes that the people would merely be concerned just about have being noticed by the most modern in-fashion trends, rather than being a considerate friend to Gatsby; Nick sees and comprehends how Gatsby squandered so many years trying to learn just how to live for himself in addition how to be acceptable as a rich man, altogether in the quest to win back Daisy’s love. In the end, even Daisy will ignore Gatsby’s funeral with no hesitation. Instead she goes away with her husband Tom, and at the end, Nick finds his opinion of her to be egotistical and insensitive and the East Egg soiled by these horrible memories. Nick will always remember Gatsby as being, “extraordinary gift for hope and the romantic readiness” which makes him different from everyone else.” (Fitzgerald, 2).