Jay Gatsby: the Master of Illusion Essay Example

such as “The Great Houdini” or “The Great Blackstone” – but unfortunately, much like Gatsby’s expectations of Daisy aren’t fulfilled, neither are the reader’s of Gatsby himself. Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his main predisposition in doing it was Daisy Buchanan. He met Daisy in 1917 as a young military officer before leaving to serve in World War I and had considered her “the first “nice” girl he had ever known,” (Fitzgerald 155).

Gatsby immediately fell in love with Daisy’s aura of grace, charm, and intelligence, and “it excited him too that many men had already loved Daisy – it increased her value in his eyes,” (156). At that time, Gatsby was “a penniless young man without a past and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders,” (156). Gatsby felt that he had “no real right to touch her hand,” therefore he lied to her about his past in order to convince her that he was worthy of her love and affection (156).

Daisy’s promise to wait for him until he came back from the war was broken after she married Tom Buchanan in 1919. From that moment on, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, and his purchase of a gaudy mansion in West Egg, the lavish parties thrown each week, and his accretion of millions of dollars were all means to that end. In fact, the purchase of his West Egg mansion was one with a specific purpose. He “stretched out his arms toward the dark water, in a curious way…could have sworn he was trembling,” because from his balcony, he

was able to see the green light of Daisy’s dock in East Egg (25).

He remained kind and loyal to Daisy throughout everything, even remaining outside her window “all night if necessary” to make sure Tom did not hurt her, as well as taking the blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting her be punished (152). Ironically, Gatsby’s good qualities eventually betray him when Myrtle’s distraught husband, “deranged by grief,” shot and killed him, haplessly ending his short life (172). Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor possesses.

When they were reunited and he was giving her a tour of his house, she began sobbing when presented to Gatsby’s array of specially selected shirts. She said, “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such – such beautiful shirts before,” (Fitzgerald 98). At this point Daisy began to realize that everything Gatsby had achieved in life was for her, and was overwhelmed by the epiphany and feelings of regret. Gatsby was now living the life she thought he could never give her.

After Gatsby’s “embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He was full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an unconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an over wound clock,” (97). For the five years that he had been away from her, five years he had spent dreaming of the time where they’d meet again, she was now standing three feet away from him as she

brushed her hair in his very own bedroom.

He believed that she would be much like the vision he had in his head of her, the perfect, gentle, rich Southern debutant that had been the queen of his heart for so long. However underneath her delicate, composed exterior was a greedy woman who had left the man she loved for money. Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished past – his time in Louisville with Daisy – but is incapable of doing so. Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its object – money and pleasure.

Gatsby is most contrasted with Nick in this novel. The former, passionate and active, and the latter, sober and reflective, seem to represent to opposing sides of character. Nick stated that Gatsby “represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn,” (Fitzgerald 6). As Nick explains in Chapter 9, the American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and decomposing social values corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast.

When the passage of the 18th amendment in 1919 banned the sale of alcohol, a thriving market designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among American citizens emerged, and anyone from any social background could potentially make a fortune. This was exactly how Gatsby acquired his. Meyer Wolfsheim and Gatsby’s “new money” fortunes symbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging. Nick “disapproved of him from beginning to end,” mainly because of his morally

wrong rise to wealth and luxury (162).

By the end of the novel, Gatsby’s deconstructed image reveals an innocent, ambitious young man who builds everything upon his dream, not realizing that his dream is not worthy of him. When we were first introduced to Gatsby, he appeared to us as he desired to appear to the world. This talent for self-invention is what defines Gatsby’s quality of “greatness”. Although the title “The Great Gatsby” indeed suggests that Gatsby has a deft persona, heroic even, we end up learning that he is a lovesick, naive man whose tragic fate was one he set himself up for.