Examples Of Greatness In The Great Gatsby

Gatsby, on the other hand, develops into the person he is by recognizing the kind of person he does not want to be- a bourgeois, like his parents. He rejects them as “shiftless and unsuccessful farm people” (The Great Gatsby 104) and yearns to move up from the middle class he is born into. After seeing millionaire Dan Cody’s yacht, Gatsby strive to achieve “all the beauty and glamour in the world” (106) that the yacht represents to him. Gatsby’s desire to attain the wealth and glamour of the upper class leads him to create the personage Jay Gatsby, his Platonic conception of himself. He goes about transforming himself methodically, practicing things such as “elocution, poise, and how to attain it” (GG 181) and learning from Dan Cody until “the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man” (107). As an outsider, Gatsby’s perception of the upper class is romanticized and

Jay Gatsby, the title character of the novel is an incredibly wealthy young man, living in a medieval mansion in West Egg on an imaginary area of Long Island. Gatsby has many laudable traits. For example, he is filled with optimism and the ability to transform his dreams into reality. Jay is also extremely faithful to his true love, Daisy Buchanan, even to the point of death. When we first meet Gatsby, he is the aloof host of the fantastically opulent parties thrown every weekend at his mansion. It appears he is surrounded by wondrous luxury and is courted by beautiful women and the rich and powerful men of the time. Jay is also a very admirable character due to his status of wealth and being a hero of War World I, “In the Argonne Forest I took two machine gun detachments so far forward that there was half a mile gap on either side… I was promoted to be a major, and every Allied government gave me a decoration- even Montenegro”. However, Nick who narrates the book views Gatsby as a flawed man who is dishonest, deceitful, a liar, and a dreamer whom is searching for answers in the past, “he talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself, perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy… if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was…”

Americans carry the freedom of opportunity and social mobility, allowing any individual to prosper, depending on their tenacity to succeed. Explicitly, Gatsby’s character differentiates between the four types of people present in this world, “the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired” (79). An instrumental facet of Gatsby’s character is his aspirations to pursue his goals, with a tenacious attitude to overcome any challenges that he may face. The passion that Gatsby contains is indefinable, his constant motivation to achieve his perfect utopian world allows him to reach out for a single “green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock” (21). Peculiarly, the green light at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock is barely visible from Gatsby’s West Egg lawn. Daisy resides along the East Egg depicting the moral decay and social cynicism of the old aristocracy, whereas Gatsby is settled along the West Egg, illustrating the newly rich of New York. The City of New York is a place for hope, a location often present in the quest to gain excessive wealth and a place full of pleasure. Moreover, the green light symbolizes Gatsby’s hope and misfortunate end with “his dream [seeming] so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him…” (180).

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famed novel The Great Gatsby incorporates many dynamic characters and situations into the world of the Roaring Twenties. Given the title, many readers will argue over whether the main character, Jay Gatsby, a mysterious man who throws elaborate parties, was truly great or not. The true definition of great is one who is selfless, pure of any illegal actions, and who doesn’t lie. Gatsby rebelled against all of these characteristics. Gatsby was selfish, committed illegal actions and lied about his overall past. Using these three reasons, one can prove that Jay Gatsby was not as great as some believed him to be.

Jay Gatsby is a self-made man, he turned himself from a farm boy to one of the richest men in America at the time and bought himself a beautiful mansion on West Egg, Long Island with the other new millionaires. In contrast to the newly rich, there are those who have inherited their wealth from family before them such as Tom and Daisy Buchanan. These people were lucky to be born into their lives and reside on East Egg along with other family’s with “old money”. Readers come to easily

“Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so,” once said Charles de Gaulle. This valiant quote by a former president of France accentuates my opinion of the Great Jay Gatsby. From humble beginnings rises our main focus of F. Scott Fitzgeralds’ The Great Gatsby. Young Jimmy Gatz is brought to West Egg from his heavily impoverished North Dakota family. His desire to be something greater than a farmer drove him to fortune and love through any means necessary; his life long obsession, Daisy Fay, infatuates Jay in his own insatiable thirst for her affection. James follows Daisy in the years after he is deployed to World War 1, and when he sees she has married Tom Buchanan he becomes hell-bent on replicating the success Tom has inherited in order to win over Daisy. Through moderately deceitful ways, Jay Gatsby builds his wealth and reputation to rival and even supersede many already lavish family names. Astonishingly, the great Mr. Gatsby, overrun with newfound affluence, stays true to his friends, lover, and his own ideals to his blissfully ignorant end.

Being great is something that a lot of people have different perspectives on. Perhaps to some people a person who is great is someone who cares about the wellbeing of others and always has hope. There are many different key points in the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald that make Jay Gatsby great. Gatsby is a poor man who had nothing to offer to Daisy, this woman that he had fell in love with. Ever since Gatsby has been trying to work his way up to win Daisy back by doing everything in his power to be wealthy. Gatsby is deserving of the title “Great” because of his optimism and ambitions to grow in his wealth.

Fitzgerald exhibits how social expectations leads one to reinvent oneself to seek approval by society through Gatsby. One day, seventeen year old James Gatz saves a helpless Dan Cody (a wealthy copper mogul) from a storm who repays the favor by taking James Gatz in. Afterwards, Cody asks James for his name thus where Jay Gatsby was formed. One can assume that Jay Gatsby was born so James could finally leave his old life of being the son of a poor farmer and start a new life as the bold and wealthy Jay Gatsby. Another instance where Gatsby tries to please society is by hosting large, lavish and prestigious parties. Consequently, by having large parties, Gatsby allows everyone to party and have fun under his expense to seek approval from everyone else. Leaving James Gatz behind, becoming Jay Gatsby and having parties are all linked to how Gatsby changed his identity in order to meet social expectations. The American Dream for

Even though Gatsby was born James Gatz on a small farm in North Dakota, he was motivated by Dan Cody and Daisy to dedicate his life to the achievement of wealth and love. Some people might claim that Gatsby was able to achieve his dream because he succeeded in becoming a fabulously wealthy man in West Egg. However, this is only partially true, for Gatsby’s genuine American Dream was to attain Daisy Buchanan. Therefore, this novel portrays both the power and deleterious result of the American Dream (C. J. Dawson).

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby provides the reader with a unique outlook on the life of the newly rich. Gatsby is an enigma and a subject of great curiosity, furthermore, he is content with a lot in life until he strives too hard. His obsession with wealth, his lonely life and his delusion allow the reader to sympathize with him.

Jay Gatsby, the title character of The Great Gatsby, is really not all that the title might suggest. First of all, his real name is James Gatz. He changed it in an effort to leave behind his old life as a poor boy and create an entirely new identity. He is also a liar and a criminal, having accumulated his wealth and position by dishonest means. But he is still called ‘great,’ and in a sense he is. Gatsby is made great by his unfaltering hope, and his determination to live in a perfect world with Daisy and their perfect love. Gatsby has many visible flaws—his obvious lies, his mysterious way of avoiding straight answers. But they are shadowed over by his gentle smile and his visible hunger for an ideal future. The coarse and playful Jay

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald writes about a character the truly does become great. Jay Gatsby start his life as just an ordinary man that is a lower-class citizen. But he has a dream of becoming wealthy and after meeting the love of his life, Daisy, he has a reason to strive to be the best he could possibly be. Throughout his life we see that he never gives up and always has hope that him and Daisy will end up together. His love for Daisy and his hope that everything will turn out the way he wants is what makes him, The Great Gatsby.

Jay Gatsby is a thirty years old millionaire, who spent his childhood on a rural Farm in North Dakota. He despised poverty and dreamed to become a very rich and sophistication gentleman. Jay left his family’s farm at about 17 to go to St. Olaf’s College but shortly dropped out because he could not bear to be janitor anymore even though it was paying for his tuition. At first we had no clue how Gatsby got his money it was not specified for us for quite a few chapters until nick and Jay went to lunch together to an illegal speak-easy. Jay earned his money by distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities. Gatsby always wanted to be rich, but it turned out like almost everything a woman was the root of his motivation. Daisy, he

Jay Gatsby is not a lazy person, he cannot stop working until his dreams have been realized, he knows that he is destined for greatness, and to not seek out greatness would be a waste, as Nick says,“So he made the most of his time, he took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously”(Fitzgerald 149). Gatsby’s drive is everything to him since before he met Daisy, he has strived to become more than just some kid from nowhere. As a self-made millionaire, he can only afford to rely on himself and himself alone, as there may be no one else in this world who may believe in him. Opportunities to succeed present themselves to people every day, but only a few have the gifts needed to utilize these opportunities, one of whom, is Jay Gatsby, as Nick says, “he was only a young man, but he had a lot brain power here”(Fitzgerald 168). In life, humans are blessed with many things, arms, legs, a heart, one’s very soul, is a blessing. Although the one thing that holds weight over all else, the one thing that can never be taken away, is one’s mind. Knowledge is power, especially as one climbs higher into the social rankings of society. James Gatz did not just become Jay Gatsby overnight, he was built up over the course of many years of experiences, as Nick says,“My first impression, that he was a person of some undefined consequence,

What is the meaning of greatness? This question at first seems quite simple to answer; yet after substantial thought, a consistent definition of the term is either vague or nonexistent. The question of what greatness is encapsulates one of the many messages relating to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. In this novel, Nick Carraway, a man from the Midwest who moves temporarily to the east to work in the bonds business, tells of his meetings and encounters with a number of individuals, including his cousin, Daisy Fay Buchanan, his cousin’s spouse, Tom Buchanan, and the enigmatic Jay Gatsby. Nick soon learns of Gatsby’s past and interests. Gatsby has known Daisy for five years, and has loved her ever since; he planned to marry Daisy, but do to financial issues, fails to marry the love of his life. When Gatsby discovers Daisy has married another man, he works to develop enough wealth to live as close to Daisy as possible, in the hopes of winning her back over. However, Gatsby’s efforts to win back Daisy are futile, as despite his massive wealth and charming nature, Daisy is too concerned with money and self-image that she is unable to leave her current husband. Gatsby, lost in a trance of disillusionment with the loss of his love, spends his last moments of life waiting for Daisy to call him, professing her desire to be with Gatsby. Despite Gatsby’s losses, it can be argued that Gatsby was the embodiment of greatness due to his loyalty. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great