Examples Of Illusion And Reality In The Great Gatsby

In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald the concept of a reality is ever changing throughout the story. The ways that the characters treat and act towards each other is a cause of the inability to interpret the differences between reality and illusion. Through the lies, gossip, and empty speech of characters, F. Scott Fitzgerald highlights the way that people treat each other when they do not understand the difference between reality and illusion.

In the novel The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald descomteratits the idea that people are unable to accept their true reality so they tend to put them self into the a false reality that they believe is true. This idea can be examined through three different literary devices; character, symbol and motif.

The first dream that does not get fulfilled is the one of Gatsby. He starts off as an underprivileged boy and struggles his way to the top. We make his acquaintance when he is on the top of his life. He is enjoying his big house and his vast wealth. The one thing he cannot have is his lovely Daisy. Gatsby’s story reflects the “classical” American dream: Anyone can make anything of himself/herself with just elbow grease, spirit and a whole lot of confidence. Jay loves Daisy and, sadly, she is the one thing which he cannot procure to his “perfect life”.

Gatsby does not realize that Daisy also represents the corruption that comes along with wealth. "Her voice is full of money, he suddenly said. That was it. I'd never understood it before. It was full of money--that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. . . . High in a white Palace the King's daughter, the golden girl" (127). Gatsby becomes obsessed with Daisy and her voice that promised riches, but he does not realize that money was the only thing she offered. After listening to Tom, Nick describes Daisy and Tom as careless people who "smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made" (188). Daisy lets Gatsby take the blame for Myrtle’s death and shows no concern over Gatsby’s death showing her carelessness with people’s lives. Tom and Daisy’s actions indicate the corrupting effects that wealth can have on someone. They focus too much on appearance and materialism and ignore other people’s feelings and lives.

Imagine living in a world where dreams that come to mind are highly reachable and come without a struggle, a place where fantasies come into play. Americans far and beyond believe the American Dream is something as simple as owning a home or starting a family, but for Jay Gatsby, that was simply not enough. As a man with implausible dreams, Gatsby thought differently when compared to others. His American Dream was not a job or a home, but rather a married woman who is known as Daisy Buchanan. As Gatsby placed the sole focus of his life on Daisy, he became obsessed. Through a passage in The Great Gatsby, author F. Scott Fitzgerald employs personification and diction to convey the idea that Gatsby was lost in the unique distortion of his own reality with Daisy.

The Great Gatsby is an example of the original American Dream and all of its pure and moral values that have been replaced with money, greed and materialism. Jay Gatsby took the American dream too far and the idea that money leads to happiness obviously was not the case for him. He truly believed that he could buy Daisy`s love with wealth. His illegal business was all an excuse to earn money and impress Daisy, however once again, money could not bring Gatsby

Although "The Great Gatsby" is filled with multiple themes such as love, money, order, reality, illusion and immorality, no one would probably deny that the predominate one focuses on the American Dream and the downfall of those who attempt to reach its illusionary goals. The attempt to capture the American Dream is the central of this novel. This can be explained by how Gatsby came to get his fortune. By studying the process of how Gatsby tried to achieve his own so-called American Dream, we could have a better understanding of what American dream is all about, in those down-to-earth Americans' point of view. The characterization of Gatsby is a representative figure among Americans as he devoted his whole life to achieve his dream.

The novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is about the American Dream, an idealistic and illusionary goal to achieve wealth and status. The ruthless pursuit of wealth leads to the corruption of human nature and moral values. Fitzgerald uses characters in the novel to show the corruptions and the illusionary nature of the American Dream. The superficial achievement of the American Dreams give no fulfillment, no real joy and peace; but instead, creates lots of problems for the characters in the novel. What happens to Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, and Daisy Buchanan represent the failure of the American Dream. Each character has a different dream. For Jay Gatsby, his dream is to attain happiness, represented by Daisy's love, through

Jay Gatsby, otherwise known as James Gatz is a prime example of illusion that is seen as reality. Jay tells Nick that he is from the Midwest and he comes from a wealthy family, but they are all dead now and he came into an enormous amount of money. “I’ll tell you God’s truth. I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West.” (Fitzgerald 65) He says he lived as a young rajah and traveled the world doing many different adventurous things that you would be able to do if you had as much money as he did. We soon find out that this is all a lie and Jay Gatsby is actually James Gatz from an awfully poor family in North Dakota. He made his money by bootlegging after Dan Cody’s mistress made sure he didn’t get the 25,000 he was supposed to. The truth of his family background and how he made his money shows the false reality that

Gatsby believed that in order to fulfill his own concept of the American Dream he needed to win Daisy’s love, and to do that he would need to “establish himself as Somebody.” Although he loves Daisy, he also sees her as more of a goal – a step toward the perfect life promised by the American Dream. In a way, Gatsby views Daisy much the way

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).

   The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel about one man's disenchantment with the American dream. In the story we get a glimpse into the life of Jay Gatsby, a man who aspired to achieve a position among the American rich to win the heart of his true love, Daisy Fay. Gatsby's downfall was in the fact that he was unable to determine that concealed boundary between reality and illusion in his life.

The notion of the ‘American Dream’ is one of the repeated aspects portrayed in this book, since Gatsby’s entire life is dedicated to achieving this. The ‘American Dream’ comprises of grand opulence, social equality, wealth; more specifically, a big house with a big garden, the newest model cars, the most fashionable attire, and a traditional four-peopled ‘happy’ family. To Fitzgerald, the ‘American Dream’ itself is a positive, admirable pursuit. We can see this when Fitzgerald uses personification, “flowers”, to background positive connotations behind the idea of the ‘American Dream’. In regard to Gatsby, he achieves the wealth aspect of this ‘dream’, “he had come a long way to this blue lawn”; however, he was yet to be satisfied because he did not have Daisy. Ever since the very beginning of the story, Gatsby always associated Daisy with magnificent affluence, the white house, and the grand quality of being rich. Gatsby wanted everything ever since he was first introduced to the higher status. But Gatsby felt incomplete and unfulfilled even after getting everything he dreamt of, so he sourced this emptiness as not having Daisy, where in reality, “he neither understood or desired” the motives he thought he once had.

The ‘American Dream’; a thirst for wealth and success. Many want it, but few end up succeeding in achieving full success. Jay Gatsby, from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a fictitious version of someone who achieved success, and demonstrated his goals even from an early age. “Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something.” (Fitzgerald, 116) Says Mr. Gatz, who was Jay Gatsby’s father. This quote demonstrates how Gatsby had always planned to become successful, even when he was at a young age. Another one of Gatsby’s ambitions is Daisy. Even though Daisy is married to Tom, he sets his hopes high as she is the love of his life. “He hadn't once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs.” (Fitzgerald, 91) This quote demonstrates how infatuated Gatsby is with Daisy. He set his hopes so high that he wanted to be with somebody who is ‘Old Money’, which is perceived as a higher class; and, the person that

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel about the American Dream. In the Great Gatsby, the dream is that one can acquire happiness through wealth and power. To get his happiness Jay attempts to reacquire the love of his lost sweet heart, Daisy. The main problem with Jay's dream is that Daisy is married. Gatsby's personal dream symbolizes the larger American Dream 'The pursuit of happiness'.