Examples Of Innocence In The Great Gatsby

In societies based on wealth and status, there becomes a perpetual need for refuge. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence, the fatalistic desire for an escape from the upper class sycophants of New York society became apparent in the form of affairs. In Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, the protagonist, Newland Archer, was dazzled by the spectacle of the beautiful, exotic Ellen Olenska--the ostracized cousin of his betrothed, May Welland. On the contrary, Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s protagonist, left his love, Daisy Buchanan, to pursue monetary gain and societal status in the empty lifestyle of an upper-class business tycoon. In this, creating his inner sanctuary, stuck in the times he spent with Daisy. Despite advancing in economic class, Gatsby finds himself chained to the hierarchy of the ruthless, spiteful social class of NYC without refuge. Ultimately, Newland Archer and Jay Gatsby tried to find a bright light in their lackluster lives of upper-class society, to escape from the imminent ostracism, in turn digging their own graves.

Gatsby’s tragic flaw is believing his ideal life with Daisy can become his real life. Explaining how Gatsby has turned his life around, Nick Gillespie writes “James Gatz, a poor kid from the Midwest, reinvents himself with the help of bootleggers as Jay Gatsby” (1). Gatsby believes he can win Daisy back after being separated for many years. As Gatsby and Daisy meet again and start to spend time together, Gatsby is blinded by how different Daisy acts and how she is now. He is stuck in this idealism that Daisy will leave Tom for him. In chapter 7, Gatsby tells Tom “she only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved anyone except me.” (Fitzgerald). Gatsby is so unaware of how caught up he is in his dream of Daisy leaving Tom for a life with Gatsby.

Admittedly, even though Gatsby was living the American Dream, money could not make him satisfied. Gatsby used his wealth to make Daisy Buchanan fall in love with him but sadly died without her love. It is obvious that Gatsby’s money did not come from inheritance, but from organized crime. His shady “business” with Meyer Wolfsheim and the failure to explain what he works as shows his mysterious lifestyle. When Tom talks about Gatsby, he says that “He and this Wolfsheim brought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and there in Chicago…” (Fitzgerald 133). Gatsby illegally acquired enough wealth to win Daisy’s heart, ultimately thinking that money would help him obtain his goal. However, Gatsby is arguably admirable because he is loyal, especially during a time where people only cared about luxury. His loyalty strikes against the deceitful, materialistic, and dishonest American society. Even Though he gained his money illegally, lives in an extravagant mansion, and drives a Rolls-Royce, he is also loyal towards daisy and has a genuine love for her. An example of this is when Nick asks if Daisy was driving and Gatsby replied by saying “Yes...but of course I’ll say I was” (143). When Daisy accidentally runs over Myrtle while driving his car, Gatsby takes the blame for her. He certainly shows a courageous act of love and loyalty towards Daisy. Despite Gatsby’s wealth, he is candid

Fitzgerald uses Gatsby to portray the personal failure in life in order to demonstrate how some people are dealt a worse hand in life than others. Gatsby, the protagonist of the story, is in love with a girl named Daisy, however she is married to a man named Tom. After a confrontation between Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Tom return home. Meanwhile, Gatsby hides in the bushes outside their house so he can make sure that Daisy is safe. Nick, the narrator of the novel, observes as Gatsby watches over Daisy “standing there in the moonlight - watching over nothing” (Fitzgerald 145). As Gatsby waits outside Daisy’s house, he believes that she will choose him over Tom, but unfortunately he is in a hopeless situation and Daisy will break his heart. Nick further describes the dinner Tom and Daisy share to have “an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together” (Fitzgerald 145). While Gatsby stands there, he is unaware of Daisy’s betrayal as she shares an intimate dinner with Tom. Furthermore, as Gatsby fights for the love of his life, he is has no idea that the circumstances that are beyond his control since Daisy’s true love is Tom. As Tom and Daisy

In many instances, Gatsby showed signs of selflessness. But, if the reader were to dig deeper into the roots of the story, they will be able to see that under the kind acts and good deeds, Gatsby’s intentions were always selfish. After the car scene, Tom, Jordan, Daisy and Nick returned to Daisy and Tom’s house. As Gatsby waits outside of the home, Nick, unknowingly, asks Gatsby whether or not Daisy was driving. Gatsby replies saying, “Yes, but of course I’ll say I was” (Fitzgerald 143). When Gatsby took Daisy’s place in the murder of Myrtle, although seeming kind-hearted, his only reason for this was to earn Daisy’s love and to impress her. Gatsby has somewhat put up an image of himself to be the pure and almighty man that deserves Daisy more. Meyer Wolfshiem, Gatsby’s business partner, mentions to Nick of Gatsby’s chivalrous actions towards women saying, “Yeah, Gatsby’s very careful about women. He would never so much look at a friend’s wife” (Fitzgerald 72). Although Meyer Wolfshiem’s comment on Gatsby about him being a gentleman, and how he would never look at another man’s wife, Gatsby proceeds to exceed all expectations and have an affair with Tom’s wife, Daisy Buchanan. Yes, some might say his only reason for doing so was out of true love and destiny but, in either case, it was morally wrong. In every action that Gatsby commits for Daisy, his selfishness secretly hides beneath it, shading itself from light so no one will approach the real man that lurks behind the curtains of self pride.

The novel The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald, revolves around the main character, Jay Gatsby, his actions, and his ambitions. The book tells of the twisted, corrupt love triangle that is formed between Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, and Tom Buchanan. This develops when Gatsby is reacquainted with Daisy after not seeing her for five years. As the story develops, unfavorable aspects are demonstrated by Gatsby: his obsession with Daisy, his dishonesty with Nick and Tom, and his manipulation of Nick and Daisy. These traits portray him as a corrupt man, wanting only what is best for himself. Therefore, Gatsby’s actions prohibit him from being the hero of the novel.

As Dwayne Johnson, a well-known American actor, once said, “Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come” (Johnson). The protagonist of Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is Nick Carraway, a Minnesota man in his mid-twenties. At the beginning of the novel, Nick moves to New York in search of the American Dream. Nick’s new house happens to be next door to the great Jay Gatsby, a wealthy man just a few years older than Nick. Nick’s cousin, Daisy, lives across the bay in East Egg. Nick travels to see Daisy and learns a lot about Daisy and Tom’s relationship. At one of Gatsby’s elegant parties, Gatsby asks Nick to arrange a tea party with Daisy and then he will happen to come by. The two rekindle their love for each other and then decide to travel into town. In town Tom confronts Gatsby on his illegal fortune and causes tension. Daisy is angry and will not let Gatsby explain so the two drive back to West Egg where Myrtle happens to be running out into the street. When Tom passes through with Nick and Jordan, Tom finds that Myrtle has been killed. He is saddened and talks to George Wilson, Myrtle’s husband. George is very angry and out to kill whomever killed his Myrtle. Tom blames Gatsby for running over Myrtle and therefore finds and kills Gatsby at his mansion. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby remains true to his friend Nick, his true love, and his dreams.

The Great Gatsby is an exceptional piece of American literature written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, in 1925. It follows the story of 32-year-old Jay Gatsby, from the perspective of newcomer Nick Carraway. He moves to West Egg, and settles down next to Gatsby, who throws lavish parties for the neighborhood. Eventually, we find out that Gatsby is pining away for Daisy Buchanan, his love five years previous. He pursues her, but it turns out to be his pitfall. In the end, Daisy accidentally hits someone, for which Gatsby takes the blame and gets shot while swimming by the husband of the woman Daisy hit. The tragic ending can be attributed to one person; Jay Gatsby. He was responsible for this terrible tragedy because he lied about his character, he refused to deal with the present situation, and he ruined Tom and Daisy’s marriage.

To begin with Gatsby invests his new fortune and decides to buy a mansion on the West Egg directly across from where Daisy lives on the East egg on Long Island. With this he intends to become closer to her. “ ‘Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay’” (Fitzgerald 83). With Daisy being closer to him they meet once again but this only creates Gatsby's dream of being with her that much greater while Daisy wasn't truly sure of what she wanted. Showing how Gatsby never got over Daisy he tried to induce her with memories from the past while trying to spark a sign of love. “Here's a lot of clippings- about you” (Fitzgerald 99). While Daisy was looking at all the letters and pictures Gatsby had saved of her he felt his dream coming to reality, he felt like he had won her over once again. This made him feel like Daisy wanted everything to be just like how the used to be in the past. Afterall things took a drastic turn when Gatsby decided to show his unconditional love for Daisy the day she accidentally ran over Myrtle (the women Daisy's husband had an affair with) while driving Gatsby's car. Nobody had a clue that it was Daisy driving the car but Gatsby, but all he did was keep it to himself in fear that Daisy could be affected if people found out that it was her who was driving the car during the accident. “It was

The Great Gatsby is a novel that was published in 1922 by F. Scott Fitzgerald, in this novel he writes about the Jazz Age in language that marvelously evokes music. The Great Gatsby is a romantic and cynical novel about wealth and he portraits characters in the novel who maneuver themselves in complex or difficult situations. The character Tom Buchanan, is Daisy Buchanan’s husband, which Daisy is cheating on him later with Gatsby whom I’ll explain who he is in a bit, and also Daisy is the main character’s cousin. The main character is a man named Nick Carraway which in the novel he is telling the story in a second person point of view of Gatsby, who is a fabulously wealthy young man living in a mansion in West Egg. He is famous for the big parties he throws every Saturday night, but no one knows what he does, what made his fortune, or where he comes from. In the novel Tom Buchanan is cheating on his wife Daisy for a woman named Myrtle Wilson who is married to a man named George Wilson, a lifeless man owning a run down garage in the Valley of Ashes. Tom Buchanan and George Wilson are more similar than different because they both got cheated on. They will be compared and contrasted on their attitudes towards women, their ways of showing violence, and their reactions of being cheated on.

He wants closure about what happened between them. Daisy confronts Gatsby about an affair she had with Tom, and he doesn’t even care at this point because what they had was ‘real’. She claims to love them both but she decides she wants to go back with Gatsby and not her husband. On her way back, she accidently kills a woman on the side of the road speeds off with Gatsby’s car. Gatsby gets blamed for the death and the husband of the woman shoots him. No one attends Gatsby’s funeral but Nick. This goes to show Gatsby really had no body in his life, and his own true love whom he did everything for, didn’t love him equally. Throughout the whole book, Fitzgerald points out that Gatsby was living his American dream, but because his dream was Daisy, he was living his dream out of fantasy not reality.

The horrific death of Jay Gatsby was both expected and astounding, especially since his shooter wasn’t his real killer. “The Great Gatsby” written by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a short novel about the journey of Jay Gatsby and his ambition and dream. It takes you through Gatsby’s love life, extravagant lifestyle, to his melancholy demise. Tom Buchanan is responsible for the death of Gatsby because of his dislike towards Gatsby, his affair with Myrtle, and it was him who told Mr. Wilson about the car. Tom Buchanan despised and loathed Gatsby.

Gatsby’s life has been told many ways and he has not been honest to many people about it, leading to the end of the book where there are a series of events that inevitably kill Jay Gatsby. “‘Was Daisy driving?’ ‘Yes,’ he said after a moment, ‘but of course I’ll say I was ...’”(Fitzgerald 15). The paradoxical idea of who was driving the car and the lie Gatsby will tell, enforces the idea of dishonest behavior. The contradiction between true events and what will be told to the public, except for Nick, connects the belief that they can get away with the killing of

Jay Gatsby is portrayed as a man who has many admirers, which may lead people to believe that he is an admirable character of a “Great American Novel”. However, if taken into deeper account, Gatsby is a very isolated man without a family. In the past, Gatsby and Daisy had a romantic alteration, however, Gatsby had to leave for the war and was not financially stable. When Gatsby comes back from the war with great wealth, Gatsby is determined to restore the relationship they once had. Daisy, in the end,

Is Gatsby a Christ figure? Why or why not? In the Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby is depicted as a Christ-like figure. There are several reasons why Gatsby is considered a christ figure.