Essay on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

Gatsby's strategies of winning back Daisy's heart are to show off his wealth and social status such as connecting himself with "Oxford"; living in a luxurious "mansion"(Pg 5), throwing lavish parties, dressed in nice expensive clothing; he even has "men in England who buy him clothes and sends him a selection"(Pg 92). Gatsby believes that with his money and material success he could buy anything in life including true love and happiness. Because of his obsession to obtain Daisy's love, he betrays his honesty and morality. With no other purposes in life, Gatsby ends up engaging in illegal activities. Therefore, it is very ironical that sometimes in life, good idealistic goal, somehow, is achieved by immoral and illegal means. This is the reason for the failure of the American Dream, and the tragedy of Gatsby.

On the other hand, Gatsby epitomizes the corrupt American Dream as well. Gatsby is such a delusional idealist that even though Daisy is married and has a child, he believes that his dream will be realized the moment she admits that she is not, and never was, in love with her husband, Tom Buchanan. His devout confidence in self-invention leads him to construct a completely new identity that isolates him from others. Carraway comments on the fabricated persona when he notes, “[Gatsby] smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly [..] some time before he introduced himself I’d got the strong impression that he was

Thesis: The pursuit of the American Dream is a dominant theme throughout The Great Gatsby, which is carried out in various ways by F. Scott Fitzgerald, how the author represents this theme through his characters and their actions is one small aspect of it.

The 1920s is the decade in American history known as the “roaring twenties.” Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is a reflection of life in the 1920s. Booming parties, prominence, fresh fashion trends, and the excess of alcohol are all aspects of life in the “roaring twenties.”

When Cody died, he left the boy, now Jay Gatsby, a legacy of $25,000. Unfortunately

Hopes and dreams are needed to give man's efforts a meaning, or a purpose. Pushing towards some ideal is how man can feel a sense of his own identity. In the novel The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is a man with tremendous and "infinite hope" (Fitzgerald, 6). To be able to accomplish a life long dream, one must have strong determination that can in no way be weakened by any obstacles one might face. It is the hope of achieving your dream that keeps you from wandering away from it and guides you to the right path. In order to achieve his dream, Gatsby was motivated, optimistic and brave. Whether or not he eventually was able to accomplish this dream, having these qualities in a person certainly indicate

Any American is taught a dream that is purged of all truth. The American Dream is shown to the world as a belief that anyone can do anything; when in reality, life is filled with impossible boundaries. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald gives us a glimpse into the life of the upper class during the roaring twenties through the eyes of a moralistic young man named Nick Carraway. It is through the narrator's dealings with the upper class that the reader is shown how modern values have transformed the American Dream's pure ideals into a scheme for materialistic power, and how the world of the upper class lacks any sense of morals or consequence. In order to support Fitzgerald's message

To accomplish his one main goal, Gatsby would do anything to make money, so he did it illegally. Gatsby is a very rich man, but he did not earn his money the way that most of America did. “[Gatsby] differs from the other newly rich members of society in that he did not earn his money in an honorable way.” Gatsby made his money out of illegal bonds and bootlegging. Bootlegging is when one illegally sells alcohol under-the-counter, at a time where alcohol is banned. His main goal left in life is to win back Daisy Buchanan, and to accomplish that he needed money. All that he could do was to get into illegal business, which at that time in his life, was the only easy way to get wealthy fast. Gatsby could not wait any longer to reunite with the girl he had thought about every day since he had left to fight in World War I.

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, about half of the main characters present themselves as something they are not. Throughout the novel, the theme of passing is apparent in Nick, Jay Gatsby, Daisy, and Myrtle Wilson, although they are all passing, each does it for a very different reason. Many scholars have touched on the idea that these characters are not who they appear to be and that their passing is associated with social class issues of the 1920s. Fitzgerald’s characters are built around the idea of passing and social class restrictions.

During the early part of the twentieth century, the American culture fantasized about achieving a successful future with financial stability and the opportunity to thrive in a world that it only dreamed about in the past. In the novel The Great Gatsby, the main character Gatsby, is not worried about money, which he has accumulated through the years, but instead has created an intense attachment to a woman whom he had once loved, and never has stopped loving. His “American Dream” does not involve monetary stability; instead the only thing that he wishes to attain is the love and control over Daisy. His fantasy has developed into an unreachable love that destroys his life at the end. In the case of Tom, his attachment to Daisy has also became a way to prove his male dominance, he might love Daisy, but he only needs her to feel secure. This attachment to the past and the love that both Tom and Gatsby is completely contrary to what the “American Dream” many times signifies. Although The Great Gatsby was written during this time, the “American Dream” for both Tom and Gatsby, is not involved with financial stability, instead it is focused on a love fantasy and attachment to Daisy, a fantasy which has been used to prove their male dominance and superiority.

Many of us want to be remembered when we pass away. For most, the best way is through an obituary. Almost every day, there are numerous obituaries submitted to many newspapers, such as The New York Times. There are brief obituaries submitted by family members in which the said deceased individual played a major role throughout his/her life (whether it be charity or a major work accomplishment) and there are longer obituary articles written by reporters, usually on a well-known individual. When looking at those two kinds of obituary articles, there are many similarities and differences.

Daisy. Daisy was Gatsby’s American dream. So badly does he want to go back to the days of kissing in her car that he defiantly proclaims that he can and will relive the past (Fitzgerald 110). “His life had been confused and disordered since then” (110) and he was ready to do anything in order to get his Daisy back. This drive leads Gatsby to engage in shady business practices working with “the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919” (73) and selling alcohol in his drug stores(90). This was Gatsby’s way of achieving his American Dream and he chose to break the law because it was his boom or bust way to get back Daisy. So it seems that the American Dream is something that you will do anything to achieve.

The idea of the American Dream is a concept that many people have struggled with against themselves to prove that it not only exits but can ultimately be achieved. Countless generations of people have devoted their lives and work towards this dream. But, what is the American Dream? Can someone actually profoundly feel the fulfillment of what the American dream means and is to be achieved, or are we actually following a manipulated stereotype that was created within our own minds? The American Dream is commonly defined as someone working their way up from a low economic or social level towards prosperity, wealth, or fame. The novel “The Great Gatsby” by Scott Fitzgerald embodies many themes however the novel’s most significant theme relates to the American dream and the corruption it brings. This achievement of reaching the “American Dream” is commonly portrayed by having money, a big house, a car, a happy family, and other upscale possessions. Fitzgerald shows how this dream is full of materialism, and how materialism corrupts the lives of people by ultimately making it hard for them to see reality objectively. The characters Myrtle, Daisy, and most prominently Jay Gatsby have all been corrupted and destroyed by this dream. As a result of being so materialistic Fitzgerald’s characters start idealizing not only their way of life but their feelings, too. In the praised satirical novel, “The Great Gatsby”, Fitzgerald successfully exposes the underside of the unattainable and

An Austrian physician by the name of Sigmund Freud, a well renowned psychologist, aside from his studies, was once rumored do have done enough cocaine to kill a baby horse. Other than his cocaine addiction he also developed the theory of Psychoanalysis, which in short means that he studied the longstanding difficulties in the ways that people think and feel about themselves, the world, and their relationships with others. Sigmund Freud’s ideals of psychoanalysis was translated to in a way where we are able to analyze media in all it’s shapes and forms. Psychoanalytic media analysis argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the characters within a movie, and the literary work is a manifestation of the Id, Super-Ego, and Ego. The text that I will analyze using the psychoanalytic media theory will be the film The Great Gatsby, originally a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I will be using Freud’s primary psychoanalytic theory of the ID, Ego, and Super-Ego to analyze the movie The Great Gatsby, and also analyze the potential cultural and societal impacts of an authors use of psychoanalytic theory.

How came people did not respect Fitzgerald’s writing in the twentieth century, but why people are respecting and valuing Fitzgerald work in the twenty-first century? Fitzgerald had a hard time to profiting from his writing, but he was not successful after his first novel. There are three major point of this essay are: the background history of Fitzgerald life, the comparisons between Fitzgerald and the Gatsby from his number one book in America The Great Gatsby, and the Fitzgerald got influences of behind the writing and being a writer. From childhood to adulthood, Fitzgerald faced many good and bad experiences that inspired him to achieve his own American dream in a short amount of time.