Essay on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

Gatsby was employed by Dan Cody doing various jobs and during that time, became close friends with one another, and each had a trust with one another (Fitzgerald 100). Cody showed Gatsby the lavish things in life, and Gatsby held a tight grip on them and made them his lifelong aspirations. Dan Cody evokes in Jay Gatsby the appreciation for wealth. “To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world” (Fitzgerald 100). Jay Gatsby stares in amazement at Cody’s possessions, in Gatsby eyes, being corpulent in wealth and power causes bigger and better things for one’s self. The greatness of Gatsby comes through the willingness he has to make his dreams a success. Jay Gatsby’s dreams are the reason for his existence, and his purpose in life.

In the book, there is a self-made millionaire named Dan Cody who has an intimate relationship with Gatsby. While in the movie, this character has been left out. As a matter of fact, the importance of Dan Cody to Gatsby’s life cannot be exaggerated. He is like Gatsby’s father, teaching Gatsby skills and becoming a paragon of Gatsby’s life.

Gatsby in the story “The Great Gatsby” By F. Scott Fitzgerald. Through the novel, Jay

Additionally, Gatsby told this to Nick “at a time of confusion, when I [Nick] had reached the point of believing everything and nothing about him” (101). However, Gatsby left out one major part of his backstory of half-truths: none of it would have happened had he not encountered Dan Cody, a millionaire dropping his yacht’s anchor in Lake Superior. Dan Cody inspired Gatsby with his wealth, and he took Gatsby, who was seventeen at the time, three times around the Continent in his boat. In the end, Cody left Gatsby with twenty-five thousand dollars, but he was never able to inherit it as Ella Kaye, Cody’s mistress, found a way for the entirety of Cody’s millions, including Gatsby’s share, to go to her. Nevertheless, Gatsby “had filled out to the substantiality of a man” and would find an alternate way to accumulate wealth. Flash forward and Gatsby has more money than he knows what to do with. How, exactly, one might ask, did Jay Gatsby go from meager to a millionaire? The answer is in a very 1920s-esque way. The method in which Gatsby made his fortune stifles his ability to reach a full capacity of greatness, and, not to mention, was illegal. Through his connection with Meyer Wolfsheim, a member of an organized crime mob, Gatsby was able to bootleg in order to become rich; thus, he was able to live

Gatsby’s father figure is Dan Cody and the business Gatsby is about is bootlegging and other various illegal activities. By including a Biblical allusion, Fitzgerald allows the reader to apply the knowledge they have about the verse to Gatsby and see what the relationship between Dan Cody and Gatsby was like.

to Cody that Gatsby drank so little (Fitzgerald 100). After dealing with that he formed

Gatsby also wants to believe that money will solve all the problems in the world, and can buy happiness. Gatsby wanted to go from a poor

Gatsby grew up in North Dakota and did have no connections, money or education. He spent his youth training for his “Big Break”. Highly motivated, he had a plan to escape his life as a poor man. Gatsby was resentful of his parents and their poverty. “His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all.”(Fitzgerald 9.) Gatsby’s desire to escape the poverty and limits of his upbringing was so powerful that he created a new person he wanted to be in order to achieve what he desired rejecting his original name, parents, and goals for personal improvement as he invented a new person and attitude that would better support him in his quest. “So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.” (Fitzgerald 9). Gatsby’s opportunity to get away from his family and into wealth occurs when he encounters a man by the name of Dan Cody. Dan Cody teaches Gatsby the skills and everything he needs to know about the bootlegging business. With this new job, Gatsby is suddenly given the opportunity to meet his goal in the quickest and easiest way (even though it was illegal). Gatsby’s decision not only to participate in this illegal trade but shows how strong of a desire he has to reach his dream.

Set in the roaring twenties, many of the characters have an abundance of wealth. His wealth also increased from his secret business of bootlegged liquor. The money that he claimed that he had to Daisy to impress her to get her to love him that he was doing some good, actually illegally made money. The illegal bootlegging of the alcohol caused him to gain a big amount of money. It was during prohibition because alcohol was illegal and he didn 't tell her. Gatsby was born in North Dakota, and lived most of his young years in poverty before he got rich, which he had lied about him being from a family in the west with well riches. His parents were poor while he was growing up. He hated his life in poverty, he actually strongly disliked it. When he was young he would dream of wealth and riches because one day he was set to have them. His abundance wasn 't the best when he was younger his parents weren 't the richest, but just so happened he grew up in a time period where money was being made for many types of reasons. The ill treatment of the money and wealth problems brought problems which led to death and sorrow. The life that

James Gats was born in a poor farmer family in North Dakota, at the age of 17 Gats went to Lake Superior and met a wealthy man on a yacht named Dan Cody. Dan Cody became his Friend, mentor. This is where Gats tries to reinvent himself by changing his name to Jay Gatsby. He learned the ways of a high class gentleman. He didn’t want to be a poor man his whole life; he strived to be a self-made man. Dan pasted away and had $25,000 under Gatsby’s name but Cody’s mistress took

Next, Gatsby could be seen laboring to achieve his American Dream through his various methods he used to try to become wealthy. The first time Gatsby almost succeeded with his dream is when he became Dan Cody’s assistant. Gatsby had the chance to happen upon the millionaire Dan Cody. Liking Gatsby, Cody immediately offered the young adult a job. Gatsby traveled the world with Cody, but his employment was finally terminated after five years when Cody died. “And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn 't get it. He never understood that was used against him, but what remained of the millions went intact to Ella Kaye” (Fitzgerald 100). Gatsby almost succeeded in earning a large amount of money through Cody’s will, but Ella Kaye, Cody’s mistress, was able to extract the money under Gatsby’s nose for herself. Once again Gatsby was back to where he had started and all his work over the five years was for nothing. Nevertheless, Gatsby did not give up and after he was released from the war he started to work with Meyer Wolfsheim to make money in unsavory ways. Wolfsheim was not a respectable businessman, but through his methods he was able to make an enormous mass of cash. “‘He’s [Wolfsheim] the man who fixed the World’s series back in 1919’” (Fitzgerald 73).Wolfsheim was the one responsible in the 1919’s of fixing the World’s series to win money through gambling. Wolfsheim and Gatsby worked

Gatsby's real name is Jay Gatz, but he changed his name when he was 17 years old. His family were unsuccessful farmers. He was raised him in North Dakota almost in poverty. Nick mentions that Gatsby calls himself "Son of God" because his parents could not fit in his life. Gatsby worked one year long in low-payed jobs like clam-digger and salmon-fisher to survive and he got to knew women. He was never interested in those women. He was contemptuous of them; thus, he rather dreamed of his future and created a fabulous life in his imagination.

Gatsby, who was actually born James Gatz, was a son to poor famers in North Dakota. He is a man who knows right from wrong but teeters on the line of each. In the beginning Gatsby dreamed of leaving the farm life and become rich. He soon leaves home in search of the proposed “American Dream”. He enrolls into St. Olaf’s College with a janitorial job, but he dropped out only two weeks in because he couldn’t stand the job. One day while on the beach he sees a yacht and approaches it. This is where Gatsby meets Dan Cody. Dan Cody is obviously a rich man. Gatsby was seventeen and Cody was fifty years old. He offers Gatsby his first job. He showed Gatsby the ways of the real world.

At the onset of Gatsby’s introduction, we witness a man who is characterized with the utmost propriety and wealth. Consequently, this initial depiction evokes the prima facie assumption that Gatsby is a man who had basked in his opulence since his childhood. In actuality, his roots are humble and he comes from a poor background; escaping his destitute childhood, he reinvents himself as a new man after meeting a wealthy man named Dan Cody who serves the critical role of a mentor in Gatsby’s life. EXPLAIN HOW DAN CODY WAS A MENTOR.(start body paragraph from here maybe) Initially, Gatsby is known as “James Gatz;” moreover, he opted to change it in order to escape his past- a past characterized by failure and destitution. Unbeknownst to Gatsby, this new identity of his

Dan cody helps Gatsby but Gatsby doesn’t know that his help was unnecessary because he doesn’t get back together with Daisy anyway. “He was employed in a vague personal capacity---while he remained with Cody he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be about, and he provided for such contingencies by reposing more and more trust in Gatsby.” (100) This shows that the power of love and money corrupted Gatsby’s life because he wanted to make alot more money to impress Daisy by working with Dan Cody. Besides, Gatsby did not need the money anyway because Daisy was already with Tom. At the end Daisy doesn’t go with Gatsby because she has to try to explain to Tom what just happened and why Daisy had to do this to him, which leads to Gatsby’s life to get corrupted because Dan Cody was not a man of money he was poor and Gatsby made him help him out anyway. All of the things mentioned above are all things that Gatsby did in order to make his dream of getting back with Daisy and they all lead to the corruption of his