Happiness In Gatsby

Themes of hope, success, and wealth overpower The Great Gatsby, leaving the reader with a new way to look at the roaring twenties, showing that not everything was good in this era. F. Scott Fitzgerald creates the characters in this book to live and recreate past memories and relationships. This was evident with Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship, Tom and Daisy’s struggling marriage, and Gatsby expecting so much of Daisy and wanting her to be the person she once was. The theme of this novel is to acknowledge the past, but do not recreate and live in the past because then you will not be living in the present, taking advantage of new opportunities.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby focuses on the excitement and adventure of the roaring twenties, a time filled with great economic success and parties said to last the whole decade. New to Long Island and New York, aspiring bond man Nick Carraway becomes infatuated with the lifestyle of his rich peers living the “American dream”. He gains interest in his mysterious neighbor Jay Gatsby, who lives in an incredible mansion and has a vast amount of wealth. Gatsby uses his money to try and steal his love, Daisy Buchanan from her unfaithful husband, Tom. Characters in The Great Gatsby are unhappy and unfulfilled with their lives due to greed manipulating their view of The American Dream. This skewed perception also affects their unreasonable life expectations and their narcissistic thoughts create a larger potential for failure, such as Gatsby’s extravagant plan to steal Daisy Buchanan.

Through Gatsby, Fitzgerald displays a wistful tone by illustrating Gatsby's yearning to start over, contradicting the compelling nature normally associated with the “Roaring 20’s.” For instance, Gatsby’s regretfulness is shown in his “want[ing] to recover something, some idea of himself,” contrasting the glamorous and thrilling view of the “Roaring 20’s” (110). This reveals how Gatsby longs for a chance to be with Daisy once again. In addition, a wistful tone is established by Gatsby’s longing to start over. Nick notices that Gatsby’s “life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place” he could find the missing piece he was searching for (110). This description of his life signifies that

The Great Gatsby is a book that almost proves the phrase “Money can’t buy happiness”

Many people put on masks to hide their dissatisfaction with life. Perhaps they are unhappy with their marriages, their professions, or the politics of the time they live in.  In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, many characters are unsatisfied with their lives, relationships, and social status.  For example, The Buchanans, The Wilsons, and Jay Gatsby have the most unsatisfied lives.  They deal with being the most unhappy throughout the book, because they are not living the life they want to live it is not “perfect” to them.  In this book, Fitzgerald describes many problems within the  unsatisfied thoughts of his characters. Those unsatisfied thoughts are not the biggest problems in the world, but they make it seem that way to The Buchanans, The Wilson’s, and Mr. Gatsby; this dissatisfaction with life directly leads to the deaths of The Wilson’s and Jay Gatsby.

F.Scott Fitzgerald’s story of The Great Gatsby is an intriguing piece of literature that is full of suspense and surprises. The two main characters Gatsby and Tom were both living the America dream, but were not fully satisfied due to the contention for Daisy’s love and company. Gatsby and Tom had similar characteristics, but were different in some other aspects. Daisy choose Tom over Gatsby, however, it was not really easy for her, but was necessary for her to live a safe and comfortable life.

The Great Gatsby, a highly acclaim American novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, entails the demise of the American dream by means of drawing a parallel between Jay Gatsby, a character whom covers his inner qualities with the idealistic characteristics of the rich during the Roaring Twenties in order to obtain the affection go the beloved and deeply flawed Daisy. Regrettably, throughout his conquest for Daisy’s affection, Gatsby falsely presumes that through his accumulation of wealth he will be able to acquire his deeply embedded desires for happiness, which mainly revolve around his acquisition of Daisy Buchanan. Eventually, Gatsby’s wealth ultimately results in his cataclysmic demise, as it is unable to provide him Daisy’s unconditional and

The Great Gatsby is a book with no limits, but also no happiness. If you take a close look into the book you can see for yourself that nobody in the book was actually happy. I believe that if you have good morals and ethics then you can achieve happiness. We see very little true happiness within the characters throughout the course of the book. Fitzgerald’s standpoint on morals and ethics in this book is that there are no boundaries. That a man can cheat on his wife, and likewise, but that person will never truly be happy. We never really see happiness at all in this book. There may be parts in the story where someone might be having fun at a certain point, but when

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, all the characters are trying to achieve happiness or their version of the American Dream. In trying to achieve this dream, each of the character’s flaws come into light and drama ensues. The hunger for acceptance, the drive for attention, and the lack of honesty all come into play as the story unfolds. In the end no one is truly happy and they all, except for one, walk away unchanged. What hinder the characters from reaching a higher state of happiness are their own flaws.

Outcomes alter when money and happiness merge. “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald accompanies the young bootlegger Jay Gatsby in the roaring twenties and, all his futile efforts to win his happiness and the love of his life - Daisy Buchanan. The fundamental theme presented in the novel is happiness is spoiled by wealth. This is first seen right before Daisy marries the wealthy Tom Buchanan. Daisy receives a string of pearls from her husband to be but, she does not want to marry Tom and requests for the pearls to be returned to "whoever they belong to"(129). This proves that the happiness that Tom and Daisy shared was ruined by the wealth of Tom Buchannan. Further, this theme is unveiled when Nick Carraway tells Gatsby that despite his

Richard M. DeVos once said, “Money cannot buy peace of mind. It cannot heal ruptured relationships, or build meaning into a life that has none.” This quote demonstrates how people believe that money is everything and that it is the key to happiness, but you cannot fix everything with it. You are not a better person just because you have it, you are the same as a poor man just with money. Many wealthy people use money to their advantage, thinking people look up to them, or that they can get away with whatever they want just because of what they have in their pocket. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald the characters use money for happiness and to brag. Although there are many characters that are similar to each other, Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan are the most alike in the story, but they also have

Fitzgerald illustrates how people with wealth and power become corrupt and that they’re miserable without love. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby’s hopes and aspirations are completely destroyed in a world surrounded by unreachable and unachievable possibilities, as he begins his pursuit of wealth and power to help attain his hope to win Daisy over. Jay Gatsby assuredly thinks that being rich and having finer things in life will result in bringing him well-being, love and admiration. The other characters in this book recognize that by having material things does not always result in the possession of these insensible items.

Gatsby does not belong to his own class and he is not accepted by the upper class, therefore he becomes an exception. Because of disappointment of being looked down upon and impossibility of accept by the upper class, he has nothing left except his love, which is also his “love dream”. Gatsby’s love for Daisy has been the sole drive and motive of his living. Gatsby’s great love is also the root of his great tragedy, because he is desperately in love with a woman who is not worthy of his deep love. Fitzgerald offers Gatsby with the spirit of sincerity, generosity, nobility, perseverance, and loyalty. All his good natures can be seen

Happiness symbolises a form of content, a form of satisfaction that can lead to several types of actions. In the Great Gatsby, happiness is portrayed in unusual forms with different characters, however every single character had some form of a Dream in mind. Fitzgerald juxtaposes his influence of T.S Elliot’s use of Valley of the Ashes showing poverty, decay and lost spiritualism with the rich life style of West Egg as he shows the wealth, parties and liveliness in this Egg. The Egg represents the symbol of birth and life, as well as the fragility of society and mainly the fragility of Dreams.

When a person’s greatest hope does not come true, it can not only leave them stuck and unsure what to do with their lives, but cause emotional damage as well. Putting all the eggs in one basket means that if the person loses the basket, he or she loses everything they essentially live for as well. Obviously, this leaves him or her in the lowest depths of despair. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald once again uses the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy, this time to demonstrate how much hurt a broken dream can cause. Within the first hours of being reunited with his former love, Gatsby begins to suspect that the situation will not fall perfectly into place the way he imagined. Nick, after attending this awkward reunion, reflects, “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything... No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart” (103). Although Daisy still appears as beautiful and charming as ever, Gatsby’s false image of her after several lonely years expands so much larger than life that the real Daisy plainly disappoints Gatsby. Fitzgerald strongly warns against the pitfalls of hope - once a person fixates on an idea, such as Gatsby did, reality cannot compete with the power the idea has over the person, leading to a delusional and unsatisfactory life in actuality.