Happiness In The Great Gatsby

The Pursuit of Satisfaction: An Analysis of How Chasing the Ideas of the American Dream Leads to the Characterization of Prominent Figures in The Great Gatsby.

“Without obsession, life is nothing.”(John Waters) Gatsby is obsessed with being successful in life ever since he was little. He was a poor little boy that worked up from nothing, he didn't do it legally though. He did some shady things to get to where he is now and he isnt very proud of it. So he has to lie about his past to if people ask him or stretch the truth for say. So without being obsessed Gatsby wouldn't be very far.

I believe that the three texts that I have studied contained moments of optimism and pessimism which in turn have shaped my opinion of the general vision and viewpoint. This alludes to the feelings and emotions portrayed through the omniscient camera in "The King's Speech", the morally inclined narrator Nick Caraway in "The Great Gatsby" and the protagonist in the novel "Foster". I was very intrigued to find out more about these societies and the vision the author/director hoped to convey.

“feeling of pleasure or contentment” is what happy is defined. Throughout the book “The Great Gatsby” it is focused heavily on the characters' happiness and what they want for their life. I focus on Myrtle Wilson, who seems to just be some mistress who is a bad person because a man is cheating on his wife for her. Myrtle is more than just some mistress, she wants happiness, she wants what she can't have with her husband. Myrtle wants money she thinks that will make her happy, and that could be what truly makes her happy or it will give her the false happiness that she wants. This relates to Maslow's Hierarchy of needs because she's not getting what she needs in her eyes; she wants more than what her husband is giving her and she can get that with Tom.

In the song “Can’t Buy Me Love” written by the Beatles, they claim that they can buy anything there friend desires but it sure can not buy them love (Genius, 1964). In the story, Fitzgerald shows us many examples of Jay Gatsby’s way of living in having a lot of money and he constantly tries to use that money to win Daisy away from Tom, her husband. Just like in the song Gatsby does not achieve the love of his old friend Daisy with money. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” a wealthy man, Gatsby makes strong efforts to win back the heart of his lover, Daisy Buchanan. F. Scott Fitzgerald also demonstrates through the characters of “The Great Gatsby” that money cannot buy one's happiness.

Throughout the novel, Gatsby is constantly trying to gain the affection of Daisy. If he were to win back Daisy, he would in a sense, achieve the American Dream. Yet he can’t because he belongs to a different social class, Gatsby is new money, while Daisy is old money. While talking about Daisy to Nick, Gatsby says. “Her voice is full of money...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”(Fitzgerald Chapter 7). While Daisy has been wealthy for year, Gatsby has only recently acquired his newfound riches. The difference is shown very explicit in nature as it becomes the barrier for Gatsby and Daisy and overall their happiness. Gatsby and his party goers, or new money, is described as irresponsible, self-made, and ostentatious. While Tom and Daisy, or old money, is described as elegant, refined, and established wealth. The stark difference in the end leads to the tarnishing of the American Dream for all those involved, as they no longer have hope for a better future. Angela Hickey explains in her analysis of The Great Gatsby, “ Gatsby can never hope to obtain Daisy because he doesn't have the right kind of money”(2). Hickey explains the way that social divisions cause Gatsby to never reach true happiness in order to achieve the The American Dream. In this case, the social differences

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

Love and tragedy have been a tale as old as time and is definitely not going anywhere. No matter what year it is, people are always searching for happiness and sometimes go about their motives the wrong way and ends up in a disastrous fate. In Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" it is apparent that the goal was money and fame with loose morals. Wharton's "Ethan Frome" was before World War 1 and when America was still kept to the classic standards of house, family, and farm. Both main characters lived in completely different worlds, but the end goal was the same; love and happiness.The novels tell its readers that people are willing to push their limits and morals to achieve their idea of perfect love and perfect happiness without thinking

What makes people happy in most countries is when they gain more wealth. These values are still true today and as true in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, which is held in the 1920’s. Most Americans think that wealth and happiness are synonymous with each other. This belief will continue to fuel an economy and marketplace that persuades consumers into buying products that will provide them “happiness”. Wealth and human happiness have reached an equilibrium in the view of an enormously capitalistic society, contrary to the beliefs of social progressives who believe happiness comes from the heart. Gatsby’s generation of the 20's were the age of a market that was primarily fueled off of the neediness of the average consumer. The same values are present today because our need for flashy products stem from the free market economy in this country. Consumers believe that they need all the things that businesses are attempting to sell to them.

Throughout the modern era, society’s views on money’s effect on a person’s emotions have drastically changed. Many people believed that the more money a person has, the more satisfied he or she will be. However, due to recent conclusions made by writers and case studies, money has proven to not be responsible for a person’s contentment. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, Daisy and Gatsby’s wealth ultimately shows the reader that money does not equal happiness.

The American Dream: Is is fact or fiction? In the United States’ Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers set forth the idea of an American Dream by providing us with the recognizable phrase “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. The green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock symbolizes Jay Gatsby’s “Pursuit of Happiness” in the novel, The Great Gatsby, set in the 1920s on Long Island, New York. The American Dream can be defined as “the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone. The American Dream is achieved through sacrifice, risk-taking, and hard work, not by chance” (Fontinelle, Amy). At the birth of our country in 1776, our founding fathers introduced the American Dream as a personal desire to pursue happiness; however, the pursuit of happiness was not intended to promote self-indulgence, rather to act as a catalyst to encourage an entrepreneurial spirit. As our country has changed, the idea of the American Dream, in some cases, has evolved into the pursuit of one’s own indulgences such as material gain regardless of the consequences.

Everyone wants something they don’t have for most people that is money, In Gatsby’s situation that’s attention and the need for love and happiness. Gatsby is one man with a house who can fit plenty. Throughout the novel Gatsby finds himself at a loss for he has no real friends has nobody who loves him nor does he have any true happiness. “It was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, [with] a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy” (5).

Money is generally presented as a symbol for stability and happiness, however The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald contradicts this idea. Throughout the novel, Jay Gatsby is known for his unimaginable formation of wealth and has the innate capability to achieve his dreams, however he does not realize that his dreams are above him due to the heavy corruption present in the 1920’s. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald presents money as an antagonist since wealth is the primary stimulant in the characters’ motivations, relationships, and happiness.

Characters such as Tom and Daisy Buchanan can be seen as highly materialistic and driven by their hunger for money. As a woman of high-class, Daisy has no desire to break her marriage with Tom and abandons her status in society to be with Gatsby. This is illustrated when Jordan Baker explains to Nick how Daisy “cried and cried” right before her wedding after reading the letter from Gatsby, but the “next day at five o’clock she next day she “married Tom Buchanan without so much shiver” (Fitzgerald 36). This shows how materialistic Daisy is since she marries Tom in the spite of escaping a

The characters are frequently depicted as longing for what is just out of their grasp: something so near they can almost feel it. Gatsby is the prime example of this, as he spends the entire novel fervently pursuing his lost love Daisy Buchanan. It seems that Gatsby possesses everything a man could want, yet he is solely focused on gaining the one thing he can’t have. It is revealed through what Gatsby tells Nick that even he can see the shallowness with which Daisy lives her life. He tries to gain her interest with extravagant parties and lavish things, but to no avail. Although she is impressed with the extent of his wealth and the fact that he had slaved to win over her for five years, nothing he could ever to do impress Daisy would cause her to forget social class and follow her heart. Nick’s girlfriend, Jordan Baker, is described as a notorious cheat and liar, and Tom, an obnoxious racist. Fitzgerald portrays the aristocratic members of society as suffering from severe disillusionment--a terminal disease that crippled the wealthy during this godless era. The death of the ever present yet, unattainable American Dream can be seen in the dubious ways in which characters like Meyer Wolfsheim and Gatsby himself earned their fortunes, and the measures they would take to protect what is not rightfully theirs. Gatsby’s murder is the