Hope And Optimism In The Great 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.

During the first chapter we learn that from Nick that Gatsby is a very optimistic and hopeful man. He's done his best to prosper in life but we learn that he has hopes for more. Also we learn that his hope is what drives other characters. Then we find out through Jordan that Gatsby wants to meet with Daisy but is afraid. That is why he always holds such lavish parties, Jordan tells Nick,"I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties..,but she never did.". Later in the story after Gatsby has spilled the beans of he and Daisy's affair he hopes and waits for her to come to him. In the end she does not and this is where we actually see a genuine act of despair in Gatsby, "Nothing happened.., I waited, about four o'clock she came to the window and stood there for a minute..". Overall, Gatsby goes through having his hopes crushed entirely by the end of the novel. But the hope he actually had was false because all along he knew what he had dreamed for wouldn't really work out and you can see this in many chapters of the book.

     In the text, The Great Gatsby, the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald leads us to sympathize with the central character of the text, Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald evokes our sympathy using non-linear narrative and extended flashbacks as well as imagery, characterization and theme. Through these mediums, Fitzgerald is able to reveal Gatsby as a character who is in an unrelenting pursuit of an unattainable dream. While narrative and imagery reveal him to be a mysterious character, Gatsby's flaw is his ultimate dream which makes him a tragic figure and one with which we sympathize.

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired” (Fitzgerald 79). In Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” the protagonists live lives of secrecy, one in which is full of despair and desperation. This desperation is caused by an emptiness that resonates from within and in order to further eliminate it from their mind and hearts they aspire to fill the void they experience. The idea “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” from Henry Thoreau’s “Walden” becomes present as the characters find themselves unsuccessful in fulfilling their life goals to find happiness through the attainment of wealth, status, love, etc. Several characters in the novel mistakenly believe utmost fortune cause the desperation to cease, while

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.

“Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so,” once said Charles de Gaulle. This valiant quote by a former president of France accentuates my opinion of the Great Jay Gatsby. From humble beginnings rises our main focus of F. Scott Fitzgeralds’ The Great Gatsby. Young Jimmy Gatz is brought to West Egg from his heavily impoverished North Dakota family. His desire to be something greater than a farmer drove him to fortune and love through any means necessary; his life long obsession, Daisy Fay, infatuates Jay in his own insatiable thirst for her affection. James follows Daisy in the years after he is deployed to World War 1, and when he sees she has married Tom Buchanan he becomes hell-bent on replicating the success Tom has inherited in order to win over Daisy. Through moderately deceitful ways, Jay Gatsby builds his wealth and reputation to rival and even supersede many already lavish family names. Astonishingly, the great Mr. Gatsby, overrun with newfound affluence, stays true to his friends, lover, and his own ideals to his blissfully ignorant end.

Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby is about a millionaire named Jay Gatsby, who attempts to win back his lost lover, Daisy Buchanan, by using immense demonstrations of wealth and throwing lavish parties to gain her attention. Gatsby and Daisy were once in love, but Gatsby was too poor to marry her so after earning a massive fortune for himself, he uses it in an attempt to win her back (Fitzgerald). Gatsby possesses a great deal of innocence in that he is ignorant to the fact that he is unable to turn back time and make things new with ambitious displays of success. When told told it is impossible to repeat the past, he replies “Can’t repeat the past?...why of course you can!” (Fitzgerald 110). Gatsby does not recognize how unrealistic his dreams are and how much he is tearing apart a marriage and the entire group’s relationship. As for experience, it is a major factor of Gatsby’s character. He has experienced so much in his life, including poverty, loss, war, opportunity, wealth, interaction with different people and more (Fitzgerald). Innocence is typically associated with a lack of experience, but this novel is peculiar because although Gatsby has experienced a great variety of things in his life, he is still naive to certain aspects of love and society. Gatsby’s fantastic experience is a very common subject in the story, as people are curious about how he obtained his great wealth, but in the end it is his innocence and ambition that causes the group to part and ultimately leads to Gatsby’s death

Without using depth of thought, The Great Gatsby is essentially a love story of the impossible forbidden desire between a woman and a man. The primary theme of the novel, however, shows off a much larger, less romantic scope of the novel. Though most of its primary plot takes place over simply a few short months through 1922’s summer, and is set in a small area in relative proximity to Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a a view on the 1920’s in America, and uses a lot of varied symbolism with it, in particular the loss and dismemberment of the American dream in an era literally named after the amount of wealth and industry it produced in material excess. Fitzgerald is able to showcase the 1920s as an era of dying social and moral values, evidenced in its overwhelming pessimism, desire, and unfulfilling pursuit of pleasure. The carelessness of the parties and celebrations that led to wild jazz music, exemplified in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night, eventually was created, in the corruption of the American dream, as the rampant desire for wealth and pleasure surpassed more worthwhile ideals.

The Great Gatsby is a story is about a man named Jay Gatsby who revalves his life around getting his one true love back, Daisy. Gatsby lived an eventful life by going from poverty to wealth and then eventually to death. This story is based on the thought of the American dream that hard work can lead you from rags to riches especially when you have something to work for. Throughout the story to prove this it is demonstrated by the use of foreshadowing, flashback, similes, and metaphors. All these played a role in developing the story along with making things interesting.

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

   The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel about one man's disenchantment with the American dream. In the story we get a glimpse into the life of Jay Gatsby, a man who aspired to achieve a position among the American rich to win the heart of his true love, Daisy Fay. Gatsby's downfall was in the fact that he was unable to determine that concealed boundary between reality and illusion in his life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, portrays the life of a man who is truly focused on one dream: to reclaim the love of his life. Fitzgerald illustrates the problem of being so single-minded through Gatsby’s ultimate demise. His slow evolution and reveal of the character of Gatsby leads to a devastating climax once his dream fails. Fitzgerald uses extended metaphor and sharp diction to depict Gatsby’s crumbling life in his last moments.

     F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a tragic tale of love distorted by obsession. Finding himself in the city of New York, Jay Gatsby is a loyal and devoted man who is willing to cross oceans and build mansions for his one true love. His belief in realistic ideals and his perseverance greatly influence all the decisions he makes and ultimately direct the course of his life. Gatsby has made a total commitment to a dream, and he does not realize that his dream is hollow. Although his intentions are true, he sometimes has a crude way of getting his point across. When he makes his ideals heard, his actions are wasted on a thoughtless and shallow society. Jay Gatsby effectively embodies a romantic idealism

Gatsby has created his «greatness», but has none of his own. So, he is not a hero by classical definition, not quite, just because all that he is, his greatness, is in fact a masterful illusion. ! Is Gatsby destined for downfall? Clues can be found all over the novel, in descriptions of Gatsby, and Nick’s portrayal of him. Firstly, Nick realises straight away that Gastby is lying about his past and his trips to India, which suggests that Gatsby isn’t that much of a good liar, and Gatsby doesn’t realise this, because he has made all his dreams reality. Also, the description of Gatsby in chapter 6 gives us suggestions on why Gatsby can never be satisfied with his life: «...these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing»2. This quote is a perfect illustration of how Gastby views life. The fairy mentioned is has a slightly sarcastic feel, it’s almost as if Gastby’s mind is of a child - that everything around him is perfect, and nothing can influence him. But, such an oblivious approach to life cannot be secure or everlasting. Every dream changes, and every lie comes through sometime. Gatsby has to understand that he cannot live in his own fantasy, and that other

In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, hope is a major theme throughout the novel. Hope is the act of wanting or wishing for something to happen. Gatsby, for example, is hoping that Daisy will leave her husband to be with him, this eventually leads to his death. Despite the recurring nature of the theme of hope, it is not portrayed in a completely favorable light. In fact, there is a complex attitude towards the nature of hope as shown through the narrator Nick. He believes hope is a human instinct, but it is something undoubtedly pointless in the long run.