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How Is Jay Gatsby Selfish

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The Great Gatsby is a novel that reflects on the mysterious Jay Gatsby who boasts a lavish lifestyle in order to impress Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby came from a poor family and was ashamed of his upbringing. “I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all… 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 98)
Gatsby figuratively and literally made a name for himself. Gatsby met and became infatuated the with Daisy, a wealthy girl from Kentucky in 1917 before he went to war. Daisy married Tom Buchanan, an heir from a wealthy family the next fall. Five years …show more content…

In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people, but always with indiscernible barbed between. He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him––he had never been in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there––it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him…” (Fitzgerald 148). Daisy was “nice” girl because she wealthy. His love for Daisy was heightened because she wealthy. Gatsby was motivated to become rich, but the idea of being able to provide for Daisy intensified the motivation. Daisy was part of the hope for the Gatsby’s American dream. The hope was represented by the green light at the end of the dock. Gatsby views Daisy as the utmost goal of achieving greatness. “It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy––it increased her value in his eyes”(Fitzgerald 148). Gatsby valued popular luxuries and Daisy happened to be one of

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