Essay Jay Gatsby: The Tragic Hero in The Great Gatsby

A tragic hero is someone who can be most appropriately defined as a person of great quality, who has a tragic flaw such as they are destined for some kind of downfall, suffering or defeat. In The Great Gatsby, by Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby is the epitome of a tragic hero. The Great Gatsby is the story of a man by the name of Jay Gatsby who shapes his life around one desire, one goal: to be reunited with the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan. His quest for love and the American Dream directs him from poverty and powerlessness to wealth and dominance in society. All of this leads to the dramatic death of Gatsby. Through his endless wealth and power he never uses material objects in a selfish manner. Despite his high social status and nearly perfect

Life is an adventure that we all go through; we are born and then we die. Throughout this journey we can’t retake a step or go back into the past; it isn’t possible. However, there are a handful of people who believe everything is possible. They are associated with innocence until they enter adulthood. At that point they are considered naive. In Fitzgerald’s great novel, Gatsby is the image of success; with his riches and assets galore; however, he can’t let go of the fact that the past is unattainable. Gatsby is considered a tragic hero because he possesses all the qualities of a tragic hero, he has a fatal flaw, and he got an undeserved fate because by his fatal flaw.

Jay Gatsby serves to epitomize Fitzgerald’s view on how monetary success does not always lead to the attainment of one’s ultimate goal of satisfaction and euphoria. Gatsby has all the wealth and influence a man could wish for, yet he is chronically isolated and delusional when it comes to the aspect of love and claims that “[He] will fix everything it just the way it was before… She’ll [Daisy] see” (Fitzgerald, 110). This statement proves that Gatsby’s ultimate goal was not to increase his net worth, but to use the money in order to lure Daisy back into his life and attain emotional exuberance. As time progresses in the novel, it is apparent that Gatsby’s unhealthy desire for Daisy increases even as his wealth proliferates, and his fiscal success only seems to create further agitation. In the novel, Gatsby’s lavish parties make him the talk of the town, and he is envied by society since their view of success is solely financial. This

The American Dream is a fairly nebulous concept that is exemplified by a number of American

What was Gatsby’s downfall? Gatsby’s downfall was that he did immoral actions to achieve his dream, how far would Gatsby go to accomplish his dream? To begin with, Gatsby wanted to steal Daisy from Tom and wants her to say that she never loved Tom Buchanan (pg.

The character I found to be most interesting is Jay Gatsby. Jay Gatsby is a man in his mid-thirty’s who grew up on a poor farm in North Dakota. Before leaving to fight World War 1 he met a girl who went by the name Daisy and immediately fell in love with her. But their love was not to be, while Gatsby was gone Daisy married Tom Buchanan and as a result Gatsby dedicated himself to getting her back. Gatsby's attempts to win her back included completely reinventing himself and becoming fabulously wealthy. Even though Gatsby always wanted to be rich Daisy was his main motivation. He acquired this wealth by participating in organized crime. By doing this he stakes everything on this dream without realizing that he is unworthy. Unfortunately, in

However, just like the American dream and society, Tom and Daisy and Gatsby’s envious lives are not what they seem to be. Throughout the book, Fitzgerald reveals many cracks in the lives and characters of Tom, Daisy and Gatsby. The woman Gatsby is in love with is tragically, Daisy Buchanan. Daisy, and not the massive fortune Gatsby has accumulated, is Gatsby’s “American dream”, his ever-elusive goal. Having already lost her once because he “had no comfortable family standing behind him, and was liable at the whim of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere about the world” (Fitzgerald 149), Gatsby is determined to win her back, even declaring to Daisy’s husband, Tom, that Daisy “only married [Tom] because he (Gatsby) was poor and she was tired of waiting for

The American dream is about social class mobility; the idea that one can move from a poor family to the middle or even wealthy class. It bears the notion that one’s origins does not determine status but rather with hard work and sacrifice anyone can attain the level of success that they dream off. Whereas many attribute the tenets of this paradigm to the Declaration of Independence which states that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”, the term, American dream was actually coined by writer and

The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald is a novel that eloquently summarizes what the entire American society represents through Fitzgerald’s view. This novel develops its story in New York, at a time when the jazz age was at its peak. The roaring twenties, the era of glamour, infringed prohibition, conflict, growth and prosperity. The main concern in that age was materialism, sex, booze, and entertainment. The American Dream was the idea that anything, especially success, was possible through hard work and determination no matter where the individual comes from. On the other hand, in Fitzgerald’s perspective, he was aware of the falsity of the values in the American society; and also he was

The Great Gatsby is truly a book that when you start to read it you cannot put the book down. In this book there are so many things going on that you do not know what to think at first. There are the mysterious Mr. Gatsby, and the there is the timid Nick. There are a lot more characters in this story than just that, but those are some of the most important people at least in my opinion. This book starts out with Nick moves to the city and then he's moves to west egg. What is west egg you might ask, well it is the part of the city that people live in. Most of the people that live on this side of the lake are wealthy but they didn't come across it by family or anything like this, they would call them people with new money. Most people did not like these people because they felt they did not earn their money honestly. Once you get a little further into the book a lot of drama starts to happen. The parties get bigger. The people become curious, there is also tragedy. Everything that you could imagine probably happening in this book. That is one of the many reasons that I love this book so much. Another thing that happens in this book is that Nick finally meets Gatsby after finally going to one of his parties this is a huge part of where the whole books starts to have the drama and excitement and we then start to actually know who Gatsby really is and

Daisy lives a wealthy life which makes others enviable. However, as a matter of fact, Daisy has nothing except money. At that time Daisy is just in the unimportant social position and doesn’t have profound existence value. She is only an attachment of men and enjoys the affluent life. In the fact, she does enjoy the life for the money rather than love.

The plot started when the narrator, Nick Carraway rents a house in the West Egg in district of Long Island. He lives next to a mansion owned by a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby and like to throw parties every weekend. Nick visits his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, who lives with his husband, Tom Buchanan in East Egg who is his friend in the same college. Nick also meets Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman who is also a golfer. She reveals that Tom is having an affair with another woman, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City.

The belief in the American Dream has been a beacon of hope for many Americans and immigrants who seek to have a better life in America. The American Dream describes a reality in which people can achieve success and prosperity despite the financial and social status they are born into. The dream romanticizes the “rags to riches” stories and provides people with a sense of optimism for the future. Studies have shown that compared to Europeans, more Americans believe that success can be achieved through self-reliance and hard work. This is due to the popular and widespread belief in

Sam Winchester, Elena Gilbert, Walter White, Sirus Black, Peta Mellark, Jean Valjean, and Jay Gatsby, what do all these characters have in common? They are all tragic heroes. A tragic hero is a character that has a fatal flaw, or tragic flaw, that keeps them from perfection. From HBO shows to classic literature, writers have been breaking hearts with tragic heroes for years! Even the title "tragic hero" sounds melodramatic. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero should have certain traits. He decided that they should be pitied, they should disrespect the natural order, reverse their fate, have a tragic flaw, make an important discovery, and be put in an unavoidable situation (Meirow). In the book, The Great Gatsby, while Jay Gatsby is frantically searching for the American Dream, he displays each of the previous traits. His tragic flaw ends up killing him and affecting those close to him.

The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, explores the world of materialism, betrayal, love, and dreams. Jay Gatsby is the man behind the title. Gatsby can be characterized as charming, determined, and mysterious. Although he has a range of traits, he remains a static character throughout. Gatsby stays true to himself and does not let his fortune make him an arrogant person. In addition, Gatsby wears his heart on his sleeve. In the story, he symbolizes the “American dream” because all he wanted in life was Daisy`s love and a life with her. Furthermore, Gatsby is a true embodiment of the saying, “rags to riches,” since he built himself out of nothing.