Past In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The past is an idea that develops memories, while also establishing goals for the future. A past molds one’s personality into its unique form, which lasts a lifetime. Thus, it holds an essential role in creating the goals humans possess. In The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald bestows a lost, romantic past on Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald uses the character of Nick Carraway to enhance the overarching theme of his novel: “the past can not be repeated”.

There are some people in the world who grow up in tough spots, that grow to believe that this is all they will ever encounter and this is their destiny. They believe that they don’t have the ability to be someone great. Then there’s other people in the same situations who learn and do whatever it takes to advance and escape. Jay Gatsby, the main character in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is apart of the crowd who wants and does end up advancing and escaping from his previous life. Jay Gatsby was successful in reinventing himself because he changes his entire persona, he gets rich and he does get the win Daisy over.

Glan Allan Manio 10/06/17 Period 6 Debatable Issue #2 “He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.”(Fitzgerald). “The Great Gatsby” was a great literary piece that has conjured numerous meanings. Some might say that the meaning of the novel is focused on the consequences of obsessive love; Or it might be focused on a dark depiction of the world and maybe the novel defines something essential about American cultural values. However, I believe that the true denotation of “The Great Gatsby” is that our desire to recapture the past holds a deep allure, but this desire is both unachievable and self-destructive because of the actions and dreams that Gatsby had

Jay Gatsby’s background was very similar to that of Andrew Carnegie’s. Jay Gatsby, at the time referred to as “James Gatz”, was the son of two farmers in North Dakota. Similar to Carnegie, Gatsby started off very poor. Although there is suspicion of an inheritance granted to Gatsby in the beginning of the story, it is noted that his story is indeed based on the “rags to riches” motif. His disapproval with his parents’ social class is obvious. “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” (Fitzgerald 98). Rather than accepting his parents’ guidance and values, Gatsby is primarily mentored by his employer,

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

Jimmy Gatz or Jay Gatsby Have you ever been embarrassed by who you are, of what your life is or has been like? Jay Gatsby or Jimmy Gatz was a wealthy man who lived in West Egg. Who in the past was a poor person, who served in the army. He

Fitzgerald reveals the detrimental impacts of living in the past, through the character James Gatz and his numerous flashbacks responsible for Gatz’s development into the character of Jay Gatsby. Gatz invented the character of Gatsby, providing a fallacious back-story, in order to convince himself and hopefully Daisy that there remains a possibility of love despite their difference in economic backgrounds. Nick reveals, “So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this (Platonic) conception he was faithful to the end” (132). Gatsby changed his past, hoping to change the outcome of his future happiness. Fitzgerald reveals Gatsby’s construed misconception of himself through flashbacks in order to emphasize the effect the past has on the present.

Jay Gatsby, the central figure of the story, is a character who longs for the past. He devotes most of his

Understanding Gatsby’s past greatly helps the reader understand why Gatsby is protective of his real identity. Layng’s article concludes that “Fitzgerald's linking of his characters' personal histories with American history underscores that the past is an echo that, like sonar, measures the distance gained and lost by individuals and cultures”

Gatsby has many issues of repeating his past instead of living in the present. A common

As an individual, would you want to focus on your past or be determined towards your future life? Well, the most certain answer would be focusing on the future and thinking ahead instead of thinking back. Most people think this way except Jay Gatsby from New York City in 1920s.

The past tense can affect someone very much, and it makes it hard for a person to move on for their present and future. It can be really significant for them, they keep on bringing the past back in their lives, and do everything to bring it back. In this case, is presented by Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby. Scott Fitzgerald constantly makes Gatsby to bring his past with Daisy Buchanan, and for her is the reason why Jay Gatsby became a wealthy person.

“You can’t repeat the past?... Why of course you can.” (110 This enduring quote from the famous novel The Great Gatsby by none other than F. Scott Fitzgerald stirs the mind and imagination in wonder of the very character who had uttered these words. Infamous Gatsby is the mysterious man behind the lavish and enthralling parties; a man who made his money and his image in that of a king. But, who is this mysterious man? How did he receive the great fortune of developing all of which he had possessed? He had it all, but we are on the outside looking in; did this man with everything really have nothing at all? If Jay Gatsby is the real person we see him to be, then James Gatz is nonexistent. The day that the world had gained Gatsby, it had

An Austrian physician by the name of Sigmund Freud, a well renowned psychologist, aside from his studies, was once rumored do have done enough cocaine to kill a baby horse. Other than his cocaine addiction he also developed the theory of Psychoanalysis, which in short means that he studied the longstanding difficulties in the ways that people think and feel about themselves, the world, and their relationships with others. Sigmund Freud’s ideals of psychoanalysis was translated to in a way where we are able to analyze media in all it’s shapes and forms. Psychoanalytic media analysis argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the characters within a movie, and the literary work is a manifestation of the Id, Super-Ego, and Ego. The text that I will analyze using the psychoanalytic media theory will be the film The Great Gatsby, originally a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I will be using Freud’s primary psychoanalytic theory of the ID, Ego, and Super-Ego to analyze the movie The Great Gatsby, and also analyze the potential cultural and societal impacts of an authors use of psychoanalytic theory.

How came people did not respect Fitzgerald’s writing in the twentieth century, but why people are respecting and valuing Fitzgerald work in the twenty-first century? Fitzgerald had a hard time to profiting from his writing, but he was not successful after his first novel. There are three major point of this essay are: the background history of Fitzgerald life, the comparisons between Fitzgerald and the Gatsby from his number one book in America The Great Gatsby, and the Fitzgerald got influences of behind the writing and being a writer. From childhood to adulthood, Fitzgerald faced many good and bad experiences that inspired him to achieve his own American dream in a short amount of time.