Pros And Cons Of Being A Swimmer

He is set on being ahead of his peers, his goal is to be on top. He has always believed “One thing's sure and nothing's surer, The rich get richer and the poor get - children. In the meantime, In between time - ".(Fitzgerald 95 ) He has wanted to be the best, on top, in the upper class since he was a little kid. The American Dream is what he has worked for his whole life. The love, money, cars, and upper class that what he is what he’s chasing and all that he wants in life. The Dream is his world and without it he struggles on how to live. What Gatsby forgets,“just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had"(Palladino 29 ). He does not understand how people are not successful but on the other hand he does not want people above him. He wants to be what people strive for and in order to get there he will do anything and everything to be there. Anyone in his way is a threat to him and he will ruin their reputation any way he

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s revolutionary novel, The Great Gatsby, alcohol is used as a means of escaping from the actuality of the main characters’ lives. The thing that the main characters feel that they need to escape is the absence of relationships that they are missing out on because of their choices. And instead of being proactive they turn to alcohol to help them with their stress. Ideas such as these were also seen in the Lost Generation and it is reflected in the writing, This is demonstrated countless times by the main characters with motives that are very similar and helps characterize everyone along the way. While Nick, Daisy, and Gatsby drink and party themselves away, they become numb to the bad relationships in their lives.

Fitzgerald was a dreamer. He though everything would turn out fine, just as Gatsby had, but he was wrong and had to recompense for it in the end.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby,” he mirrors his life and the people in

The Great Gatsby is generally regarded as a story of love and tragedy, but in actuality, it was a story of a sad man chasing a baseless obsession with a woman and in trying to obtain this relationship, succumbing to immoral practices and ultimately dying alone. The author of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a widely acclaimed author who had a life of tragedy and loss that greatly impacted his writing. He was able to see not only the light-hearted, celebratory, and successful side of the American Dream, but also the negative effects of overindulging with alcohol and incessant partying. He was able to indirectly write about himself and his losses in the stories he wrote. Unfortunately, he was not able to see how successful he had become.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is mostly known for his images of young, rich, immoral individuals pursuing the American Dream of the 1920’s (Mangum). This image is best portrayed in his greatest novel, The Great Gatsby, alongside his principal themes, “lost hope, the corruption of innocence by money, and the impossibility of recapturing the past” (Witkoski). Fitzgerald was identified as a modern period writer because his themes and topics were inconsistent with traditional writing (Rahn).

As Fitzgerald grew up with his family in a middle class catholic family "This initial religious note indicates how deeply Fitzgerald understood the American tradition of which he was so profoundly a part” (Bewley), Fitzgerald began writing at a very young age, and he had begun to get recognized and then his success in his career had taken off. Even though life had been going well for Fitzgerald there were some downfalls. As he began to get older health problems begin to appear, and his work did not earn the credibility and the recognition it deserved until a few years after his death, Fitzgerald had decided that his life was a great example of the American dream and how it can fail, therefore Fitzgerald decided that his life should be put in the form of a book, and that is why there is a resemblance between Fitzgerald’s life and Jay Gatsby’s.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald writes about the American dream and how many individuals want the white picket fence and be with the person they love but theirs dreams are not always achieved. Fitzgerald possesses a dream but similar to his characters, but does not succeed. After graduating a prestigious high school, he attends Princeton University where he continues to develop his writing skills. Later, he writes a novel called, The Side of Paradise, which makes him famous and allows him to marry the women he loves, Zelda Sayre. Because of his success, F. Scott Fitzgerald is able to write one of his greatest hits, The Great Gatsby, but soon after, his life begins to unthread. He is a very heavy drinker and suffers

Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald alludes to and questions many standard American beliefs. One of the most extreme cases that exemplifies his criticism is Gatsby’s fantastical description of what it would have been like to kiss Daisy when they had first known each other. “His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own,” Nick describes Gatsby’s vision, “He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God” (Fitzgerald 110). Entrenched in Gatsby’s vast imagination is the idea that Daisy is flawless and the epitome of his goals. However irrational Gatsby’s mind is, he realizes that once he actually kissed her his idealistic version of her will disappear and he will realize her imperfections. This is is a perfect metaphor for Fitzgerald’s stance towards the American Dream, the unrealistic and heroic expectations of class mobility and the clean cut ideas about hard work and are, for the most part, theoretical. Fitzgerald realizes that in many cases, such as Gatsby’s, pining after an ideal yields nothing because of the impossibility of perfection. Fitzgerald ends the novel by attempting to describe the emptiness of the promise of the American Dream by writing, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”(Fitzgerald 180). The promise of success is endlessly beat down by the “current” that all people have to fight against. It is romantic and arguably foolish to attempt to break the odds and the safest and easiest route will always be to go backwards. The apparent futility of exerting effort is only counteracted by the existentiality of life, if there is no reason to try then why does life exist. Heroic ideas such as the American Dream are doomed to

Authors who are addicts use their writing in many ways to reveal their thoughts and feelings of their addictions. Fitzgerald is an example of these people as even claiming to have “not tasted so much as a glass of beer for six months,” (“America’s Drunkest Writer”). This is most likely false as this was during his lowest times and when he would often be in denial that he was drinking. In Fitzgerald's writing, The Great Gatsby, the Owl-Eyed man says “I’ve been drunk for a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library”(50). This is similar to the way that Fitzgerald would often go and be drunk for long periods of time and say that he attempted to be sober. In the end, Fitzgerald never had a book like, The Great Gatsby, as he would often

Throughout American literature, character have had secret meanings and have flaws that prove to mean something in the great scheme of things. The story eventually revealed the flaws characters have and the other characters it affects. In The Great Gatsby, an American novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, characters hold greater purposes than they appear, put on a show to fool others and contain flaws that prove to be fatal. The majority of characters in this novel have great potential yet seem to fall short when pertaining to their life. These characters lives are affected by their poor choices focused on parties and lavish pleasures. The flaws the characters hold prove to end in an unavoidable result that does not bode well for their lives.

Fitzgerald’s success came along with the roaring 20s, also known as the Jazz age. His fame and fortune skyrocketed during this era with his first novel, This Side of Paradise being a hit. However, the lifestyle of the rich and famous during the Jazz age would prove to provide an insurmountable heartbreak. Fitzgerald claims that the Jazz Age “flattered him and gave him more money than he had dreamed of” (qtd. In “Broken Dreams” 42). With this new fame and money, he began living very recklessly. He threw extravagant parties and “rode on the roofs of taxi cabs and jumped into fountains... and got drunk at countless parties.” Fitzgerald said, “I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.” (QUOTE). He finally had a taste of the glamor of the American Dream, and he absolutely loved it. However, this lifestyle was expensive, one that Fitzgerald, even with all his money could not afford. He lived so irresponsibly that he was often in debt. He wanted more of this lifestyle, but it was the lifestyle of the American Dream that eventually lead him away from the American Dream. He began chasing the American Dream just so he could

Fitzgerald’s background falls somewhere between those of Nick Carraway, The Great Gatsby’s narrator, and Jay Gatsby. It seems that Fitzgerald’s paternal lineage is the model for Gatsby, who came from a modest Midwestern family, while his mother’s lineage became the model for Nick Carraway, whose family was a member of the upper-middle class. After several failed business ventures by Fitzgerald’s father, the family came to rely on his mother’s inheritance for their well-being, leaving the young Fitzgerald uncertain of the social strata to which he belonged. This caused him to ponder whether he would live a life of magnificence or modesty. Through Carraway and Gatsby, we see the conflict that this created in Fitzgerald’s life. In some ways, he desired to earn wealth and fame by any means necessary as Gatsby did, but he also developed an indifferent and thoughtful persona like Carraway. This shows that Fitzgerald’s contrasting desires for material happiness in Gatsby and mental happiness in Carraway carried into his writing.

There are times when reality falls short of expectations, and when individuals fail to live up to their ideals. This struggle can come in the form of one specific event, or an overall life philosophy. The quest to attain what we really want can be an all encompassing one, requiring all of our devotion and effort. It is especially painful to see others possess what we cannot have. For the characters in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby these problems are all too real. Gatsby works for a lifetime to gain back what he feels is rightfully his, while all the while facing the crushing realization that he may be too late. Fitzgerald uses this futile search to introduce the idea that the idealized America Gatsby fought for has been corrupted over

Gatsby refuses to not meet his aspirations and will fulfill his dream by any means necessary. Although Gatsby’s intentions and motivation to become successful are pure, the way he obtains his status is extremely foul and criminal. Gatsby participates in organized crime, trades stolen securities, and bootlegs illegal alcohol. Instead of Gatsby using his wit and intelligence in an honest hard working way, he participates in corrupt acts, which will guarantee him his wealth and status. It is this aspect of Gatsby’s life where Fitzgerald expresses the decline of The American Dream. He tries to show his readers the demoralization of our society and how greed and power are a form of empty success that a lot of Americans buy in to.