The Concept Of Failure In The Great Gatsby

When someone tries to achieve something great, they look for success, but things don’t often go as planned and may end badly. The quote presented means that generally, when someone strives for something greater or better than it often makes things worse. This meaning is shown through the characters Jay Gatsby, with his passion for success, Goneril, with her desire for power, and finally Edmund with his evil plots to win over the kingdom. Overall in the two texts, The Great Gatsby, as well as King Lear, when characters strive for something they desire, it is not achieved, and things end quite badly.

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays failure by using Gatsby to depict the personal struggles and unobtainable goals of people as a result of misfortune; this reflects Fitzgerald’s personal perspective that life is cruel and does not always go as planned.

When I look at the word failure I didn’t see success. But that slowly changed as I read the book What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain Chapter four. Bain, for me and I’m sure many other, have changed our view point on failure being a bad thing. He instead expressed failure as an “opportunity to learn something.” (121) As infants we grow and develop, we learn to walk by falling down a couple hundred times, and we learn to speak by babbling. By trying to walk, and trying to talk, we may fail at first. As an infant, you cannot give up when you are face to face with failure. You must get up and try again to learn. In the book, What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain he uses people’s experiences and research to explain why failure is an opportunity to learn something new, rather than seeing failure as something bad. He asserts “people who become highly creative and productive learn to acknowledge failures, even to embrace them, and to explore and learn from them.” (100) Failure is important. If we did not get up and try again as infants, we would not be where we are today.

Failure can be a very difficult thing to cope with. It can be something that makes you or breaks you. I have learned that failure is what defines a person; it shows your motivation to bounce back when things get rough. I have learned from my failure instead of dwelling on it and making myself weaker.

Daisy is not a successful prince because her morals and characteristics are not very pure. She lies to her husband, and plays with Gatsby’s heart when she says she still loves her husband Tom. Daisy is not faithful and cannot keep her promises.

Failure is a part of everyone's daily lives; however, depending on the person you are you

Society has boundless unspoken laws of conduct that dictate human behavior, even when it seems counterproductive. Humans have been gifted with the capacity to be deeply emotional, to chase after whatever outlandish and magnificent dream they have, but often the iron fist of societal conventions hinder this, and in turn, leave the dreamers of the world stuck in an endless struggle between conformity and happiness, ultimately leading them to failure. In “The Great Gatsby”, F. Scott Fitzgerald writes, “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired” (Fitzgerald 79). Since the beginning of time, people have and always will be chasing after the impossible, held back by the rigid rules of society.

By no means is “The Great Gatsby” a disaster: Even at its most shallow, the film rescues Jay Gatsby as a largely sympathetic, romantic figure rather than a cynically ironic one. But neither is it necessary. Childlike, fetishistic and painfully literal, Luhrmann’s experiment proves once again that it’s Fitzgerald’s writing — not his plot, his characters or his grasp of material detail — that has always made “Gatsby” great.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald wrote many works of literature including one of his best sellers, The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby was considered to be the depiction of The Roaring Twenties, and one of the best American novels ever written. During this time, The Roaring Twenties doubled the nation's wealth, which allowed more people to be rich. This wealth caused a split between social classes. The ones who had their American Dream, and the ones who did not. With its beautiful lyricism, pitch-perfect portrayal of the Jazz Age, and searching critiques of materialism, love and the American Dream, The Great Gatsby is considered Fitzgerald's finest work (biography.com).

The word “failure”, by definition, is the condition of not achieving the desired end or ends. However, this standard definition does not come close to summing up the countless other meanings of failure. Every person, regardless of status, color, or sex, has had to deal with this issue at least once in their lifetime. Even so, each person’s definition of it can vary depending on their personal experiences. The interpretations of failure may differ, but failure itself involves not putting forth effort, being a disappointment, or not succeeding in a task.

When understanding failure you must understand that it is conceptual. A mere thought. A fluke, one may say. One may know the act of failure but does one know what it is to feel like a failure? The sensation of a thousand bugs running up and down your skin every time you raise your hand in class? The sensation of shouting and almost as if you should have been burnt away at that very moment? My knowledge of failure is precise; there is no falter. I know of failure more than the regular person. One might worry.

Failure is something that we cannot go through life without experiencing. The best thing about failure is that failure can be used as a great learning experience to improve upon things in our lives and career. Using failure as a learning tool is dependent upon the person and how they view it as well as how they use it. Failure is a matter of perspective and the lessons in failure are important aspects towards growth and development. If we did not experience failure there wouldn’t be opportunities for learning. Failure can teach us about ourselves as well as provide an understanding for our

Failure often times leads a person to feel helpless, disappointed and depressed. However,one should not allow this to set them back in trying to achieve the ultimate aim one has set out to do. Failure in the beginning can often be a powerful incentive to reassess one’s position in wanting to achieve the particular aims; to analyse whether the purpose is worth the trouble the person has to undergo and the whether the obstacles are surmountable.

Traditionally, failure is seen as a negative concept and is defined as lacking success. I, on the other hand, try to put a positive spin on everything in life. I see failure as an obstacle that is experienced by all, but it does not define an individual. Failure in essence will force an individual to be more receptive to their surroundings and actions and also will force an individual to mature. Looking back on my childhood years I can now pinpoint the areas where I failed and I can confidently say that I have grown and prospered due to those failures. The three major failures I have experienced were my attention deficit issues which affected my ability to succeed in school, my anti-social habit that I let consume my early years, and my

Failure is simply defined as the lack of success ("failure."). Ironically, it is nearly a requirement to fail in order to understand success. Failure is not necessarily a bad thing and should not be looked down upon. Failing is not achieving, but from failure we gain experience allowing us to achieve in the future. There is comfort in knowing that every single successful person has failed at least once to get where they are now. Thomas Edison had been recorded on many occasions saying that he had not failed one thousand or more times, he just found one thousand ways not to do something (“I Have Gotten a Lot of Results! I Know Several Thousand Things That Won’t Work.”).