The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

At its most simplistic form, nostalgia is a sentimental longing for the past. It is a subtle phenomenon that is associated with a person or place. Fitzgerald plays this concept into his novel The Great Gatsby, which is narrated by a character named Nick Carraway. Nick tells of his neighbor Gatsby, who goes to extreme lengths to reclaim a lost love. Throughout the novel, Gatsby serves as a conduit for humanity’s nostalgic depictions of the past. He accumulates massive amounts of wealth and even changes his identity in efforts to relive something that has already passed. Fitzgerald draws from this, and conceptualizes how nostalgia distorts a person’s overall perception of being.

The American Dream is a philosophy based off of starting from nothing and achieving family, fortune, and fame. The belief that self-determination and hard work will lead to the attainment of the American Dream is strongly tied with the American culture. This philosophical idea, however, is not portrayed in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which is often referred to as one of the “Great American Novels” to date. In terms, a “Great American Novel” should portray an honest and well-remembered character, rather than a character such as Jay Gatsby who achieved his fortune through illegal business and dies without recognition towards the end. Although Gatsby lives a lavish lifestyle that many people fantasize about, Gatsby’s American Dream is never fully fulfilled due to his failure of not having a family, successfully obtaining money the righteous way, and leaving a legacy; therefore, the novel The Great Gatsby, should not be entitled as the “Great American Novel” today.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was the model of the American image in the nineteen twenties. He had wealth, fame, a beautiful wife, and an adorable daughter; all seemed perfect. Beneath the gilded façade, however, was an author who struggled with domestic and physical difficulties that plagued his personal life and career throughout its short span. This author helped to launch the theme that is so prevalent in his work; the human instinct to yearn for more, into the forefront of American literature, where it would remain a common topic of writing to this day. Far below the partying and drinking front of F. Scott Fitzgerald lay a common man who wrote from the heart, and held nothing back.

Jordan Baker informs Nick Carraway that Jay Gatsby is still in love with Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby and Daisy were in a relationship before she was married to Tom Buchanan, which eventually had to end when Gatsby went off to war. Half a decade later, Gatsby has situated himself in West Egg to be close to Daisy. Jordan, acting as a messenger, tells Nick that Gatsby would like him to invite Daisy over for tea, where Gatsby would then surprise and join them. Nick is baffled that Gatsby would go to the trouble of throwing extraneous parties for the past five years, holding onto the sliver of hope that Daisy may one day attend one.

While learning about The Great Gatsby preface, I learned that the Gatsby is not an uplifting story, its just a classic. I learned that F. Scott Fitzgerald was an alcoholic, and not the best of role models. I also learned that The Great Gatsby contains many memorable characters and that I may run into a lot of situations that reference this story, so I should read it.

You can’t change the past the outcome will be different each time. There’s no guarantee that the outcome is going to be what you want or like, because each time the circumstance have changed. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, tells of a man name Gatsby who came from a poor upbringing believed he was destined for greatness, and set out to obtain the American dream, and wanted to be acceptance by the rich society. While in the military he met Daisy Buchanan, who ended up symbolizing everything he wanted wealth, class, and being part of a high society. She was like gold to him, and the idea of her inspired him to pursue his dreams of having it all. I disagree with Gatsby who believed he could change the past, it’s okay to remember the past, but when it consumes the future then he is stuck hoping for something that has long passed him by, or no matter how hard he tries he cannot duplicate it.

In The Great Gatsby, the major male figures could be defined as both guys and men as their characters at certain times go beyond just guys trying to fulfill their need for “neat stuff” or accomplishing “pointless challenges”, and develop into men with real emotional qualities, expressing their wants and desires for the woman they both love, or in Nicks case: the respect and admiration he feels for Gatsby towards the end of the story. Throughout Barry’s essay, are stereotypes he attributes solely to guys in order to draw a distinction between what makes a guy, and how they differ from men. In the subsequent paragraphs, I will attempt to analyze each of the major male characters with Barry’s definitions of “guyness”, and demonstrate what makes these characters both guys and men.

Dance has shaped the way we look at many different things throughout history. It has shaped how people socialize, what music people listen to, and even whole eras. One such era is the roaring 1920s. How did people socialize in the 1920s? They danced the evening away. What music did people listen to? Jazz music that they could listen to while they danced the evening away. Dance was a huge part of what made up the glorious Jazz Age. So, when a book was written to describe the 1920s scene, no doubt there had to be dance, and lots of it. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the energy level of the parties, music, and dancing to represent a vast array of emotions within the characters.

Before leaving he ran into Tom in New York City and initially refuses to shake his hand but eventually accepts. Tom tells Nick he was the one who told Wilson that Gatsby owned the car that killed Myrtle. Tom said that Gatsby deserved to die. Right then Nick knew that Tom and Daisy were careless and uncaring people that only cared about themselves. They thought by having the power of money it would protect them from anything negative or bad in this world.

In the story “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby is portrayed as a man of high class with lots of money, living in a corrupt time in America’s history. “The Great Gatsby” takes place in 1918 right after World War I, a war in which Gatsby had gone off to fight in. The story is narrated by Nick Carraway from a first person point of view, where Nick tells us about his experiences with a “racketeer” farmer boy, named Jay Gatsby. Gatsby doesn’t appear in the story until chapter three and until then Gatsby, to the reader, is simply a mysterious wealthy man who throws wild house parties. Very little is learned about Gatsby in the first chapter, except for the fact that he lives in “West Egg” and not “East Egg.” “West Egg” is

Gatsby stops throwing a parties because they are no longer necessary. He is back with Daisy and doesn't need to throw a party to get her to his house. He wants to focus on being with Daisy

The Great Gatsby illustrates the possible poor ways to achieve something so sought after such as being, in a general sense, successful. The American Dream in this sense is overwhelming, unobtainable to some and futile in some senses. The second decade of the 1900’s was a period of peak interest in pursuing the American Dream. “Fitzgerald, who named and chronicled that brash, schizophrenic decade, was now stranger to the dissipation of values and the pursuit of sensation in the Jazz Age of the 1920’s.” (Callahan P. 376). The essential evidence of one having achieved the “dream” was having the nuclear family, some sort of financial wealth, a large home and an automobile. It was widely understood that the financial aspect of this was the most important. This was a goal that drove the protestant work ethic of lower, middle and newly immigrated Americans. This dream also promoted the idea of delayed gratification found in a large capitalist country like in the United States. Protagonist, Jay Gatsby, does achieve the American Dream but the course changes his character and he ultimately encompasses what one would imagine a person with this ambition to be, truly unfulfilled. “Fitzgerald embodied in his tissues and nervous system the fluid polarities of American experience: success and failure, illusion and disillusion, dream and nightmare.” (Callahan P.374).

The promise of riches and success that comes on the back of hard work: the American Dream. Did it wither away? Was it lost in a sea of greed and mendacity, the roots of its vision forgotten amidst material success? Furthermore, if the American Dream is stripped away of its tangible aspects, acquired solely upon wealth; one is simply left with an idealistic concept that is unattainable. Such are the big questions posed to the reader in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby. Published in 1925, the novel tells the story of a cast of socialites in there 20s and early 30s in the fictional town of West Egg, Long Island. Narrated by a character named Nick Carraway, who provides insightful descriptions of the men and women he finds

In this novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald produces a charismatic personality that catches the attention of the readers. This character enfolds himself with lavish belongings and wealthy people and goes by the name of Jay Gatsby. He is the principal character who gives the name to the story. Gatsby is a newly wealthy Midwesterner-turned-Easterner who commands his life around one desire: to be reunited with Daisy Buchanan, the love of his life from five years earlier. Jay Gatsby’s quest for the American dream leads him from poverty to wealth, into the arms of his beloved and, eventually, to his demise.

The Great Gatsby was written in 1923 by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It has been a critical and financial success since it was released and is on many must-read lists. Several movies based on the novel have been released over the years, but none of them were criticized more than the one released in 2013. According to Shahendra Ohneswere, a writer for Life + Times, The Great Gatsby is a thinly veiled version of Fitzgerald’s own life. He wrote books as a way to make money and gain fame so that the woman he loved would marry him. He threw extravagant parties to impress her just as Gatsby does to impress Daisy. His true story, however, ended on a much happier note than his book. As with any form of adaptation, there are several differences between the novel and film. The main differences I found were the way that Daisy is portrayed, the relationship between Nick and Jordan, and the way that Tom and Myrtle’s characters are depicted.