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 Great Gatsby is often considered to be the great American novel. However, this notion must be challenged because the ideas that F. Scott Fitzgerald presents in his classic masterpiece clash with the distinctly “American” ideologies that citizens of this great country have been spoon-fed since birth. Ideas such as capitalism, the American Dream, and self-actualization are presented in one form or another and then systematically dismantled to show just how fragile they really are. In his famous novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald emphasizes the despondency of class struggle and other Marxist ideologies through literary devices such as setting, imagery, and character development. Ultimately, Fitzgerald offers a negative critique on how social

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.

To be Nick Carraway is to be an unreliable narrator. An unreliable narrator is a narrator, who, has little to no credibility and simply cannot be trusted. These narrators are often in first-person and “seem to have limited knowledge, to be mistaken in his or her understanding of people and events, or even to be deliberately misleading the reader.” (Margree par. 1). The well-known novel The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald, introduces readers to a story where everything may not be necessarily true. The beauty of this novel is that the readers actually get to decide what they want or do not want to believe. This is all due to Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby. Nick is prejudice and has various faults like dishonesty and being oblivious to himself. A character/narrator like this during the 1920s in New York City seems to fit in just fine, after all it was an age of “vitality, sapping out genuine emotion in favor of the artificial,” (Wolok 1). However, Nick’s faults have a major effect on the background stories and events taking place in The Great Gatsby. He picks and chooses his narrations forcing readers to not get only half the story. Along with this, Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby is an unreliable narrator because he constantly contradicts himself, is biased towards Gatsby, and attempts to use other characters as primary sources.

Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby are rivals within F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book The Great Gatsby. Throughout the entire story, Tom and Gatsby fall in love with the same person but in the end Daisy has to choose one of them. Gatsby knew Daisy from when he was enlisted in war. Though Daisy did not have the patients to wait for Gatsby, and the fact that he did not have much money did not make it any easier. He was starting to realize that because of it he would not be able to win her over. Once Tom showed up into her life everything changed. She left Gatsby and decided she wanted to pursue her life with Tom. Even though Daisy chooses Tom instead of Gatsby, Gatsby would have been a better choice.

Society has an obsession with money. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, wealth is portrayed in two different classes called the new money and the old money. New money refers to those who have recently made their own fortune within their own generation. Old money refers to those who have inherited money from their wealthy families in the past generations. The new money people are more extravagant with their money in order to flaunt their wealth, while the old money people are more conservative with their money because they have been around for longer and people already understand their wealth. The difference between new and old money is not

“To do two things at once is to do neither”(Syrus). As Publilius Syrus suggests, in an age where multitasking is more common than the ideals concencentration, it is important to reconsider the capabilities of man. The idea of taking on multiple tasks underlines man’s capabilities in that it often gears the mind in two opposite directions with equal power. In this regard, though it may seem efficient, it is actually vile for man to attempt to sustain multiple projects that gear toward opposite directions. This idea is confirmed by F. Scott Fitzgeralds’ The Great Gatsby, a novel in which the protagonist Jay Gatsby illustrates why man isn’t capable of taking on two equal and opposite projects at the same time. Gatsby fails to conquer Daisy

Whenever Daisy is introduced into the narrative, she is primarily described by her voice. These descriptions are often contradictory, reflecting Daisy’s multifaceted nature. Thus, her voice contains, “fluctuating, feverish warmth”, (?) “aching, grieving beauty” (?), and “a husky, rhythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before and would never have again” (?). Nevertheless, the overarching commonality is that Daisy’s voice features a seductive, alluring quality to which Gatsby is unavoidably attracted. However, most significantly, Daisy’s voice is “full of money”, signifying her innate attraction to wealth, and her privileged, elite lifestyle, in which she has never experienced deprivation.

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.

The American Dream is a dream about possibilities, and a desire for success. Sometimes you can interpret the dream for money, sometimes for love regardless of what the you think it is, the dreamer works hard to reach this goal. In the novel The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is driven by his desire to achieve the American Dream. Unfortunately, Gatsby’s drive to achieve the dream also results in him falling victim to it. Essentially, Gatsby falls victim to the American Dream because he is forced to face the reality that his dream is just that, a dream that is out of reach and unrealistic. The novel also shows what happened to the American Dream in the 1920’s, which is a time period when the dreams became corrupted for many reasons.

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.

Buzz Aldrin once said, “I think the American Dream used to be achieving one 's goals in your field of choice - and from that, all other things would follow. Now, I think the dream has morphed into the pursuit of money: Accumulate enough of it, and the rest will follow.” The American Dream is a way for people to start over and have opportunities to become successful and achieve their dreams. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald writes a story of enormous wealth, from old money in East Egg, to new money in West Egg. Gatsby Lives in West Egg, while Tom and Daisy live in East Egg. Fitzgerald writes about three characters in which have trouble finding true happiness with themselves and others without flashing their money

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.

The Jazz Age, marking to be an era of great change. After World War I ended in 1919, the post-war seemed to make life so much better. People began to become wealthy, which was a tremendous financial change, at least for the upper class, from having a time of corruption. With all of the new wealth, people began buy more. When people begin to buy more, that means profits grew, more goods were manufactured, which makes people earn more money. With all of this money, they began to buy consumer goods- cars, radios, telephones, etc.

In the “Great Gatsby” F. Scott Fitzgerald explores the modern woman’s symbolic significance in an era of luxury and excess. Many of the female characters are seen enjoying the freedoms of the ‘flapper’ lifestyle during the Inter-War period. Fitzgerald offers the public an image of the ‘flappers’ who are modern young woman sexually liberated, self-centered, fun-loving, and magnetic. Fitzgerald uses the female characters in the novel, such as: daisy buchanan, Jordan baker and myrtle wilson as a way to convey the futures and the pasts of female traditions colliding with one another. There are both women that are “dependent” and women that are “independent” from male characters in the novel. I would argue that Myrtle and Daisy are both dependent on men to provide for them and take care of them. While Jordan, on the other hand, would be an example of a woman that does not need or want any man to provide for her. Fitzgerald experiments with narrative point of view and presents the female characters through a central male consciousness. It is through the eyes of Nick Carraway, we get our first glimpse of Daisy and Jordan. Set off by an elegant décor and airy nature images, the two women impress Nick as extraordinary embodiments of womanliness associated with an indicative combination of purity, grace, and beauty. From the beginning, Nick suspects that the two women are hiding their real natures behind scripted public facades.