The Theme Of Time In The Great Gatsby

Gatsby exemplifies an individual who can not always get what he or she yearns for. He possesses more than millions of people have combined, yet is still not satisfied. There is only one thing that Gatsby is destined to have, and that is Daisy Buchanan’s unconditional love. Hence by the name, she is married to another man: Tom Buchanan. The madness begins before Daisy gets married when she shares a kiss of a lifetime with James Gatz. Gatsby allows himself to fall in love with her, and from that moment on, all of his life decisions and daily problems are stimulated by Daisy, and framed around her life. Some may consider Gatsby to be an extreme stalker or nutcase, but in reality Gatsby simply has faith in

He wants to be the perfect man for Daisy. “We both looked down at the grass –there was a sharp line where my ragged lawn ended and the darker, well-kept expanse of his began. I suspected he meant my grass” (p82). This shows the theme of appearance against reality and how Gatsby wants everything to look presentable and nice for his first meeting with Daisy after five years. He feels like having a lot of wealth, a flashy car and an enormous palace, he can reconquer her love, who is a materialistic woman. He spent years on end throwing parties, to get himself known as a rich man and so that he could attract Daisy.” He wants her to see his house … And your house is right next door” (p79). “I want you and Daisy to come over to my house… I’ d like to show her around” (p.89). Here he is planning on making his dream come true. By having Daisy at his house, he can show her that he is wealthy enough to provide for her what she wants.

Gatsby is a “poor boy trying to remake himself” (McClurg). Gatsby comes from an impoverished family, so he leaves his family and starts looking for success. His first chance at being rich is when Dan Cody leaves him some wealth. Unfortunately, Cody’s wife refuses to give it him, so Gatsby makes it his goal to get rich without Cody’s help. Gatsby serves in the Great War then he joins the bootlegging business. The bootlegging business turns Gatsby to a really wealthy man. He becomes “mister nobody… who rise up out of the crowd” (McClurg). Gatsby tries to fit in with rich people by throwing extravagant parties, buying a personalized car, and lying about his background. Despite of all his generosity at his parties, people usually “came and went without having met Gatsby” (Fitzgerald 41). Additionally, his desire to be an upper class comes from his love for Daisy. For instance, Jordan Baker tells Nick that “Gatsby bought [his] house so that Daisy would be just across the bay” (Fitzgerald 78). Gatsby wants to show his wealth to Daisy and prove to her that “he has been cured of poverty” (Pidgeon 180). Nevertheless, Daisy leaves Gatsby “standing… in the moonlight – watching over nothing” (Fitzgerald 145). Gatsby’s hard work is all for nothing. Readers can infer that Daisy picks Tom over Gatsby due the fact that he does “not belong to the right club [class]” (Pidgeon 178).

The conception of time is an idea of a period of length that is constantly described based upon diverse periods and aspects. Although time is always consistently flowing in the same direction, it is broken up into the ideas of the past, present, and future. Throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the character Jay Gatsby is shown as a character who constantly wastes his life in the past wishing for his idyllic vision. Fitzgerald presents the reader with the idea that over time, the course of reality destroys the romantic illusions that characters idealize. Although time is a constant force that creates, in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses the character Jay Gatsby to illustrate the idea that time is in reality, a destructive force.

Themes of hope, success, and wealth overpower The Great Gatsby, leaving the reader with a new way to look at the roaring twenties, showing that not everything was good in this era. F. Scott Fitzgerald creates the characters in this book to live and recreate past memories and relationships. This was evident with Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship, Tom and Daisy’s struggling marriage, and Gatsby expecting so much of Daisy and wanting her to be the person she once was. The theme of this novel is to acknowledge the past, but do not recreate and live in the past because then you will not be living in the present, taking advantage of new opportunities.

After the war, Gatsby’s only goal was to posses enough wealth to bring Daisy back. He acquired millions of dollars from businesses he did. “Gatsby bough this house so that Daisy would be just across the bay” (78). His love for Daisy was the only thing that made him the man he was. He was intelligent, rich and even famous, all because of her. He threw big parties were many celebrities went and were thousands of dollars were spent in liquor and food just to call Daisy’s attention. “I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties, some night…” (79), recalled Jordan, Gatsby’s friend, one night. All that Gatsby possessed was only and exclusively to show Daisy he could give her the life she wanted.

Time is an idea described in diverse periods and aspects, for example philosophical, psychological, physical and biological. This time flows consistently but is broken into the past, present and future. Since we only live in the present forever in preparation for our futures and dreams, when we try to live in the past it restricts our future. Throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, Gatsby wasted time and his life for a single dream, and it was his illusion of his idyllic future that made time a key dimension in his life. Fitzgerald sees life in satiric-tragic dimensions, as a contest between romantic illusion and coarse reality. The reality slowly and viciously disintegrates the illusion.

In chapter 8, Gatsby reveals to Nick what his life was truly like. While reading about Gatsby's past the read comes to realize how much he changed just for one person. Gatsby was actually born James Gatz, a man from a poor family who had fallen in love with Daisy. With the love that James had for Daisy he was willing to give her up to try and better himself for her. James had known that the only way he could be with her, was if he was wealthy. When analyzing this chapter, we truly see how much James had changed himself and left his family just so he could have money to be with the women he loved. Now it seems to be something romantic, however one should not to gain more wealth to be with someone. The reader will read more and find out that, however Jay Gatsby had actually bootlegged to earn more money. It seems to be that Gatsby had been worried about his social status just to have Daisy back.

He made money his goal, but only sees what he wants to see. He only sees the large house he lives in, the expensive clothes he wears, and the happy people at his parties. In chapter 9, a man Nick called to visit Gatsby’s funeral had “implied that [Gatsby] had got what he deserved.”(pg#), showing how little everyone truly cared for him apart from his money. Gatsby saw the money as a chance at happiness, as a chance at Daisy. The rose tinted glasses he wears prevented him from foreseeing the fake friendships, and his sad, empty funeral that the money would play a large part in causing

Gatsby meets Daisy when he was a young military officer. He is just a poor guy. Daisy, also a brilliant and pretty girl just as a fairy, has the most romantic days with Gatsby. Obviously, Daisy impressed herself into Gatsby’s heart during that time. It seems that they deeply love each other, but actually, she is in love less with Gatsby the man, than with the Gatsby’s successful image. To some extent, she falls in love with the wealth of Gatsby. Clearly remember that Gatsby makes the famous remark to Nick before they moved to the New York,” her voice is full of money”.

Gatsby wanted nothing else in the world besides Daisy. He felt as though she was the ultimate symbol of wealth and prosperity. To show this Fitzgerald portrays Daisy as the green light at the end of her dock. “He stretched out his arm seaward…I glanced seaward and distinguished nothing except a single green light” (Fitzgerald 16). Gatsby yearns the day when he’ll be able to acquire the green light that is Daisy. The green also symbolizes something else, it symbolizes money. Therefore, if the green light is money and Daisy they are both the same thing to Gatsby. Gatsby thinks that he’ll only be happy once he has Daisy, but this is not the case. Towards the middle of the book Gatsby actually wins over Daisy from Tom for a short period of time. At this point Gatsby may think he is happy but the experience is described in the following, “Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever… His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one” (Fitzgerald 70). Gatsby had placed all his hope and effort on this dream he had conjured of Daisy, and once Gatsby finally won over Daisy, or his happiness, with his wealth he was no longer happy. Money never gave Gatsby what he wanted, and it never

A theme from Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, is that money cannot buy a person happiness. This theme applies to Gatsby himself. Gatsby spends about half of his life trying to satisfy Daisy. He obtained an enormous amount of wealth and threw house parties for five straight years. He did this to show off his wealth and to see if Daisy would attend one of his house parties. Daisy is married to Tom and has a child named Pammy. She has feelings for Gatsby but, she eventually stays married to Tom. Throughout the book, Gatsby has an obsession with Daisy that he cannot get over. Nick says that, “He [Gatsby] knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a “nice” girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, in

James Gatsby is constantly trying to change time. In the book the word time is mentioned hundreds of time showing its definite importance. James Gatsby continued to dwell on the past with his relationship with Daisy which blatantly ruined and future chance she had with him. Gatsby felt as if something was missing from his life and F. Scott Fitzgerald makes the reader conclude that the “thing” is in fact Daisy. He wanted her so much that he wanted to erase the last five years that he didn't spend with her. Assumptions could be made that Gatsby's whole reason in living the life he did was to for lack of a better word impress Daisy. His whole purpose for living was to be with Daisy and that didn't work out his whole life was a waste. He died for the thing he was living for. Gatsby is a pathological control freak, and the one thing he couldn't control with his money, alcohol, a manipulation was time. A clock is a symbol for consistency and and control because it never changes, 12 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds, it never changes. So when the clock in the scene with Daisy, Nick, and Gatsby falls and breaks Gatsby begins to feel uncertain about what he is doing and believes that everything was a mistake. Everybody seems to have an obsession with time. People are always looking for a way to travel in time, or change what happened previously in time. Jay Gatsby, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby", is one of these people. The whole novel is centered on the idea of the past,

In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the element of time is prevalent and essential to the story being told by the narrator Nick Caraway. So important that the actual word “time” is used 87 times and there are hundreds of other words that are time related. Even Fitzgerald’s use of the seasons lends itself to the element of time and what mood the season represents. The characters are living in the present while focusing either on memories of the past or troubles of the future. In addition, there is an underlining presence of fate in the lives of the characters and what is actually within their control. No matter how hard one tries, they cannot turn back the hands of time. Time had different meanings for Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick Caraway.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a story that has many different themes. Fitzgerald shows the themes that he uses through his character’s desires and actions. This novel has themes in it that we deal with in our everyday life. It has themes that deal with our personal lives and themes that deal with what’s right and what’s wrong. There are also themes that have to do with materialistic items that we deal desire on a daily basis. Fitzgerald focuses on the themes of corrupted love, immorality, and the American Dream in order to tell a story that is entertaining to his readers.