Truth In The Great Gatsby

Winning the heart of a long-lost lover, a dream only achieved by a lucky few. To forget the past and rekindle affection long forgotten, the romantic hopes of a passionate imaginary, too far removed from reality to face the truth. Yet Jay Gatsby (of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby) longed for more. Gatsby, born James Gatz, not only wish to reconnect with a lover of his past, Daisy, not only wished to have her fall in love with him again, but wished to erase five years of lapsed time between them, convincing her that the time they were apart never took place and that her new husband and child were mere relicts of a day dream run on too long. To achieve such an exorbitantly grand goal, James Gatz began to direct his life to mold
Tom fully intends to exploit this unalterable fact of Gatsby to display to Daisy that Gatsby is not of the same cloth as Daisy as his new wealth means he cannot fundamentally function properly as those born into wealth, such as Tom and Daisy both are. Tom exclaims, “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife… sneering at family life and family institutions” (cite). Tom is supposing that Gatsby’s lack of historical wealth is an affront to some institution of values, and the emphasis of “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere” suggests that the larger issue for Tom is not the infidelity itself, rather, it is that a relation could be had with a man of such lowly origins. This inevitably strikes at Gatsby’s appearance in the eyes of Daisy as she is among the old rich and cherishes these same values. Tom continues this path of discounting Gatsby’s wealth with the comment, “I picked him [Gatsby] for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong” (cite). Whether Gatsby was a criminal or not, Tom expressed his belief not to seek justice for a wrong doing, but to further the notion of Gatsby’s character as being that of a poor criminal who does not belong among the wealthy. Tom’s claims strive to do nothing more than attack a single aspect of what separates Gatsby
As stated by Aristotle, the preserved character of a person greatly effects an audience’s ability to associate with such person, and Tom used this conclusion against Gatsby by disseminating the character James Gatz had created in becoming Gatsby. Daisy, through the course of the novel, could be shown as valuing wealthy society, while disproving of grand extravagance or instability. To this end, Tom portrayed Gatsby as a lowly criminal, with no reserve or class and was delusional to the truth of the circumstances. Gatsby attempts to fend off the scathing attacks of Tom, his most effective attempt aimed directly at Daisy summarized with, “just tell [Tom] the truth – that you never loved him…”, but even this was an extravagant display, a mere facade of the new Gatsby to capture his fleeting dream with Daisy. (CITE). Unable to escape his own character, the great Gatsby was diminished to nothing more than James Gatz, alone in