Examples Of Deception In The Great Gatsby

Imagine being new in town; everything around is foreign, new and fascinating. The people are all unfamiliar, but as they slowly start to become acquaintances, the realization that many of them live unhappy lives filled with deception and lies becomes evident. It is quickly proven that this is not a life that keeps people satisfied for very long, and more times than not, leads to horrible outcomes. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, lying and deception leads to the ultimate downfall of many characters.
The first character encountered in The Great Gatsby that deals with lying is Daisy Buchanan. Daisy is first seen in chapter one when Nick goes over to her house to catch up with her and her husband, Tom. Daisy is a woman of many emotions,
When first introduced, Jordan is just a friend of Daisy’s who is a golfer, and little else is known about her. As Nick and Jordan start to form a relationship, it is apparent that Jordan has a problem with lying. Nick realized that she was never up front with him, and ‘She was incurably dishonest. She wasn’t able to be at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I suppose she had started dealing in subterfuges when she was very young..’(Fitzgerald 58). This quote means to say that Jordan lies about anything and everything, simply to put herself at the top, with the repercussions meaning nothing to her. ‘At Jordan’s first big golf tournament there was a row that nearly reached the newspapers- a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semi-final round...A caddy retracted his statement and the only other witness admitted he might’ve been mistaken’ (Fitzgerald 57). Jordan lying about moving her ball in a tournament is the prime example of her lying leading to her downfall. If the two men who caught her in her lie not taken their statements back, Jordan would have been ruined. Further in the novel, it is learned that ‘Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men’ and that it was because ‘she felt safer on a plane where divergence from a code would be thought impossible’ (Fitzgerald 57-58). Nick learns this about Jordan as he spends
While it is true that other characters lied, no one deceived others to extent that Jay Gatsby did. Jay Gatsby was a man with little morals, who never felt remorse for leading all of his friends around him to believe he was someone he was not. Gatsby knew who he wanted to be from a very young age, and never cared about what morals he would have to lose to get there. ‘The very vehicle for one who formed his ideals as a teenager and never questioned them again’ (Seiters 82). Jay was deceitful about his entire being, ‘The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island sprang from his platonic conception of himself’ (Fitzgerald 98). As this quote states, Jay is a man who is entirely made up of lies in every aspect of his life. Gatsby lives a quiet and secluded life, but throws the largest parties in town, creating the illusion of a successful, happy and content man. Before he even appears in the novel, it is felt as though he known through the rumors that float around the town and through the air at his parties. The rumors that are flung around at his party vary from rumors of him killing a man to him being a graduate of Oxford. None of the rumors are confirmed or denied for any of the gossipers, because the elusive Gatsby never makes his presence known. That is, until one night, Gatsby comes and befriends Nick. It is assumed this was just because he