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Is Gatsby Admirable or Pathetic?

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Is Gatsby Admirable or Pathetic?
I believe Gatsby was pathetic in the pursuit of his dream for several reasons including the motivation behind his dream, time spent, and his false sense of the truth. Basically, he has spent five years in constant pursuit of reuniting with Daisy and has devoted his entire life to falling back in love with her. Gatsby's great mistake was loving Daisy in the first place. He chose a vacuous lady upon which to focus everything in his life towards. Just as the American Dream itself has turned into the absurd pursuit of material wealth, Gatsby, too, strived only for wealth once he had fallen in love with Daisy. She was a woman whose insignificant, limited imagination could imagine of nothing greater than a man of great wealth. His wealth, although, could not help escape him from death. It was important that Gatsby was not murdered for his criminal connections, but rather for his unshakable devotion to Daisy. Gatsby consequently paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. Up to the moment of his death, Gatsby could not accept that his dream was over—he continued to insist that Daisy may still come to him, though it was clear to everyone that she was set on loving Tom. Gatsby's death as a result seemed almost expected, given that a dreamer cannot exist without their dreams; through Daisy's betrayal, Gatsby effectively loses his reason to live. For him, losing Daisy was like losing his entire world. Gatsby basically altered the course of his life by attaching symbolic significance to something that is, in and of itself, meaningless. For Gatsby, it was Daisy and her green light. He was destroyed by his affection for a woman who loved Tom Buchanan. Gatsby has longed to re-create his past with Daisy and was now forced to talk to Nick about it in a desperate attempt to keep it alive. Even after the confrontation with Tom, Gatsby was unable to accept that his dream was dead.

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