The Great Gatsby
Gatsby lives an illusion that his wealth will lead to satisfaction and friendship. Gatsby has people all around him, going to his parties, yet no one truly knows him. Born a poor man and son of a farmer, James Gatz desires living the "American dream". Because of this dream, he creates a false Identity, Jay Gatsby, "So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end"(104). He wastes his life trying to impress other people with material success. Gatsby is the type of person to do anything to get happiness even if it is the false kind. Jay Gatsby is man who will have it all and believes Daisy, an image of money and happiness, is a perfect fit.
4. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. (See QUOTATIONS, p. 25)Situated at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsby’s West Egg lawn, the green light represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and in Chapter I he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. His purpose is in attaining the love of Daisy, a girl he dated before the war, who comes from an old wealthy American family. In a way, Gatsby’s dream is not actually Daisy, but his past memory of her. The color green symbolizes the American dream, which is corrupted by the failing morality of the roaring 1920s.
a. Nick perceives Tom and Daisy as they really are, heartless and careless. “They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald 188). Tom and Daisy’s actions are an indication of the detrimental and emotionally numbing
4. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. (See QUOTATIONS, p. 25)Situated at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsby’s West Egg lawn, the green light represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and in Chapter I he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. His purpose is in attaining the love of Daisy, a girl he dated before the war, who comes from an old wealthy American family. In a way, Gatsby’s dream is not actually Daisy, but his past memory of her. The color green symbolizes the American dream, which is corrupted by the failing morality of the roaring 1920s.
a. Nick perceives Tom and Daisy as they really are, heartless and careless. “They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald 188). Tom and Daisy’s actions are an indication of the detrimental and emotionally numbing