The Great Gatsby, By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Character is not developed being sedentary. The extraordinary novel, The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a wealthy young man. Known for his mysterious past and inconceivable amount of money, Gatsby is able to host several extravagant parties in his gothic mansion. Many characters in the novel represent each aspect of the Roaring Twenties. Introducing many characters who all seem to cause conflict with each other, the main character Fitzgerald sets the entire book over is Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is first shown as a mysterious man whose reputation is built by rumors and great parties; this makes the guest of his parties assume that Gatsby is actually great, however, his traits shows that he is not as great
He is able to intrigue someone because “he smiled understandingly--much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life” (Fitzgerald 48). It is slowly revealed that everything Gatsby currently does is to achieve his unrealistic dreams to bring back his past. Gatsby is great, but he also stands for things may not be so admirable. In one sense, Gatsby's extraordinary story makes him an embodiment of the American dream. He is the son of two unsuccessful farmers. By the time he is a young man he had even less, having voluntarily estranged himself from his family, unable to come to terms with the conditions he had been dealt in life. Never accepting his circumstances, “Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island sprang from his Platonic conception of himself” (98). While on his own, he has the opportunity to reinvent himself and does so from evolving from James Gatz into Jay Gatsby. In the eyes of others, Gatsby becomes the exact embodiment of what it means to be successful. As such, life becomes much different. He is no longer tied to his early years, but can imagine whatever past he desired for
After meeting Daisy, everything he does is for the singular purpose of winning her. From the moment he sees her, he is “consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock” (92). Money is, essentially, the issue that prevented the two from being together. Gatsby then makes sure he will never again be without money, using his current wealth to impress Daisy. Gatsby's determination and persistence to obtain his goal is in some ways exemplary. However, his running “like an overwound clock” foreshadows catastrophic events that leads to his tragic end. In Tanfer Emin Tunc’s, The Tragedy of the American Dream on Long Island’s Gold Coast, he points that “Fitzgerald's novel traces the arc of a life as it begins in wonder, reaches for the stars, confronts society's spiritual emptiness and gratuitous materialism, and ends in tragic death” (Tunc 3). Thus, Gatsby is defeated because he has no limits. There are also other aspects of Jay Gatsby that call his character into question. Gatsby's money did not come from inheritance, but instead, “He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That's one of his little stunts. [He] was