Jay Gatsby, the title character of The Great Gatsby, is the epicenter of the novel. Jay Gatsby is part of all the main conflicts in this novel, and is the focus point of the major themes. Originally named James "Jimmy" Gatz, our young protagonist changed his name and dropped out of college to pursue business and wealth. After being an apprentice of Dan Cody for several years until his death, Gatsby acquired the knowledge, skills, and connections to use criminal activity as a means to attain immense wealth. In 1917 Gatsby falls in love with the beautiful and young Daisy Fay, during his military training. Daisy becomes the love of Gatsby's life, and henceforth sets all of the conflicts in the novel into motion. After achieving the rank of Major during the first World War and returning home to study at Trinity College, Oxford, Gatsby finds that the love of his life, Daisy, has married Tom Buchanon, our self centered, hypocritical, and aristocratically powerful antagonist. Gatsby's goal in life becomes to attain immense wealth and status in hopes of winning over Daisy from Tom, and our conflicts in the novel arise. Our perception of Gatsby changes quite a bit throughout the novel. At first Gatsby is introduced as a rather shady but interesting figure who is enormously wealthy and throws major parties every weekend at his mansion, next to Nick's home. Once we meet this Gatsby through our narrator and come to know of the entire situation that the novel encompasses, we see that Gatsby truly is just a man striving to make a misguided dream reality, and although he holds great personality traits and is a good fellow at heart raised in a poor but morally and ethically healthy family, he ultimately possesses a flaw that leads to his tragic death, which is his ignorance or stubbornness in differentiating dreams from reality. An interesting and symbolic addition to Gatsby's stubborn love for Daisy is the green light which Gatsby always looks to across the bay, which in fact is the green light on the pier to Daisy's and Tom's home. This light ( which is ironically only visible at night, just like a dream is only tangible during sleep) is symbolic of Gatsby's dream and how he is always striving to attain it yet it is not truly worth as much as he manifests it to be. Daisy is not as perfect as Gatsby has come to glorify her to be. This green light and Gatsby's interest in it by extension is symbolic of American society striving to attain the American Dream which truly ends up being a hollow promise of perfection that we have fabricated, and that is overvalued and mutilated from it's originality.
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| The American Dream Revealed |
