Compare and Contrast: Jay Gatsby and Dick Diver
Griffin Gilmore
Mrs. Clark
Humanities
28 November 2012 In the novels Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night by Scott Fitzgerald the two main characters, Jay and Dick both face problems in achieving their dreams and face much adversity trying to achieve it. In both novels pursuing their dreams leads to their demise due to their failure to realize that success is from within, not from the superficial qualities that the society around them looks up to.

The first difference between Gatsby and Dick is how they value money. Jay Gatsby believes that with money he can buy his happiness, he plans on using his money to fall in love with him and have her leave her current husband (Tom) to be with himself. Dick on the other hand doesn't like all the wealth of Nicole and trues to distance himself way from it. When Nicole and himself start out they are living off of his few thousand a year. Nicole's parents then buy them their own clinic. Much like Gatsby his wealth by no means that he is happy. “had wedded a desire for money to an essentially unacquisitive nature … he had never felt more sure of himself … than at the time of his marriage to Nicole. Yet he has been swallowed up like a gigolo, and somehow permitted his arsenal to be locked up in the Warren safety deposit vaults.” This just goes to show how even with their almost endless income, they were not satisfied, which properly illustrates the time period which took place then, materialism.

A trait that Gatsby and Dick both shared was their talent to entertain and control a crowd. Each character had their own rational for entertaining though. Dick was all about being able to control people and manipulate them. This is displayed throughout the book with the balance he wants between curing Nicole and still having her need him. Dick's control over people is displayed