...A popular saying in today’s society is “Money can’t buy happiness.” Yes, that statement is extremely true but maybe people should be saying “Money can’t buy love.” In the novel, The Great Gatsby, love is bought in many ways. One clear example is, the relationship between Tom and Daisy. Tom and Daisy’s marriage was organized by Daisy’s parents strictly because Tom had money. “It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.” (6). Of course, Daisy may have felt feelings for Tom at the beginning but it was not pure love and I believe Daisy knew that. Every day Daisy and Tom’s relationship grew worse. Not only did Tom continuously cheat on Daisy but Tom would physically abuse Daisy. Why would Daisy stay with Tom even though he hurts her? Money. Another example of love being bought is between Daisy and Gatsby. When Gatsby and Daisy first dated, Gatsby did not have any money. When Gatsby enlisted in the army, Daisy soon left him for Tom. Daisy left Gatsby for Tom not because she liked him more but because Tom had money. Gatsby realizes this and as soon as he comes back from the war, he is a new person, with money. Gatsby believes he can use his money as a weapon to win back Daisy. Gatsby buys a enormous house right across from Tom’s to...
Words: 404 - Pages: 2
...The Great Gatsby was written in 1925 by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Although it was his most well known work, The Great Gatsby was only a dip into his collective works where he developed a whimsical way of completing his writing that is seen heavily in The Great Gatsby. It tells the love story between young, married, rich socialite, Daisy Buchanan, and the mysteriously rich and extravagant Jay Gatsby. Their love story is not a very cliche or common one, therefore, some may say that Gatsby didn't actually love Daisy, but was more obsessed with her, or only in love with the idea of her. Although Daisy’s and Gatsby’s love my be slightly unorthodox, it is, in the end, still love. Proof that Gatsby’s love for Daisy isn't genuine, if interpreted just so, does exist. The fact that Gatsby is kinda of obsessed with becoming the most perfect version of...
Words: 938 - Pages: 4
...Gatsby Essay: Tom and Gatsby Elegant parties, endless supply of alcohol and food, numerous people, huge mansion, and loud music are all examples of common occurrences at the Gatsby mansion. All of this was to lure in one beautiful girl. That girl was Daisy. However, Daisy was occupied by her own rich husband, Tom. This only left Gatsby wishing he could have Daisy. Soon, Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom all cross paths. Although different in many ways, it turns out that Tom and Gatsby share many of the same traits. Over the course of events in The Great Gatsby, Tom and Gatsby show many traits that are similar and many traits that are different. In the end, Gatsby learns his lesson about the emptiness of pursuing happiness through wealth. Throughout The Great Gatsby, there are lies, secrets and indiscretion. Tom and Gatsby both share these traits. Both men lie, hold onto secrets and have indiscretion about their lives and what they do for work. “Tom’s got some woman in New York” (15). Tom shows his indiscretion through his secrets and lies about his affair. The other characters are aware of Tom’s affair, but he still manages to lie to them and go behind Daisy’s back to see his mistress. Tom also says “We’re getting off, I want you to meet my girl” (24). Tom’s “girl”, as referred to in this quote, is actually his mistress. This example again shows Tom’s indiscretion, secrets, and lies. Gatsby is also secretive. Gatsby’s secrets are mostly about his work. “I found out what your ‘drug-stores’...
Words: 1317 - Pages: 6
...Exploring The Many Themes Of The Great Gatsby “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald There are many messages authors try to send the readers when they write books, but at the end of the day, people receive different messages from the masterpiece. Author Francis Scott Fitzgerald wrote a book in 1925 which was The Great Gatsby. “Even if Scott Fitzgerald is, as someone suggested years ago, essentially a one-book author, only a prig would dispute either the stylistic beauty or the cultural importance of The Great Gatsby.”(Barbarese) Although he is arguably a one-book author, this story about a Jay Gatsby has a story to tell. This piece is about a wealthy young man named Jay Gatsby, who has everything anyone would dream of, besides the love of his life. Making money through bootlegging and making illegal sales of alcohol, but soon finds it hard to believe that money can not really buy happiness. The book contains many conflicts between Jay Gatsby and himself, Jay Gatsby against society, and even Jay Gatsby and the love of his life’s husband. The wealthy This novel is filled with all the themes of love, revenge, money can’t buy happiness, the “American Dream”, and many more. There are so many themes to pick from, the audience has their individual ideas on which them Scott Fitzgerald is trying to send. The truth is he isn’t sending you any themes, how you interpret the novel is all on your own making of the story. Scott Fitzgerald has many themes all mixed up within...
Words: 2732 - Pages: 11
...The Great Gatsby, a story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is one based on the American Dream or should I say the “demise” of the American Dream. This so called dream in the 20’s was portrayed by wickedness and greed. Week three of our lecture we were asked to discuss what the American Dream meant to us and my response was one based off freedom, discovery, and hard work. Immigrants, salves, lower class citizens, etc. were accustomed to earning their money through manual labor, not through family inheritance as seen by most of the characters from The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald uses this story and the characteristics and actions of these characters to say that the “American Dream” was based on a lie in the 1920’s. The carefree satisfaction of the Jazz Age, also seen as the Materialistic Era, led to the extortion of the American Dream. The Declaration of Independence states that “all man are created equal and that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” F. Scott Fitzgerald created this story to reveal that people in the 20’s were in a pursuit of selfish delight, and the equality of people was based on their financial assets. The line that states all mean are created equal is broken in the scene where Tom is bashing Gatsby for how he became wealthy. He calls Gatsby a crook, and in this in turn leads to retaliation from Gatsby and a fight almost breaking out. Two mean that hold such high class and dignity, yelling and...
Words: 1781 - Pages: 8
...Annotated Bibliography Rev. of Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby'., by Brian Sutton. Gale Cengage Learning. The Explicator, 1997. Web. 23 Mar. 2010. <http://find.galegroup.com>. Brian Sutton asserts that F. Scott Fitzgerald's book, The Great Gatsby, has four interlinked images that traces Gatsby’s rise and fall as he attempts to recapture Daisy Buchanan's love. The first image is in the beginning of the book when Gatsby is seen by the narrator holding his arms wide open to a green light in the distance. Which we later learn is that the green light is on Daisy's porch. It symbolizes how Gatsby wants Daisy's love back again and that his arms are wide open for her. The second image occurs in the middle of the book when Gatsby experiences a moment of triumph, Gatsby and Daisy finally meet. During this meeting, Daisy is smoking a cigarette...which is another symbol of light! The third image is when Tom and Gatsby finally confront each other and while all this i is going on, Daisy throws her cigarette and the burning match to the carpet...which symbolizes that their(Gatsby and Daisy) love is over. The fourth image is at the end of the book when Gatsby is standing in the distance where he once looked at the light in Daisy's house, just hoping and praying that maybe she will return her love for him. Throughout this article, Sutton uses examples from the text to heighten the meaning of these...
Words: 655 - Pages: 3
...The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a novel that takes a different spin on the stereotypical American dream. To say “through the novel, Fitzgerald puts across the idea that the American dream has been corrupted by the desire for materialism” would be accurate. Because “we see that Gatsby had a pure dream, but became corrupt in his quest towards that dream,” this is how the American dream was viewed as corrupt. Throughout the novel Gatsby displays many examples of how his quest towards the dream that was once pure, slowly becomes more and more corrupt. The first showing of corruptness in Gatsby’s dream, which is to marry Daisy, is his unethical means of obtaining a fortune. The stereotypical American dream is working hard for honest money. However, this is not the case for Gatsby. Gatsby attains his fortune through the illegal means of bootlegging. In the novel, the narrator Nick describes Gatsby, “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a Son of God—a phrase that, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. 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” (The Great Gatsby Chapter 6 pg). This quotation shows how Nick saw Gatsby as trying to transform himself into the ideal person. He even goes as far as to...
Words: 1143 - Pages: 5
...Not all love is running into your true love's arms on a beach while the sun is setting. There are many different kinds of love; the love of friendship, admiration, unrequited love, or young love. Love is real, raw and when it’s not cared for the right way, it can turn toxic. The Great Gatsby not only includes all of those kinds of love, but many more. In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald not only writes those loves, but shows how easily they can crumble down. Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby have one of the most confusing relationships in The Great Gatsby. They meet at one of Jay Gatsby's extravagant parties and Nick seems to admire him. ‘"They're a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. ‘You're worth the whole damn bunch put together”(45). Nick held Gatsby on a higher pedestal that all the attendants at Gatsby's rager, which starts a his admiration for Gatsby. When Gatsby realizes that Nick has relations with Daisy, Nick's cousin, he seems to really want a friendship from Nick, yet Nick is still wary of Gatsby, not even friends with him until Gatsby proves that he is the man he says he is. Their friendship was rocky for the most part, Nick didn't actually trust Gatsby the whole book. Even less so when it is revealed that Gatsby was not who he said he was. When Gatsby dies, Nick states that he never really thought of him as a friend in the first place, even though he was one of the few who attended his funeral. Their friendship was tainted by lies and trickery, yet it wasn't all much...
Words: 1195 - Pages: 5
...The Narrative Art of The Great Gatsby Introduction The Great Gatsby was written in 1925. The author, Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) is one of the most outstanding writers in America. As a member of the “lost generation”, Fitzgerald made the short life of Gatsby epitome of the rise, boom and decline of the “American Dream” in “Jazz Age”. This novel shows us unusually rich literary and aesthetic connotation is has by its unique narrative perspective, the ups and downs of plot, superb accurate language, various rhetorical devices and vivid character images. To some extent, the reason why The Great Gatsby can become a famous classic work is that the author uses extraordinary narrative techniques in it. All the techniques are employed skillfully by Fitzgerald. The study of narrative art in this work has been highlighted in the research area in these years. Zhang Jinfeng(2001) analyzes the role of Nick in the novel from the its structure, themes and other aspects. Cheng Xilin(2009) uses the spatial narrative theory to discussed the space narrative art in The Great Gatsby from three aspects: the geography space, social space and the text space. Xiao Dongbo(2009) starts with the analysis on author and characters and expound the connotation of "American dream" and profoundly reveals the historical process of the formation, development and burst of the "American dream". Shang Guanghui(2011) analyzes The Great Gatsby from the narrators of the role and argues that the communication...
Words: 5017 - Pages: 21
...Disillusionment and failure in The Great Gatsby In the book The Great Gatsby, author F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the theme of disillusionment, love, lust and failure in order to portray the “American dream”. The American dream is the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. Many believe that the American dream is “earned”, but what they don't know is that there is a lot of “behind the scenes” money making deals that occur. And these deals put you at the top without even asking. For example Gatsby wasn't the perfect man that he was imagined to be. Jay Gatsby's real name was, James Gatz and the change seemed right when he “reinvented” himself. Gatsby didn't like being the son of farmers and was embarrassed about where he was from. “His imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all.” He changed it at the age of 17 because of his transformation when he met Dan Cody. This one of the main reasons he hid his background from people. The other was that in reality Gatsby was indeed an unrepentant criminal, who bootlegged his way through the Prohibition to create his wealth and pursue his dream. The prohibition was a nationwide constitutional ban on the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933. To make his way to the top and to pursue the “American dream” Gatsby basically illegally sold alcoholic beverages...
Words: 1566 - Pages: 7
...they desire. For example, President Nixon in the Watergate Scandal of 1972 lied about his association with the burglars who were trying to get government information to help him win reelection. Here, he lies about his involvement in the case in order to save his chances to remain president. He tried to maintain his high status through lying; however, this dishonesty backfired and forced him to resign and lose his title as president. This is similar to characters in The Great Gatsby who lie to gain or keep a high social status. Social dishonesty in The Great Gatsby, by F....
Words: 936 - Pages: 4
...The Great Gatsby Oct 26, 2012 “Dishonesty” Dishonesty in a relationship exists when one person withholds or manipulates information about themselves or others and presents the facts as a truth. Being dishonest or bending the truth may seem favorable initially, but when the truth is finally revealed, you will have to spill back on more lies which will eventually push the relationship further apart. The Great Gatsby is a novel that shows the reader slyness and fraud around every corner. All of the main characters are dishonest people who portray their lives as nothing more than living in a self obsessed world while making adolescent decisions about love; all these people care about is living in the now. They lie, cheat, and deceive. This was a time when the economy was booming, spreading prosperous jobs in big town cities. This era saw the large-scale diffusion and use of automobiles, telephones, motion pictures, electricity, and unprecedented industrial growth. People dreamed big, and expected better. Everyone was breaking traditions and experimenting with advanced and diverse goods. Fitzgerald depicts Nick Carraway as a moral guide throughout a novel infused with lies and deception. Fitzgerald utilizes many themes throughout the book; truth versus lies, illusion versus reality, or compassion versus apathy. Within the novel, virtually all of the main characters are dishonest to others or to themselves, which exposes each character’s true self to the reader. Deception...
Words: 1577 - Pages: 7
...Buying Happiness and Love in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby The American Dream is starting with nothing and through hard work and determination one can achieve millions of dollars and all the happiness one can handle. This may not be true, if that person tries to buy the past to regain the happiness he will never succeed and mostly likely end up very unhappy. A good example of this in fiction is F. Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald criticizes the American dream in his novel, The Great Gatsby, by showing Jay Gatsby's tragic flaw, his belief that money can buy happiness and his love for Daisy. The first example of Gatsby's belief that money can buy his happiness is when Nick Carraway describes the subdivision in which he lives, West Egg. The subdivision across the water is East Egg. The houses are very luxurious to say the least. On the other hand, there is a distinction between the two. The West Egg house are more recently built and are elaborately decorated, where as the houses in East Egg are still as big but very conservative in architecture. The two neighborhoods represent the division in the upper class at this time in America. During the 1920's, the conservative "old rich" despised the "new rich". A good example of an "old rich" family would be the Rockefellers, where as a "new rich" family would be the Kennedys. The East Egg represented the conservative money of the "old rich". For generations their money passed down giving them the belief that the "new rich"...
Words: 1579 - Pages: 7
...against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (Fitzgerald 180). The ending phrase in The Great Gatsby sums up human life; people fight against the incessant stream of obstacles flowing towards them in the path called reality as they are forever linked to their past and their mistakes. The Great Gatsby, as told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, tells the story of a young man fruitlessly striving to overcome the societal barriers to be with his true love: a married Daisy Buchanan. As two separate entities written in different time periods, the novel The Great Gatsby-written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925-and the movie The Great Gatsby-directed by Baz Luhrmann in 2013-converge and diverge on several topics...
Words: 1570 - Pages: 7
...think your day might go? Not only does it apply to many people but it also applies the characters of F. Scott Fitzgerald's “The Great Gatsby”. The following will explain how weather conditions in “The Great Gatsby” foreshadow eventual outcomes for the main characters. Foreshadowment can be hard to see when you're not expecting it, and when sunny weather sets in a uplifting feeling it can be especially hard to notice it. A example of this is as Gatsby and Nick go to lunch they drive over the Queensboro bridge. As the drive into the city Nick says “Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge.”. The bridge to Nick is a gateway to adventure which...
Words: 1070 - Pages: 5
