“‘They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’” (Fitzgerald 162). The ‘I’ in this quote is Nick Carraway, and the ‘You’ is Jay Gatsby. The ‘whole damn bunch’ that Nick was comparing Gatsby to was the crowd of too wealthy people that inhabited New York, including the woman Gatsby loved and ultimately gave his life for. Gatsby was a man who was a projection of the hopes and dreams of his younger self.
Jay Gatsby wasn’t always Jay Gatsby. He came from the humble beginnings of North Dakota as James Gatz. He had next to nothing; no money, no education, and no connections. But he was determined to make something of himself. His father said, “Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he's got about improving his mind? He was always great for that. He told me I et like a hog once, and I beat him for it” (Fitzgerald 182). This showed that young Jimmy Gatz believed in the American Dream. However, all his hard work to change himself was ultimately for nothing because the American Dream is only a dream, and would lead to a path of dishonest gains and his own demise.
Shrouded by rumors and secrets, Jay Gatsby is a man made from James Gatz’s imagination and dreams. He keeps his life secret to his many party goers and keeps very few friends. He is trying to escape his past the best he can, but he cannot because his entire persona is a projection of his younger self’s ambitions. Nick proves this by saying, “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 which, 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