“Recapturing the Past”
Time is complex; once it has passed, it is lost forever. It is human nature to regret that which is lost, therefore, one feels the need to recreate the past and is a common theme in everyday life. These attempts at trying to repeat the past, however, are usually in vain. The novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a great example of this, as the plot focuses on the concept of recapturing the past. The plot of this story revolves around the growth and press of this concept and is told relative to the main character in the story, Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s usage of this character effectively conveys this idea throughout the novel. The story about how and why Gatsby is unsuccessful in recapturing his past, how his actions hurt himself and others around him and how he ultimately fails while achieving nothing.
Throughout the story, we learn that Jay Gatsby is a man who depends and dwells upon his past to reach his dream. Through the narrator, Nick Carraway, we can see that Gatsby’s bad habit of holding on the past does not help him get anywhere with his goal. He believes that the past could be repeated, “'Can't repeat the past?' he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!'” (Fitzgerald, 85). This shows Gatsby’s inability to move on from the past. This obsession with the past inspires Gatsby to do everything he does in order to win back Daisy. He gets into the business of bootleg alcohol selling. To get Daisy’s attention, he throws lavish parties every week and he buys a mansion across the bay in front of Daisy’s mansion. He feels that if Daisy sees his display of wealth, she will come running back to him and will have no reason to reject him again. He does everything in his power to get Daisy to come back to him, to rewind five years ago when everything was almost perfect in his perspective. When they finally see each other at the tea