Sometimes it is difficult to get up in the morning, not always because being in bed is so comfortable, but maybe because we know our dreams and reality are so different. Dreams are also described as self-deluding fantasies in which some people cannot differentiate between imagination and real-life. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby falls in love with a woman who was not strong enough to wait for his return after World War I. She ended up marrying a man, named Tom Buchanan who was just as careless as she was. This woman was Daisy Buchanan. Daisy portrayed a character who was torn between her husband and her former lover. To Gatsby, marrying Daisy would give him the ability to fulfill the American Dream, moving up in social class. Harold Bloom notes in his critical article on The Great Gatsby, “Whatever the American Dream has become, its truest representation remains Jay Gatsby.” (5) Overall, in F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is essentially an innocent victim who is destroyed by his inability to accept reality. The 1920’s, a time of war ending and a change of an era. As the 1920’s approached, the Victorian era faded and the Jazz era evolved. The Jazz era was named by F.Scott Fitzgerald. He and his wife, Zelda Sayre, were the couple everyone long to be. Woman began to dress more revealing, smoked in public, and cut their hair shorter. Even amendments of the U.S constitution were being broken. One theory of all this change was that the generation that had fought in the war and made it back became delusional, throwing themselves headlong into an abrupt change. In his thesis project, Alan Wilms explains “the first hand observations of narrator Nick Carraway in the post ‘roar’ of the 1920’s”, and how “the novel focuses on Gatsby’s coming to terms with his past, his struggle to define his new garnish identity, his blindness in his relationship with Daisy and an overall corruption of his ideals.” To reiterate, at the beginning of the novel The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby had just returned from the war, therefore, the way he interpreted reality after the war may have been different from the way he interpreted it before the war. To build on this quote even more, Gatsby may have not been able to accept that he will never be with Daisy again because of how the terrors of the war had interrupted his normal path of thoughts. To conclude, the unrealistic, innocent victim Jay Gatsby had become may have been due to his mentality after finishing his time in World War I. Looking out across Courtesy Bay, Gatsby let’s one of his biggest fantasies into the air.
…show more content…
Gatsby had told Daisy about the green light, on her dock, that he can see across the Bay at night. After Gatsby told this to Daisy, who had no clue there ever was a light on her dock, Nick was standing nearby wondering if “Possibly it had occurred to [Gatsby] that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever” (Fitzgerald 93). The green light was not only a light that showed Gatsby the location of Daisy’s house under the moonlit Bay, but it also symbolized Gatsby’s hopes and dreams of being with Daisy in the future. “Now it was again a green light on a dock. [Gatsby’s] count of enchanted objects had diminished by one” (Fitzgerald 93). As Gatsby slowly comes to a realization of his surroundings and the truths that behold him, the objects he uses to represent his future begin to diminish. Therefore, Jay Gatsby is essentially a romantic idealist who is destroyed by his inability to accept reality due to his abundance of romantic fantasies. The moment his eyes met Daisy’s, Gatsby knew he had fallen in love. Of course Gatsby fell in love with her, “She was the first ‘nice’ girl he had ever known” (Fitzgerald 143). Once Gatsby had returned from the war, he discovered the most depressing thing that could’ve ever happened to him; Daisy had married another man. In his journey to “recapture Daisy, and for a time it looked as though he would succeed, he must fail, because of his inability to separate the ideal from the real” (Novels for
Gatsby had told Daisy about the green light, on her dock, that he can see across the Bay at night. After Gatsby told this to Daisy, who had no clue there ever was a light on her dock, Nick was standing nearby wondering if “Possibly it had occurred to [Gatsby] that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever” (Fitzgerald 93). The green light was not only a light that showed Gatsby the location of Daisy’s house under the moonlit Bay, but it also symbolized Gatsby’s hopes and dreams of being with Daisy in the future. “Now it was again a green light on a dock. [Gatsby’s] count of enchanted objects had diminished by one” (Fitzgerald 93). As Gatsby slowly comes to a realization of his surroundings and the truths that behold him, the objects he uses to represent his future begin to diminish. Therefore, Jay Gatsby is essentially a romantic idealist who is destroyed by his inability to accept reality due to his abundance of romantic fantasies. The moment his eyes met Daisy’s, Gatsby knew he had fallen in love. Of course Gatsby fell in love with her, “She was the first ‘nice’ girl he had ever known” (Fitzgerald 143). Once Gatsby had returned from the war, he discovered the most depressing thing that could’ve ever happened to him; Daisy had married another man. In his journey to “recapture Daisy, and for a time it looked as though he would succeed, he must fail, because of his inability to separate the ideal from the real” (Novels for