Examples Of Lying In The Great Gatsby

To live a lie is to live a way that is dishonest because one is pretending to be something that they aren't, to themselves or to other people. This lifestyle is and has been practiced by Americans of every social status. Today, society holds high expectations of what women and men should do just to gain love, acceptance, and significance. People choose to be true to their invented self rather than who they truly are, with the belief that this will help them accomplish dreams of perfection. Living in such a way essentially leads to illusion due to “ Commitment to [their] personally conceived vision of life”(McAdams 112). F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby holds several characters responsible for living their lives in a lie. Fitzgerald writes
Not only does the word great create an illusion in the title but Gatsby’s self- invented name completes the illusion. Jay portrayed himself as a man who essentially was “ the embodiment of the American Dream”(McAdams 114). As he begins to tell his neighbor Nick Carraway about all of his successes such as his war medals and outrageous amount of money he inherited from the death of his family, it becomes evident that Gatsby’s “ adult life is a lie”(McAdams 114). The great man that people perceive him as isn't the reality of who he is. Coming from a destitute farm in North Dakota, Gatsby was known by his real name, James Gatz. Despite his unfortunate childhood lifestyle, Gatsby had a life plan so detailed that his father who he left behind, believed “Jimmy was bound to get ahead” (Fitzgerald 173). Yes, Gatsby got ahead no doubt, but in an illegal and unadmirable way. While perfecting his new identity, the so called “ Great” Gatsby claimed that he “lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of Europe”(Fitzgerald 65), while to those who see behind his wealth, Jay Gatsby was nothing but a “boorish fraud [...] [who used] others for his selfish purposes”( McAdams