Nightmare In The Great Gatsby Essay

The Great Gatsby Essay Imagine if the American dream turned into a nightmare. F. Scott Fitzgerald does this through the point of view of Nick Carraway in his novel, The Great Gatsby. Carraway moves next door to a mansion and is unsure who owns it. Soon after, Carraway is invited to an elaborate party thrown by a man named Gatsby, a man who is only known through rumors, and who also happens to be Carraway’s neighbor. When Carraway and Gatsby become close throughout the story, many secrets are revealed, the biggest, being that Gatsby is in love with Daisy Buchanan, Carraway’s cousin who just so happens to live just across the way in east egg, a community of wealthy sophisticated old money aristocrats. We also find out that Daisy and
Gatsby have a past together and Daisy loves Gatsby as well, even though Daisy is married to a brute of a man, Tom Buchanan. Right when things were about to look good for Gatsby, everything unravels and his “American dream” is ripped right out from under him and turns into a nightmare with the accidental death of Tom’s mistress Myrtle Wilson. After all of Gatsby’s hard work, Fitzgerald stopped Gatsby from getting his dream by putting the people surrounding Gatsby in a situation that demonstrates their shallow, empty, materialistic values. Which is how Fitzgerald felt about the society of the “roarin’ twenties”. Fitzgerald begins describing the shallow relationship between Tom and Daisy at the beginning of the story when Nick arrives at their home in East Egg for a dinner party and Tom has to leave the dinner table to talk to his mistress (Myrtle Wilson) on the phone.
At this party we also find out that Daisy’s finger is bruised because of Tom. This idea is solidified when Daisy says,”I’m glad it’s a girl. And i hope she’ll be a fool-that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool”(17). Which indicates that if her daughter was a fool she’d be too naive to understand, for example, that her husband is cheating on her, like with Daisy and Tom. It also shows that Daisy knows about Tom’s affair but she doesn’t plan to do anything about it so she can stick with the money that Tom has. Nick also says, later in the story, “ A week after i left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night, and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the papers, too, because her arm was broken- she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel”(77). Which would again prove that Daisy had to know about the affair and again did nothing about it so she could stay with his money. These instances demonstrate the shallow relationship between Tom and Daisy because of her inability to leave
Tom. Characters in the story, such as Daisy are not only shallow, but have empty personalities, for example, when Gatsby and Daisy knew each other in Louisville, Fitzgerald writes, “However glorious be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he made the most of his time”(149). which indicates that if Daisy happened to know that Gatsby was poor she would have never given him the time of day. She was far too worried about money rather than the person she was speaking to, or in this case, falling in love with. This is only one demonstration, throughout the story Daisy is obviously very selfish and wants to hold on to her money. Mrs. Mckee also demonstrates a perfect example of an empty personality when she mentions to myrtle, “ I almost made a mistake, too,” she declared vigorously. “I almost married a little kike who’d been after me for years. I knew he was below me”(34). She feels that for the simple fact that her admirer was Jewish she felt he was below her. She was racist towards the man that loved her and was going to marry him out of pity not out of love. One of the main and most obvious reason’s Gatsby’s dream was ripped out of his hands was the materialistic values of his counterparts and society as a whole in the “roarin’ twenties”. A perfect example presents itself first when we find that Daisy knows her husband is cheating on her constantly and she makes no attempt to leave him, for example, Jordan says in chapter one,” Tom’s got some woman in New York”(15). She says this while Daisy is still at the table. The second and most obvious demonstration of materialistic values in Fitzgerald’s novel was evident in the end of the story. Fitzgerald writes, “The minister glanced several times at his watch, so i took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came.”(174). This is an ideal representation due to the fact that people only used Gatsby for his free, luxurious parties. And when Gatsby needed them for more than free food and a dance they weren’t even able to show up for his sad, lonely, funeral. All the people who showed up to his parties cared about exactly that, and only that, his parties. After all of Gatsby’s hard work, Fitzgerald stopped Gatsby from getting his dream by putting the people surrounding Gatsby in a situation that demonstrates their shallow, empty, materialistic values. Which is how Fitzgerald felt about the society of the “roarin’ twenties”.