Raise and Fall of Jay Gatsby

Raise and Fall of Jay Gatsby

Jay Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from childhood marked by poverty and mostly spent in North Dakota to a man of unimaginable wealth. From his early youth, Gatsby resented poverty and aspired toward wealth and sophistication. His real name was James Gatz, but it was later changed to Jay Gatsby as it was more melodic and less immigrant. Gatsby is a man who secretly hates the poor as well as immigrants, and could never see humans in them, which is also pointed out many times in the novel as these groups never seemed to appear somehow unhealthy to him.
Gatsby dropped out of St. Olaf’s College after only two weeks because he could not bear the job of a janitor with which he was paying his studies. Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation to reach his fortune was his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in World War One in 1917. Gatsby immediately fell in love with Daisy’s charm and beuty. He lied about his background in order to persuade her that he was good enough for her. Upon ending his service in the Word War One, Gatsby found himself in Oxford where he studied for whole four months, which he later on used to present himself as a bound to be member of the high class. In the meantime, Daisy maried Tom Buchanan in 1919, although she still loved Gatsby, Tom was a man who could satisfy Daisy’s aspirations towards the high class society and comfor.
After the war, Gatsby became a rich man, bought a palace in New York, more accurately in the fictional West Egg of Long Island where new high-class people with shady past behind them begun to settle, just across the bay where Daisy’s new house was and where “old money” people, nobility of capitalist society used to live. He lived a life intent to slowly draw Daisy back to him. Each and every night he organized boisterous parties full of people whom he had never met or who have never met him, and all with only one goal, to impress Daisy, and later on reveal himself.
Jay Gatsby, although he presented himself as one, was not a true aristocrat. His way to the top began when he was a teenager, when a enormous yacht sailed in to his town. He owned his enormous fortune to bootleging of alcohol, fixed sports events, and trades including stolen goods. Variety of people who used to come to his parties were able to feel justifed mystery in Gatsby’s personality as he never used to appear to them, some were saying that he was a nephew of Kaiser Wilhelm, that he once killed a man, but as every other rumour, none of these were widely belived but eagerly retold and redecorated with new details.
Upon getting closer with Carraway, Gatsby explained him what was his real aim, and revealed a tiny fracture of his life one step at a time. Daisy did not immediately fall in love with Gatsby again as the important factor in her life was the economic situation of her future love. She is materialistic, and the first time when the burst of emotions stroke her was when Gatsby threw around the room his beautiful and colorfull shirts. From that poing on, the plot escalets to the final verbal showdown in a hotel in New York where Tom and Gatsby fight over Daisy with Nick and Jordan being present, soon afterwards they storm out of the hotel, upset Daisy, who had come with Gatsby in his car and now is going back with him too, demands from him to let him drive, which he does. While they were passing Myrtle Wilson stormed out to meet Tom, because the last time they were passing Tom, Nick and Jordan drove in the same car that Daisy was driving now; Daisy hits her but doesn’t stop and just later Tom appears, so Myrtle’s husband, who had known of Myrtle having and affair, thought that Gatsby was her lover and he is now ready for revange. That evening, Gatsby hides his car as investigation about the accident could discover some other details of Gatsby’s illegal bussinesses. The following day, confused and desperate George heads towards Gatsby’s mansion where he finds Gatsby in the pool, he kills him and then commits suicide ending unlucky love story with a bloody mark.
Clearly, Jay Gatsby is a tragic figure; he has aspired to empty dreams. For, just as his life has been lived in pursuit of the false American Dream of material possessions and the love of a girl he could not have. His funeral was as empty as his private life was, only Nick, Gatsby’s father, Owl Eyes and a few servants attended it, everyone else avoided it because they did not care enough, or because they wanted to continue their shady affairs without being involved into another one. Gatsby’s father was obviously proud of what his son has achieved and he seemed to be in the grief even before the murder, as if he knew all the time how his son’s life could end.