The Great Gatsby, By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Character is not developed being sedentary. The extraordinary novel, The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a wealthy young man. Known for his mysterious past and inconceivable amount of money, Gatsby is able to host several extravagant parties in his gothic mansion. Many characters in the novel represent each aspect of the Roaring Twenties. Introducing many characters who all seem to cause conflict with each other, the main character Fitzgerald sets the entire book over is Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is first shown as a mysterious man whose reputation is built by rumors and great parties; this makes the guest of his parties assume that Gatsby is actually great, however, his traits shows that he is not as great
as those may seem to think. Jay Gatsby is actually a man who is mysterious, dishonest, and too stubborn to let go out of the past.
Gatsby is established as a dreamer who is charming, gracious, and a bit mysterious.
He is able to intrigue someone because “he smiled understandingly--much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life” (Fitzgerald 48). It is slowly revealed that everything Gatsby currently does is to achieve his unrealistic dreams to bring back his past. Gatsby is great, but he also stands for things may not be so admirable. In one sense, Gatsby's extraordinary story makes him an embodiment of the American dream. He is the son of two unsuccessful farmers. By the time he is a young man he had even less, having voluntarily estranged himself from his family, unable to come to terms with the conditions he had been dealt in life. Never accepting his circumstances, “Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island sprang from his Platonic conception of himself” (98). While on his own, he has the opportunity to reinvent himself and does so from evolving from James Gatz into Jay Gatsby. In the eyes of others, Gatsby becomes the exact embodiment of what it means to be successful. As such, life becomes much different. He is no longer tied to his early years, but can imagine whatever past he desired for
himself.
Gatsby fell in love, a fateful incident that would change the course of his life forever.
After meeting Daisy, everything he does is for the singular purpose of winning her. From the moment he sees her, he is “consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock” (92). Money is, essentially, the issue that prevented the two from being together. Gatsby then makes sure he will never again be without money, using his current wealth to impress Daisy. Gatsby's determination and persistence to obtain his goal is in some ways exemplary. However, his running “like an overwound clock” foreshadows catastrophic events that leads to his tragic end. In Tanfer Emin Tunc’s, The Tragedy of the American Dream on Long Island’s Gold Coast, he points that “Fitzgerald's novel traces the arc of a life as it begins in wonder, reaches for the stars, confronts society's spiritual emptiness and gratuitous materialism, and ends in tragic death” (Tunc 3). Thus, Gatsby is defeated because he has no limits. There are also other aspects of Jay Gatsby that call his character into question. Gatsby's money did not come from inheritance, but instead, “He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That's one of his little stunts. [He] was
picked for a bootlegger” (Fitzgerald 133). His wealth is all from organized crime. In Ron Neuhaus’s, Gatsby and the Failure of the Omniscient “I”, he states that “Gatsby is a figment of the imagination of the novel that bears his name” (Nauhaus 4). He comes to represent the dream of becoming successful, but achieved it in a dishonest way. With the story taking place in the time of prohibition, Gatsby earned his wealth through selling alcohol illegally. Using his affluence, he throws lavish parties, in which he is not interested in knowing any of his guests. He is only concerned if whether they know Daisy.
In assessing Gatsby, one must examine his blind pursuit of Daisy. Everything he does, every purchase he makes, every party he throws, is all part of his plan bring and attract Daisy back into his life. In a way, it is a romantic gesture, but in another it is rather immature. Gatsby continuously moves into a fantasy world by being so caught up in his dream with Daisy. Gatsby insists he is "going to fix everything just the way it was before” (Fitzgerald 110). His inability to deal with reality sets him outside the norm and, eventually, his holding on to the dream leads to his death. By the end of Chapter 7, Gatsby is staying guard outside of Daisy's house on a needless vigil as he is “standing there in the moonlight watching over nothing” (145). He is completely unable to realize that his dream is not a reality and so stands watching for a sign from Daisy. He sees what he is doing as noble, honorable, and purposeful. The reader, however, sees the idleness of his task as he becomes a parody of his former self. Gatsby is, quite literally, fatally idealistic. He cannot wait to distance himself from his past in terms of his family, but yet, he lives his adult life trying to recapture the past he had with Daisy. What makes matters worse as well, is that he is in love with the idea of Daisy, not Daisy herself. Gatsby is an astoundingly affluent, unshakable young man living in a mansion in West Egg. He is well known for the rich gatherings he tosses each Saturday night. However nobody knows where he originates from, what he does, or how he made his fortune. At first look, he appears like an intriguing character who has a wide range of characteristics displaying every one extraordinarily. Although, deep within he is an imperfect man, manipulative and unrefined. He supposes the most ideal approach to live is to recover the past, however he doesn't comprehend the progression of time and how it changes individuals. Unmistakably, Jay Gatsby is one of the best characters in American Literature.