The Great Gatsby Essay

Critic Philip Weinstein proposed that during the 18th through early 20th century, the west loved stories about flawed characters overcoming their problems and understanding the world. Even the worst villain could mature. Weinstein said next came the modernist movement which had authors snubbing this narrative. Characters, like real people, could never fully understand the world, themselves, or others. In The Great Gatsby, the characters are all very troubled. They cheat on their spouses, commit murder, do dirty business, yet the characters never see these issues in themselves and only partially recognise the issues with others. Gatsby never comes to understand himself and though Nick understand Gatsby, he is blind to himself. Nick and Gatsby's
Gatsby is a flawed man. He is a businessman who holds strong onto the American Dream, but his business is bad. His biggest partner is Meyer Wolfsheim, who even Gatsby admits is “a gambler” (73) and “the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919,” (73). Gatsby’s partygoers may have some fantastical stories about his past, but they know in the end, “‘he’s a bootlegger,’”(61). Gatsby constantly lies about his past and tries to conceal where he came from and how he came to wealth. Even Nick sees this. When Gatsby tells Nick about how he came from a wealthy family and was educated at Oxford, Nick “knew why Jordan Baker had believed [Gatsby] was lying. He hurried the phrase “educated at Oxford,” or swallowed it, or choked on it, as though it had bothered him before. And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces,” (65). While Nick realises Gatsby probably didn’t come from wealth, he also knows “young men didn’t--at least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn't--drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a place on Long Island Sound,” (49). Nick is able to recognise another of Gatsby’s great flaws-his obsession with the past. “‘Can’t repeat the past?’ [Gatsby]
In writing The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald has created a particularly special type of modernist novel. Instead of simply telling you that the characters do not come to any realizations, the story forces the reader to decide whether or not Nick and Gatsby came to realize their faults. However, because the character do not recognize their faults, The Great Gatsby serves to teach its readers about the dangers of doing the same. Though the point of modernist novels may be to point out that we as humans cannot fully understand the world, ourselves or others, they still set an example to try to understand those things to the best of one’s