Jay Gatsby is a new money who made living as a bootlegger. Gatsby tried to use the fancy story to cover his real identity, the son of a poor farmer of North Dakota. That’s because he despised poverty and he was self-abasement about his childhood. So he decided to make up a story in order to pretend like an old money. He even changed his name ‘James Gatz’ to ‘Jay Gatsby’, but his new name didn’t help him to cover the insecure side of his heart. He wanted to get people’s recognition, while he was afraid that people might ‘misunderstand’ him. So he was eager to know other people’s opinion of him and tried to brainwash them to make them believe that he was an old money. Apparently, Tom Buchanan, the real old money didn’t buy it. After almost one…
Gatsby began life as the son of poor farmers living on the shores of Lake Superior. Early in his youth Gatsby “knew he had a big future in front of him”. He later changed his name from James Gatz to the more fashionable sounding Jay Gatsby. The narrator of The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway, is astounded by Gatsby’s ambition. “There was something gorgeous about him… it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is likely I shall never find again”. Gatsby was determined to attain his goal and self-disciplined Gatsby was as a young dreamer. He wanted to change the world by being the one who would invent a “needed invention”. Young Gatz was bound to make it big. He had what it took: the brains, the will power, the looks, and the ambition. However Gatsby’s intentions were the purest when he was a young boy, by the time he was grown man he had already made it in the world, his story of success is quite different from that which his dreams foretold. What Fitzgerald is trying to show is the change of Gatsby’s original pure American dream to his success, infected with…
In the novel " The Great Gatsby," there is a character named Jay Gatsby, although his real name is James Gatz. He is the perfect representation of this prompt because he has gone through many past experiences that influence his life in the present, which ironically the book is not told by really two years in the past.…
Jay Gatsby in “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the most interesting males in fictional literature, even though he is not a dynamic and changing character during the novel. In fact, Jay Gatsby has changed little since he was a teenager. He was born as James Gatz to poor farmers in North Dakota and he decided at an early age that he wanted more out of life than North Dakota could offer. He leaves home to find excitement and wealth. While lounging on the beach one day, he sees a yacht docked off the coast. He borrows a boat and rows out to introduce himself to the owner of the yacht; the owner takes a liking to young James Gatz and offers him a job. When he takes the job he leaves behind the identity of James Gatz forever; the rest of his life he will be known as Jay Gatsby, an incurable and idealistic romantic who fills his life with unrealistic dreams – to capture the past.…
Gatsby’s true life story is revealed as is his real identity, “It was James Gatz”. This shows Gatsby’s more vulnerable side rather than the glamorous, public façade. The name “Gatz” is monosyllabic and unglamorous which is representative of Gatsby’s working class background rather than the upper class persona that Gatsby has created for himself. Gatsby’s persona is eventually his downfall, “to this conception he was faithful to the end”. This foreshadows Gatsby’s death as only Nick is around afterwards; he is the only one who truly sees that Gatsby’s façade lead to his demise. This also demonstrates Gatsby’s fierce loyalty and determination to convince people to only see what he wants them to see of him as he is desperate to distance himself from his working class roots.…
Everyone has dreams, some are big and some are small but everyone has one. For Jay Gatsby; dreams can seem close but impossible to obtain. Jay Gatsby is a confusing man to understand, but his dream is very clear to everyone; he wants Daisy’s love to be his for keeping. Although there are many obstacles that stand in between him and his dream; he has an ambition to succeed where the odds are against him and Jay believes that it’s possible. After all Jay Gatsby states “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!”…
As a result, Gatsby basically photoshops his identity. It is portrayed when Gatsby ran away from home, he changed his name, and abandoned his heritage. In the past Jay Gatsby, "sprang from his platonic conception about himself". With what Nick had mentioned about Gatsby's own platonic impression of himself was that Jay Gatsby "...was a son of God". With Gatsby’s theory, he himself makes an ideal conception of himself, in which he late proposes for the future. With Gatsby’s decision to climb "the ladder" to God in which gives an illustration of Gatsby's future, he had to decide on whether he would move forward into the future and climb the ladder or choose Daisy and accept the past. Because of Gatsby’s illusion that his past could very well form to be his future, he relinquishes his past ideal interpretation of himself by choosing to no longer have himself think like the "mind of God" (Fitzgerald 119). Thus, Gatsby strives to compose his future coming from whatever is left from the present although he was ultimately left behind and lost in the…
He is also very mysterious and nobody really knows him very well, therefore nick begins to discover the true man and the life of the mysterious Jay Gatsby throughout the novel. “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of west egg, Long Island, sprang from his platonic conception of himself” (Fitzgerald 98). All that Jay Gatsby ever wanted was to live a luxurious life with the person he loved. He had built a brand new life for himself that was completely different than the life he used to live when he was younger. He built wealth and success hoping to the fact that would be enough to impress Daisy.…
Since the beginning, Gatsby knew that to attain the American Dream he would have to create the persona of Jay Gatsby from James Gatz. Jay Gatsby is a rich, successful man from West Egg in New York while James Gatz is the penniless son of unsuccessful farm people. Evidently, Gatsby grasps that to attain the American Dream he absolutely can not be a lower class laborer and must be born affluent. In addition, Gatsby is revealed as a hard worker when his father presents a schedule that exhibits, “‘Jimmy was bound to get ahead’” (Fitzgerald 173). He refers to the anal schedule of self-improvement Gatsby grinded himself through. However, it is also revealed Gatsby earned his money through illegal activities when Meyer Wolfsheim, a mob leader, tells the narrator, “‘Start him! I made him’” (Fitzgerald 173). This exposes that Gatsby believs that in order to create the American Dream from nothing, integrity is impossible. In the end of the novel, everything is taken away from Gatsby when he is murdered by another victim of the hopeless American Dream, Wilson. Evidently, Daisy and her husband, Tom Buchanan, two people of privilege, can be linked to the intricate events leading to Gatsby’s downfall. Therefore, Fitzgerald reveals that all of Gatsby’s hard work and his own life was obliterated by the elite who were born into the American…
The Great Gatsby is not a story about Jay Gatsby. It is a story about the green light, the American dream. “It is the story that if you work hard enough, you can succeed” (Donahue, “Five reasons ‘Gatsby’ is the great American novel”). Jay Gatsby was once James Gatz, a poor boy of unsuccessful farmers. The United States was founded upon aspiring immigrants who wished to one day enjoy rich livelihoods. Even in…
Jay Gatsby is a puzzling character to comprehend. One may wonder how it is possible he has not achieved his dream. He lives the most wealthy lifestyle imaginable and throws parties that are the talk of the town. The reason Gatsby has not achieved his dream is because he is not truly happy. Before he went to war, he was in love with Daisy; however, while he was away he received the news that Daisy was marrying Tom Buchannan. After this, Gatsby’s entire life is…
He has Dissociative Identity Disorder, better known as Multiple Personality Disorder. Throughout our meeting Gatsby daunted on his past of growing up dirt poor in North Dakota. He explained to me his desire to come from a wealthy family his whole life. He told me he motivated himself by writing down his weekly goals to improve himself. Being so poor was one of his traumatic experiences because he was so embarrassed about his family’s low income. Multiple Personality Disorder comes from traumatic experiences, and I could tell the way Gatsby looked when he told me of the shame he felt of being poor was certainly a very traumatic experience. He felt so embarrassed you could see it in his eyes, they looked weary when he told me of all his memories in poverty. He met Dan Cody, a wealthy man in the tin business who took James Gatz under his wing. Gatsby decided at that point he would no longer be James Gatz; he would be called Jay Gatsby. Although this was only a name change, it represented much more. He was leaving his old life and personality of a poor farmer behind with the name James Gatz. His new identity would be Jay Gatsby, a wealthy businessman from a rich…
Winning the heart of a long-lost lover, a dream only achieved by a lucky few. To forget the past and rekindle affection long forgotten, the romantic hopes of a passionate imaginary, too far removed from reality to face the truth. Yet Jay Gatsby (of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby) longed for more. Gatsby, born James Gatz, not only wish to reconnect with a lover of his past, Daisy, not only wished to have her fall in love with him again, but wished to erase five years of lapsed time between them, convincing her that the time they were apart never took place and that her new husband and child were mere relicts of a day dream run on too long. To achieve such an exorbitantly grand goal, James Gatz began to direct his life to mold…
In The Great Gatsby, James Gatz wanted to change his old life to a new life, using the American Dream. Thus, creating this new man, Jay Gatsby. Although James Gatz was born into a poor family, he did anything he could to change his life and made sure people didn’t know his true background. Over the years,…
Looking at Gatsby's past it is clear, that he doesn't start of as a successful man. He has nor money nor education, but a humiliating janitorial job and dreams of being a wealthy man. When he meets Cody, Gatsby falls in love with wealth and luxury. He dedicated himself to become a successful man, and changing his name to Jay Gatsby gives him a good start to reaching his dream. When Gatsby meets Daisy, it is obvious why a man who has gone to such great lengths to achieve wealth and luxury would find Daisy so alluring: for her, the aura of wealth and luxury comes effortlessly. She is able to take her position for granted, and she becomes, for Gatsby, the epitome of everything that he invented “Jay Gatsby” to achieve.…