Scott Fitzgerald did live briefly on Long Island which is the inspiration for East Egg and West Egg jay gatsby character analysis essay spent time with New York celebrities. Especially since Daisy can't support this statement, saying that she loved both Tom and Gatsby, and Tom quickly seizes power over the situation by practically ordering Gatsby and Daisy to drive home together, jay gatsby character analysis essay, Gatsby's confident insistence that Daisy has only ever loved him feels desperate, even delusional. Find Out How. Catch up with our summaries of chapters 78and 9. So Gatsby's obsession with the past is about control—over his own life, over Daisy—as much as it is about love. How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League. Especially since a huge part of The Great Gatsby is a critique of the American Dream, and specifically the unjust American society that all of the characters have to live within, the idea of a tragic hero—a single person bringing about his own fate—doesn't quite fit within the frame of the novel.
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NEED A PERFECT PAPER? Essay: Gatsby Character Analysis. In a regular face to face class, you are required to do some in-class essay writing, rather than have all the essays be simple turn them in after the fact writing. ÿIf your response is very much shorter than that, jay gatsby character analysis essay, however, you may wish to reconsider your approach. PROMPT:ÿÿNow that you have finished the book, considerÿeitherÿthe character of Jay GatsbyÿORÿNick Carraway…BUT NOT BOTH! ÿPerhaps you see Gatsby as a noble person pursuing a years long goal, jay gatsby character analysis essay, or perhaps you see him as a delusional person who turns to organized crime to ruthlessly pursue a goal that is not worth it.
ÿBut then again, jay gatsby character analysis essay you see him as someone who presents his supposed morality to you the reader, but jay gatsby character analysis essay stands by and watches lives being destroyed, affairs being carried on, and the like, and never really steps in to stop the unethical behavior he supposedly frowns upon. ÿWhatever your approach, do not play the middle ground and say Gatsby or Nick is both good and bad. Form an opinion that has a clearly defined and defended position, and firmly support it with your own thoughts, as well as quotes from the book.
ÿHave a thesis that defines your position and helps guide your content! ÿHave focused body paragraphs that discuss a single main point that advances your analysis. ÿHave an overall conclusion that wraps things up neatly. You know the deal! Information about customers is confidential and never disclosed to third parties. We complete all papers from scratch. You can get a plagiarism report. If you are convinced that our writer has not followed your requirements, feel free to ask for a refund. HOME ABOUT US SERVICES PRICING CONTACT US Menu. SIGN IN. PLACE ORDER. Why US? Original Writing We complete all papers from scratch. Money Back If you are convinced that our writer has not followed your requirements, feel free to ask for a refund.
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NEED A PERFECT PAPER? Essay: Gatsby Character Analysis. In a regular face to face class, you are required to do some in-class essay writing, rather than have all the essays be simple turn them in after the fact writing. ÿIf your response is very much shorter than that, however, you may wish to reconsider your approach. PROMPT:ÿÿNow that you have finished the book, considerÿeitherÿthe character of Jay GatsbyÿORÿNick Carraway…BUT NOT BOTH! ÿPerhaps you see Gatsby as a noble person pursuing a years long goal, or perhaps you see him as a delusional person who turns to organized crime to ruthlessly pursue a goal that is not worth it.
ÿBut then again, maybe you see him as someone who presents his supposed morality to you the reader, but who stands by and watches lives being destroyed, affairs being carried on, and the like, and never really steps in to stop the unethical behavior he supposedly frowns upon. We will explore that in action below with some common essay topics about Gatsby. I think the best way to tackle this question is to ask " why is Gatsby called great " or " who thinks Gatsby is great? Remember that the book is narrated by Nick Carraway, and all of our impressions of the characters come from his point of view. So the real question is "why does Nick Carraway think Gatsby is great?
And the answer to that comes from Gatsby's outlook and hope, not his money or extravagance, which are in fact everything that Nick claims to despise. Nick admires Gatsby due to his optimism, how he shapes his own life, and how doggedly he believes in his dream, despite the cruel realities of s America. So Gatsby's greatness comes from his outlook—even if, to many readers, Gatsby's steadfast belief in Daisy's love and his own almost god-like abilities come off as delusional. Gatsby is not so much obsessed with repeating the past as reclaiming it. He wants to both return to that beautiful, perfect moment when he wedded all of his hopes and dreams to Daisy in Louisville, and also to make that past moment his present and future!
It also means getting right what he couldn't get right the first time by winning Daisy over. So Gatsby's obsession with the past is about control—over his own life, over Daisy—as much as it is about love. Even after he's managed to amass great wealth, Gatsby still searches for control over his life in other ways. Perhaps he fixates on the reclamation of that moment in his past because by winning over Daisy, he can finally achieve each of the dreams he imagined as a young man. The Great Gatsby would probably be much less memorable, first of all!
Sad endings tend to stick in your mind more stubbornly than happy ones. Furthermore, the novel would lose its power as a reflection on the American Dream -- if Gatsby ended up with Daisy, the book would be a straightforward rags-to-riches American Dream success story. In order to be critical of the American Dream, Gatsby has to lose everything he's gained. The novel would also lose its power as an indictment of class in America, since if Daisy and Gatsby ended up together it would suggest walls coming down between old and new money, something that never happens in the book. Instead, the novel depicts class as a rigid and insurmountable barrier in s America. A happy ending would also seem to reward both Gatsby's bad behavior including crime, dishonesty, and cheating as well as Daisy's cheating, killing Myrtle.
This would change the tone of the ending, since Gatsby's tragic death seems to outweigh any of his crimes in Nick's eyes. Also, Gatsby likely wouldn't have caught on as an American classic during the ultra-conservative s had its ending appeared to endorse behavior like cheating, crime, and murder. In short, although on your first read of the novel you more than likely are hoping for Gatsby to succeed in winning over Daisy, the novel would be much less powerful with a stereotypically happy ending. There is a bit of a progression in how the reader regards the American Dream in the course of the novel, which moves in roughly three stages and corresponds to what we know about Jay Gatsby. First, the novel expresses a cautious belief in the American Dream.
Gatsby's parties are lavish, Nick rides over the Queensboro bridge with optimism and the belief that anything can happen in New York 4. However, this optimism quickly gives way to skepticism. As you learn more about Gatsby's background and likely criminal ties in the middle-to-late chapters , combined with how broken George seems in Chapter 7 upon learning of his wife's affair, it seems like the lavish promises of the American Dream we saw in the earlier half of the book are turning out to be hollow, at best. This skepticism gives way to pessimism by the end of the novel.
With Gatsby dead, along with George and Myrtle, and only the rich alive, the novel has progressed to a charged, emotional critique of the American Dream. After all, how can you believe in the American Dream in a world where the strivers end up dead and those born into money literally get away with murder? So by the end of the novel, the reader should be pretty pessimistic about the state of the American Dream, though there is a bit of hope to be found in the way Nick reflects on Gatsby's outlook and extends Gatsby's hope to everyone in America. How you answer this prompt will depend on the definition you use of tragic hero. The most straightforward definition is pretty obvious: a tragic hero is the hero of a tragedy.
And to be precise, a tragedy is a dramatic play, or more recently any work of literature, that treats sorrowful events caused or witnessed by a great hero with dignity and seriousness. If we consider The Great Gatsby a tragedy, that would certainly make Gatsby a tragic hero, since he's the hero of the book! But in Aristotle's influential and more specific definition, a tragic hero is a flawed individual who commits, without evil intentions, some wrong that leads to their misfortunate, usually followed by a realization of the true nature of events that led to his destiny.
The tragic hero also has a reversal of fortune, often going from a high place in terms of society, money, and status to a ruined one. He also has a "tragic flaw," a character weakness that leads to his demise. Using Aristotle's definition of a tragic hero, Gatsby might not fit. There isn't a sense that he commits some great wrong unlike, say, the classic example of Oedipus Rex, who kills his own father and marries his mother —rather, his downfall is perhaps the result of a few smaller wrongs: he commits crimes and puts too much faith in Daisy, who ends up being a killer. In that sense, Gatsby is more of a playful riff on the idea of a tragic hero, someone who is doomed from aiming too high and from trusting too much.
Especially since a huge part of The Great Gatsby is a critique of the American Dream, and specifically the unjust American society that all of the characters have to live within, the idea of a tragic hero—a single person bringing about his own fate—doesn't quite fit within the frame of the novel. Instead, Nick seems to indict the society around Gatsby for the tragedy, not Gatsby himself. On the surface in Gatsby, we see a man doing whatever it takes to win over the woman he loves Daisy. He even seems willing to sacrifice everything to protect her by taking the blame for Myrtle's death. However, he ends up killed for his involvement in the affair while Daisy skips town to avoid the aftermath.
This can make it look like Gatsby loves Daisy truly while Daisy doesn't love him at all. However, the truth is much more complicated. Gatsby claims to love Daisy, but he rarely takes into account her own feelings or even the fact that five years have passed since their first romance and that she's changed. In fact, he's so determined to repeat the past that he is unable to see that Daisy is not devoted to him in the way he thinks she is. Furthermore, Gatsby seems to love Daisy more for what she represents -- money, status, beauty -- than as an actual, flawed human being. As for Daisy, it's pretty clear she loved Gatsby up until she married Tom see the bathtub scene as recounted by Jordan in Chapter 4 , but whether she still loves him or is just eager to escape her marriage is harder to determine you can read more in depth about Daisy right here.
Either way, there are certainly strong feelings on both sides. I don't think you could argue Daisy never loved Gatsby or Gatsby never loved Daisy, but their relationship is complex and uneven enough that it can raise doubts. Read more about love and relationships in Gatsby for more analysis! Nick, for his part, starts out suspicious of Gatsby but ends up truly admiring him, to the point that he tells Gatsby that he's worth more than Daisy, Tom, and their ilk put together. But why does Gatsby come to rely on Nick so much? Part of the answer comes in Nick's introduction, when he establishes himself as both part of a privileged group his family is pretty wealthy and he's a Yale graduate , but also someone who's not as incredibly wealthy as the Buchanans—in short, Nick is the sort of person Gatsby wishes he was but not to the degree Gatsby would be jealous of him.
Perhaps more importantly, Nick establishes himself as relatively grounded and a good listener, which is the type of person lacking in Gatsby's high-flying circles hundreds of people come to his parties but Nick seems to be the first real friend he makes. Both Nick and Gatsby seem to recognize each other as kindred spirits—people both "within and without" of New York society, rich but not old money aristocracy. The cherry on top of this is the fact Nick is related to Daisy, and is thus a link to her Gatsby can use.
So Gatsby starts confiding in Nick to get closer to Daisy, but continues because he finds Nick to be a genuine friend—again, something he severely lacks, as his poor funeral attendance suggests. Recently, some scholars have argued that another possible layer of The Great Gatsby is that Gatsby is actually part black, but passing as white. This would make Tom's racist statements much more charged and ironic, if it's true his wife is cheating on him with a black man. It would also explain Gatsby's desire to completely sever ties to his past and reinvent himself with an old money background. However, many Fitzgerald scholars point out that Fitzgerald's conversations with his editor about the book are well documented, and they never had any discussions about Gatsby's race.
You can read more about it here and decide for yourself if you believe it! There are also similar theories that argue that Gatsby is Jewish. You can read one such theory in depth here. The Great Gatsby is not based on a true story, and there wasn't a specific person in F. Scott Fitzgerald's life who inspired the character of Jay Gatsby. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald did live briefly on Long Island which is the inspiration for East Egg and West Egg and spent time with New York celebrities. This was all during the s, when bootlegging and organized crime were in their heyday.
So he certainly could have been inspired by real life, newly-rich celebrities. If you're curious, the house Fitzgerald lived in is still standing on Long Island, but it's not a tourist site like, say, Mark Twain's house is. Finally, and perhaps most potently, Fitzgerald himself went through a Gatsby-like heartbreak. Before he married Zelda Sayre, he was in love with a wealthy woman named Ginevra King. I think he's. Great gatsby Character He had an overzealous need for He lost daisy because of his eagerness for money and would sacrifice anything to get it, Daisy Buchanan. We use cookies to give you the best experience possible. PhD Essay Personal Character Analyze the The Great Gatsby Character Analysis Essay. Order original essay sample specially for your assignment needs.
get custom essay. Critical analysis of page of the Great Gatsby. Essay type Character Analysis. The Great Gatsby: Chapter 7 Analysis. Stylistic Analysis of Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby American Dream Essay. Informative Essay on Great Gatsby. Great Gatsby Essay- Social, Critical, Gender Lens. The Great Gatsby Argumentative Essay. Similar Topics Sherlock Holmes Promises Personal Statement Characterization Birthday Memories When I Grow Up I Want to Be My Dream Appearance Problem Emotions Personal Opinion My Advocacy I Believe Gift My Choice Personal Life Describe a Tragic Hero Invisible. Save time and let our verified experts help you.
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