F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby Essay -- essays research papers

Wealth, Love, and the American Dream     It has been said that F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby is about the pursuit of the American dream. It has also been said that the novel is about love, ambition, and obsession. perhaps both are true. Combined, these themes may be understood in their most basic forms among the relationships within the novel. After all, each characters reason for belong to a relationship speaks very strongly of what really makes him tick each characters manifestation of his own desires is found within his lover. Throughout the novel, what universally unites each character beyond anything else is the love of a dream or position and involvement in relationships for the success of that dream.      Jay Gatsby has loved Daisy Buchanan since their romance of his youth. Beautiful, rich, and refined, Daisy serves as a symbol of Gatsbys wealth- she represents what 17-year-old James Gatz invented himself to be. The product of years of unfulfilled waited and longing by Gatsby, she becomes a sort of trophy dream. "Her voice is full of m adepty", Gatsby says (Fitzgerald 127). This delightful figure of speech shows precisely what Gatsby desires. The poor boy from the mid-west hoped to be a great man Daisy has become the manifestation of this desire. Thus, he believes that by impressing her and being accept by her he can fully posses that dream. After all, Gatsby believes that with his fabulous wealth he can buy anything he wants, especially Daisy. Longing for the love of his youth, he shapes his whole life around this objective of becoming worthy of her. "He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths so that he could come over some afternoon to a strangers garden" (Fitzgerald 83). Daisy had become the be-all and end-all of his mad ambition, and yet, his approach is passive and wasteful. Instead of actively seeking Daisy, he throws lavish parties, hoping she will stumble in. He finally resorts to a poorly planned meeting, using Nick as an accomplice and stumbling through with(predicate) a reunion that he had planned for all the years she had been away.Unfortunately for Gatsby, Daisy has married in his absence the hulking, brutish Tom Buchanan, the sort of man one would have expected her to marry all along. Tom represents old money, Ame... ...re within Myrtle to make public her new station in life. Unfortunately, there is not much structure within the apartment or the relationship itself. Neither can support the goals and ambitions brought into the relationship. Just as their apartment seems cramped due to more furniture than the building allows, their relationship is crowded and messy without any real feeling or structure.     What is common in these relationships is the desire for the attainment of ones dream through the use of ones lover. Gatsby loves Daisy because she represents wealth and success, Daisy loves Tom because he holds the promise of a continued place as a particle of American aristocracy, and Myrtle loves Tom because she believes that her relationship with him will grant her a place in high society. Although these relationships may exhibit pure ambition they do not exhibit pure love. Perhaps the novel is making a statement about the nature of ambition itself. When intertwined and mistaken with love, ambition causes hurt, disillusionment, and tragedy. And thus, perhaps Fitzgerald is locution that when the American dream is one based on money and mistaken for love, tragedy occurs.