The Great Gatsby Character Analysis

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Gatsby lived his life in hopes to achieve the “American Dream”. An idea he locked onto at a young age. Gatsby’s extraordinary quality of hope and idealistic dreams became the backbone to the theater production that was his life. Using his dreams to overpower the desolate wasteland of reality, he relied on the concrete disposition of the past to script his future. The rejection of reality ultimately led to his demise. Nick had such an immense respect for Jay’s imagination and pursuit of his dreams that he dubbed him the “great Gatsby”. This title could be worthy of divine figures, which is exactly how nick saw Gatsby, a divine figure that pushed the limits of probability and overlooked obstacles. As defined in this quotation “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was the son of god-a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that-and he must be about his fathers business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty” (Fitzgerald 98). Nick refers to Gatsby as a god, in the sense that god’s admit no limitations. The lack of restriction allows Gatsby to reach the “platonic conception of himself” because the pursuit of beauty cannot be achieved with hesitation. Gatsby grew up poor, and when he was young he decided that he was going to change, he was going to become rich and successful and the mere fact that he actually went out an achieved such a fiat is nick’s definition of “great”. Nick also found Gatsby beautiful in his ability to not only believe in himself but also project that optimism on everyone around him. “He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.
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