Captari Ionut

Dinu Alexandru

The Great Gatsby

F Scott Fitzgerald
-character essay-
F Scott Fitzgerald's book, The Great Gatsby, is a masterpiece. Many interesting
characters and themes are included in the book. I'm going to focus on the novel's lead character,
Jay Gatsby, and how our attitudes about him shift over time.
Our hero, Nick Carraway, travels to New York City at the start of the novel. He befriends
Gatsby, who we later hear is in love with Nick's married cousin, Daisy. They initiate an affair
that lasts until Daisy's husband, Tom Buchanan, becomes suspicious (despite the fact that he has
been unfaithful as well). Tom tackles Daisy and Gatsby in a fiery argument that acts as the
novel's turning point. Daisy prefers Tom as her allegiance at this stage. Despite this, Daisy and
Gatsby head back into town together, and Daisy inadvertently knocks down Tom's mistress,
Myrtle Wilson. Daisy causes Gatsby to take the fall, resulting in his death as Myrtle's husband.
George was led to believe that Gatsby was having an affair with Myrtle, so he hunted him down,
shot him, and then killed himself. Given his extravagant parties, none of Gatsby's so-called
friends attended his funeral, including Daisy, who had left town with Tom. Nick focuses on
Gatsby's character and life at the conclusion of the book.
Gatsby is an enigmatic figure at the beginning of the book. Our narrator, Nick, does not
encounter him until much later in the book. Nick, on the other hand, gets an early invitation to
one of his well-known events. When he arrives at Gatsby's mansion, he hears all sorts of rumors,
including that "he killed a man." Nobody, however, appears to know him well or understand
where he gets his money. This makes us wary of Gatsby, and we're not sure how we feel about
him at first. Nick notices him with his arm extended out towards the water on another evening.
Nick "could swear it was shaking." Nick overheard stories of a dangerous character at the party.
However, the way his arm was outstretched into the water was more endearing, and it actually
made us feel sorry for him, though we don't know why at this stage. There is a sense of
melancholy about Gatsby from the beginning. Of course, we discover later that the Gatsby
reaching out to the water was in reference to his long-lost love, Daisy, who lived across the water
from him. Nick notes that when people are pairing up at the close of one of Gatsby's parties, the
host stands alone: "no one swooned backward on Gatsby." We tend to feel sorry for him at this
stage.
When Gatsby and Nick's relationship progresses, we hear that Gatsby is in love with
Daisy, and we feel pity for him. We discover that they had a brief friendship before Gatsby went
to war, five years before the novel starts. Daisy had vowed to wait for Gatsby, but he never
returned, so she married Tom Buchanan instead, as we learn later. We learn near the end of the
novel that Gatsby went to see Daisy, but when he arrived at her large and elegant home, he
realized he had nothing to give her, having come from a poor family. In this culture, money was
 Captari Ionut
Dinu Alexandru

coveted, so Gatsby spent the next few years amassing his fortune in order to win her back. When
we hear about Gatsby's history with Daisy, we feel sorry for him because he missed out on the
love of his life due to no fault of his own, but due to the war and the class structure of the time.
Gatsby's reason for his lavish parties, we learn near the beginning of the book, was to see
Daisy again. Jordan told Gatsby that he "half expected her to wander in one night." We begin to
doubt whether Gatsby is genuinely in love with her or has become obsessed with the thought of
her because of some of his acts. Another scene that poses this issue is during Gatsby and Daisy's
reunion, when Gatsby is showing Daisy around his mansion, obviously trying to impress her
with his immense wealth. “Look, here's a bunch of clippings – about you,” he says as he gives
her a book. Daisy is obviously flattered, which is just what Gatsby was looking for, but it makes
the reader uncomfortable about his very obsessive actions. During their reunion, Nick refers to
him as a "overwound clock," alluding to one of the novel's core themes: time. Gatsby is
desperate to turn back time in the book, and when Nick says, "You can't replay the past," Gatsby
replies, "Of course you can." Though we want Daisy and Gatsby's love to be rekindled at this
point in the book, we are a little worried about it.
Another explanation we might be uneasy about Gatsby's character is because we see him
through Nick's eyes in the book, and as the story progresses, we begin to wonder whether Nick is
a trustworthy narrator because he seems to be biased towards Gatsby. We discover that Gatsby's
money was acquired illegally through "bootlegging," and that he has lied to others about who he
is and where he came from. He also changed his name from James Gatz as part of his new
identity. On top of that, he's having an affair with a married woman, and he's tricked Nick into
assisting him. Nick, on the other hand, thinks he is "worth the whole damn lot put together."
Tom, on the other hand, sees Gatsby for what he really is: a fake, and tells Nick that "he threw
dust into your eyes, just like he did in Daisy's," which makes us wonder if Tom has a point. This
leads to another of The Great Gatsby's main themes: reality vs illusion. Throughout much of his
adult life, Gatsby was desperate to maintain a facade, which is not a quality we generally respect.
Despite all of this, we somehow find ourselves cheering for him.
We feel pity for Gatsby again at the novel's turning point, during a tense conversation
between him and Tom after Daisy refuses him. "You want so much," she tells him. Despite all
appearances, it becomes evident that she and Tom have some love for each other. However,
Gatsby's inability to acknowledge his rejection prompted him to assume responsibility for
Myrtle's death in order to shield Daisy, the murderer, which resulted in George killing him.
Gatsby’s continuous optimism is a quality that Nick admires. He describes it as “an
extraordinary gift for hope” and is perhaps his greatest attribute, but it is clearly also his greatest
flaw. He lived his life full of hope, but his refusal to live in the real world, ultimately led to his
death. Despite Gatsby’s lavish parties, there were only a handful of people who attended his
funeral, which makes us realise the complete superficiality of the society Gatsby was living in.
At this point we feel immense sympathy for Gatsby. He was clearly a flawed character but
despite most of his adult life being a lie, he never actually intended to hurt anyone. His lies were
self-preservation and unlike Tom and in fact Daisy too, Gatsby never seemed to act out of malice
or cruelty.
 Captari Ionut
Dinu Alexandru

The depiction of Jay Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald was extremely successful. Despite the
fact that he developed a character who acted in ways that went against many of our own personal
beliefs, such as integrity, we couldn't help but cheer for him throughout the book. We are both
shocked and saddened by his passing. We don't understand why so few people seem to be
grieving him, and we become angry. It takes exceptional talent for a writer to make us feel a
wide range of emotions about a completely fictional character.