Daisy's Tunnel Vision In The Great Gatsby

“... it is a story about failure and death, an idealistic quest for unworthy goals, and the almost total collapse of the aspirations of nearly all of the principal characters” (Nagel 113). The Great Gatsby is a story that represents people’s unachieved aspirations that lead to a sad existence and ultimately death. They are all trying to attain one thing, the American Dream. The American Dream is almost impossible to attain and that is why a lot of people failed when it came to living out the American Dream. In Fitzgerald’s, “The Great Gatsby”, Gatsby tries to attain the American Dream through Daisy throughout the whole novel but fails and is left heartbroken.

Gatsby's strategies of winning back Daisy's heart are to show off his wealth and social status such as connecting himself with "Oxford"; living in a luxurious "mansion"(Pg 5), throwing lavish parties, dressed in nice expensive clothing; he even has "men in England who buy him clothes and sends him a selection"(Pg 92). Gatsby believes that with his money and material success he could buy anything in life including true love and happiness. Because of his obsession to obtain Daisy's love, he betrays his honesty and morality. With no other purposes in life, Gatsby ends up engaging in illegal activities. Therefore, it is very ironical that sometimes in life, good idealistic goal, somehow, is achieved by immoral and illegal means. This is the reason for the failure of the American Dream, and the tragedy of Gatsby.

She was a girl with wealth, connections and means—everything a seventeen-year-old boy could aspire to one day attain. It is this illusion that Gatsby falls in love with, not Daisy, and he dedicates his life to become a man that could parallel Daisy in both social status and wealth. “So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.” (98) Though Gatsby appears to be blinded by material possession and unethical in his means to acquire it, Fitzgerald sets him up to be the hero of the novel by contrasting his virtue to the sea of corruptness and material greed that made up the ambitions of most young folks in the 1920s. True, he made his money through illegal means, but his incredible sense of loyalty is striking against the dishonest, scheming American society. In the novel, it is clear that Gatsby is unfailingly loyal to everyone he loves, from his father to Dan Cody to Daisy, who he dedicated “five years of unwavering devotion” (109) to, even if they were not loyal to him in return.

Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, is also someone who is blinded by his greed. “Her voice was full of money”, Gatsby says about Daisy, his love interest. In saying this, he means that she is full of wealth, status, and notoriety, all things that Gatsby craves. Gatsby is an ambitious man who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. He is a man who believes that money and possessions alone will allow him to get what he truly wants: the love of his life, Daisy. However, Gatsby is so blinded by his greed that he joins the mob to grow his fortunes and commits acts as unspeakable as murder. Daisy's discovery of this convinces her to stay with Tom, as Gatsby is likely to be arrested and therefore lose his wealth. Had Gatsby gone about his business in a moral way, he would have most likely won Daisy back. However, his ambition and desperate need for Daisy blind him and convince him that any immoral act is excusable and necessary to achieve his goals. Gatsby is a man with good intentions, but in the end, he allows his greed to get the best of

Does this mean that Gatsby thinks he loves Daisy but actually not? Or he is just one of the people who loses desire to things/persons he

Fitzgerald displays Gatsby as man who came from nothing, with an unrelenting passion to obtain material success, or the 1920’s American Dream. Radical transformation was one of Mr. Gatsby’s most outstanding characteristics, taking his desire to change from the once impoverished man to the point of changing his name. Certainly Gatsby possesses admirable traits, as his will power is once again displayed through the longing for his lost love, Daisy. The misconceptions of the time period are illustrated as Fitzgerald displays that Gatsby’s underlying desire for money is to win over Daisy through impressing her with his wealth. Within Adam Cohen’s piece “Jay Gatsby Is a Man for Our Times”, Cohen discusses the worthiness of Gatsby’s goal: “The callow Daisy, whose voice is ‘full of money,’ may not be a worthy goal. But Gatsby’s longing for her, and his willingness to sell his soul to pursue her, are the purest thing in this sordid tale.” Essentially, Fitzgerald demonstrates that Gatsby, nor his relentless will to succeed, are not the issue. It is the time period, along with the misconceptions of a dream, which corrupt the character. Gatsby’s wealth is obtained through unethical ways, like many others who followed the path of easy money. The corruption of bonds does bring Gatsby the wealth he had always longed for, along with extravagant and lavish parties at his mansion. Consequently, we learn that reaching the goal of obtaining wealth ultimately does not lead to

In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby’s hold of the past and his pursuance of his own American Dream ends in certain death. Throughout the story, Gatsby believes that his passion can sway Daisy to leave Tom. These events lead him to relentlessly chase wealth in order to gain social status that is worthy of Daisy. However, the story does not end according to Gatsby’s ideals. Fitzgerald utilizes symbolism to demonstrate Gatsby’s tragic flaw, his chasing of a dream that is already dead.

I hypothesized that Gatsby 's failure arose from his deluded and futile dream of Daisy. Gatsby 's failure is that he continues to pursue Daisy, who is unwilling to break her marriage, and forces a confrontation that escalates and eventually ends in his death. This dream, which drives him to his failure, arose from his obsession with Daisy and the American Dream. During Gatsby 's life, a social belief existed in the form of the American Dream. The American Dream was a belief held by many that any individual can reach their dream should they choose to work towards it. In most cases, this meant money. However, for Gatsby, it was not enough to simply be wealthy, although he did acquire great wealth, but rather to accommodate Daisy 's background of old money. With the American Dream influencing Gatsby, when he met Daisy and fell in love with her, it became his everything to marry her. However, this dream became an illusion because of the reality that she had moved on. He grew a delusion that he could break the Buchanan marriage as he believed that she did not and had never loved Tom. The futility of Gatsby 's dream accounts from

The desire for social pleasure was rampant in the roaring twenties and in The Great Gatsby. On the surface, Gatsby’s dream appears very materialistic. We’ve just talked about his fancy parties and his flash car. But if Gatsby’s dream was truly material, would he chase after Daisy? If his aim was purely material, he wouldn’t have been such a desperate romantic figure. We’re selling him a bit short here by accusing him of just wanting money. He is unsatisfied with his wealth, and pursues something greater – ‘true love’. Gatsby’s idea of ‘success’ was Daisy. Granted, you and I will agree that Gatsby could have done so much better. In fact, what does Daisy represent? Daisy has a symbolic name, and the way she gleams “in the sunlight” (pg 160) is merely a white façade covering her superficiality. The truth is, she and Tom are “careless people”, they “smash up things…and retreat into their money and carelessness…let other people clean up the mess they’d made” (pg 191). You may think Gatsby’s corrupt. However, clearly Daisy and Tom are the corrupt ones; they think they can do anything and everything, with the social influence and wealth they gained at birth. Daisy exploited Gatsby, his naive desire of “the golden girl” (pg 128), the ‘girl of his dreams’ – or so he believed. Fitzgerald also wanted a girl out of his league; Ginevra (Erbentraut, 2013). Very much like Daisy, Ginevra couldn’t be with Fitzgerald because of she was rich and cool and he

Gatsby is trying to control his truth because he tries to ignore the fact that their relationship will never be the same as it was in the past. Nick describes Gatsby’s struggle with his accepting this truth saying “he did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city…”(Fitzgerald 189). Gatsby allows his obsession with the idea of being with Daisy to prevent him from grasping reality for what it really is because he is too clouded by this surreal idea of achieving his fantasy life. This ignorance prevents him from identifying or making effort to correct his flaws. Instead, Gatsby childishly decides to use his failure as a motivation to continue his pursuit for Daisy without grasping the consequences of his actions. This ideally makes him not great because he brings about his own demise due to his inability to see that his actions will not bring about the ending he desires,

     F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a tragic tale of love distorted by obsession. Finding himself in the city of New York, Jay Gatsby is a loyal and devoted man who is willing to cross oceans and build mansions for his one true love. His belief in realistic ideals and his perseverance greatly influence all the decisions he makes and ultimately direct the course of his life. Gatsby has made a total commitment to a dream, and he does not realize that his dream is hollow. Although his intentions are true, he sometimes has a crude way of getting his point across. When he makes his ideals heard, his actions are wasted on a thoughtless and shallow society. Jay Gatsby effectively embodies a romantic idealism

The transformation between James Gatz and Jay Gatsby is an example of how people can transform themselves according to their ambition for wealth and prosperity. The use of illegal activities to gain Gatsby's wealth is alluded to in the book, this shows the extent of how the American Dream circumvented the moral revulsion and pushed people who were crazy about money into crime - driving the moral standing of wealthier citizens into the ground. To Gatsby, his dream was symbolised by Daisy, Gatsby even says that her voice sounds like money, a direct correlation between Daisy and the wealth and happiness that Gatsby would supposedly enjoy if only he could have married Daisy but could still enjoy if he had married her five years later. His pursuit of happiness with Daisy was the ultimate cause of the degradation of Gatsby's morals and realistic dreams. This is because he held an unrealistic view of life and how he could recreate the past. His dreams had distorted reality to the point where when his rationality realised that the image of life and of Daisy did not coincide with the real life version his mind did not grasp that perhaps the dream had receded to the point of no return, consequently his dreams helped to

Hunting down and engrossing one’s self in one dream can prevent them from being conscious about other areas in their life. Evidence of such can be found in The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s character, Gatsby, who overlooks good relationships, his potential as a person, and the reputation he builds while trying to achieve his one ultimate goal.

It is very clear in the text that Gatsby is only in love with the idea of loving Daisy, but does not actually love her. Gatsby creates this imagined reality of the connection he shares with Daisy that doesn’t actually exist. Sure, maybe at one point the connection was there, many years ago when they first established it, but it has died and he just refuses to see that. I believe that Gatsby believes that he is in love with Daisy, I even believe that after a while Daisy believes that she still reciprocates these feelings as well. This being said, no matter how hard both of them push for this connection mentally and emotionally, their actions speak louder than their dreams.

He wanted to have her and wealth at the end, that’s what he wanted his whole life. At the end, he was actually getting Daisy’s love back again until Tom Started being a little suspicious, but moreover she still liked him because he had money now. And knowing That she would never be with someone who had less money than her. Personally It brought me because I want to be independent, succeed, have a better future than my parents once had, and also help my parents out. Gatsby demonstrated that, that is possible he was poor once just like in my situation i'm not in the best place of shoes in my life. But I know i can do it. He set goals and pursued them and more importantly he accomplished everything until at the end of the story he got killed because Wilson shot him. He did die showing people, the audience, and his readers the American Dream. The entire book is about the american dream because not everyone in the story were rich many people picked themselves up by other working extremely hard or others by having some money. The Great Gatsby showed that no matter what social class, race, gender nationality you can still be successful in life by accomplishing what you set in mind, you just have to work hard like gatsby did. The book expressed plenty of different characters but Gatsby was the one who stood