The Great GatsbyGeneral Theme Essay Research Paper

The Great Gatsby-General Theme Essay, Research Paper

Down through the centuries people have made progress. From the wheel to the

assembly line to computers, people have found more efficient ways to do their work. People discovered through the use of technology they could do things they hadn t donebefore. Mass production and assembly lines reduced the need for manual labor. Outside the home, they worked less they discovered they had more time for recreationand to travel, socialize, volunteer, and relax. Because people found more and more leisure time, they began to go out to eat at elaborate restaurants, host big parties, and acquire more possessions from daily shopping sprees. As they relaxed more, they broadened themselves; they became inquisitive about the world. With more desires and spending the economy began to strengthen. As people began to acquire more possessions, they began to higher the standard of living. However, there is another side. A higher standard of living reinforces people s increasing desires; it creates

chaos. Thrown aside are the morals and ethics that once existed. People want to have all of the luxuries that are available; they become self-centered and spoiled. Because the true American Dream is an illusion, it s no wonder there is so much continued discontent (Nelson). In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald illuminates this theme through the use of conflict, imagery, and character.

Failing to realize the destructiveness of time, Gatsby tries to live in a world where past, present and future are all one (Stavola 131). Surprisingly, Gatsby spends most of his adult life trying to recapture the past. Imprisoned in his present, Gatsby belongs even more to the past than to the future (Bewley 22). He can t accept that the past is gone and done with: Can t repeat the past. . . . Why of course you can (Fitzgerald 116). So strong is this belief that Gatsby demands Daisy to . . . help him to do the impossible; obliterate time and repeat the past (Stavola 140). When Tom is at

the Plaza Hotel with the others, Gatsby says to Daisy: Just tell him [Tom] the truth that you never loved him. . . . (Fitzgerald 139). Gatsby isn t the only one torn between the past and the future. Daisy likewise longs to return to her past with Gatsby but is blocked by her struggles toward the future and in the present. Nick too believes that the past can be recreated. But soon he learns as many of the others so painfully come to understand, You can t repeat the past (Fitzgerald 116). Unhappy with their lives, the characters dwell between a dead past and an inconceivable future.

Another conflict in the novel is the one between the American East and West. Tom and Daisy Buchanan live in East Egg, a socially prominent and modern society in which people behave carelessly. People of East Egg maintain . . . snobbery of those who have arrived at least one generation earlier (Rowe 93). Fitzgerald describes Buchanan s spacious home as an .. .elaborate . . . . Georgian Colonial Mansion overlooking the bay (11). Across the water in West Egg, . . . the less fashionable of the two (Fitzgerald 9), . . . whose wealth is fluid income that might cease to flow (Cowley 71) is where Nick and Gatsby live. Both Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby are westerners . . . . uncomfortable in the East (Eble 96) and are situated here to represent their closeness to western values idealism and romanticism. Nick comes East to West Egg because he is restless (Fitzgerald 7), seeks adventure, and wants to try his fortune (Lehan 13). In the East he feels like a . . . pathfinder, an original settler (Fitzgerald 8). As Way writes: Nick Carraway imagines that he will find among the sophisticated Eastern rich, the high point of American civilization (91). For Gatsby,

the Western frontier is closed so he must go east to pursue his dream a pursuit of an ideal and a frontier equivalent found in the New York underworld (Bewley 13). Dissatisfaction causes the characters to shift between the west and the east.

The most significant conflict in The Great Gatsby is the one between illusion andreality. The illusions seem to be more real than reality itself. Gatsby is an embodiment of that conflict between illusion and reality at the heart of American life (Bewley 34). In order for Gatsby to have Daisy, he creates a fictitious background: like his ancestors, he has been educated at Oxford (Fitzgerald 69). He rejects his real name, James Gatz, and invents a new, more glamourous one, Jay Gatsby (Kuehl 62). Fitzgerald agrees and writes: The truth was that Jay Gatsby . . . sprang from his

Platonic conception of himself (104). Supposedly, Gatsby inherits his fortune from Dan Cody, a man he looked up to. In all reality, Nick learns early on that Dan Cody is a cover for Gatsby s real source of wealth bootlegging. . . . major characters in the novel . . . embrace illusions that they know to be illusions in order to cope with their sense of hopelessness and vulnerability (Parr 60).

Wealth creates an illusion that covers an ugly reality, but carries with it the associations of happiness and fulfillment. Gatsby is drawn to Daisy because she already represents his dream to him, the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves (Fitzgerald 157). Her presents indicate the fact of money when Gatsby identifies her voice with a distinctive quality of being full of