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Solomon: U.S. Literature
Naomi Biden
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald may be brilliant because it embodies America during the 1920’s, however it is timeless because of how well it illustrates the beauty and allure of an unattainable dream. Human nature causes us to constintantly be searching for something more or striving for something better. Jay Gatsby represents the epitome of this quality. His dream incorporates the American one we continue to be familiar with; a poor boy with hopes of becoming rich quick. Nevertheless, try as Gatsby may, he was not born into a wealthy respectable family, his money is not ‘old’ and Daisy will never truly be ‘his’. Therefore the closest he can come to content is in the persona he has created for himself as an oxford man born into a rich midwestern family. I believe that by dying, staring at the stars, hoping daisy will choose him over Tom, Gatsby is able to die still reaching out and in plain sight of what he wants but not quite able to touch it. Although he is reunited with Daisy to an extent he isn’t with her, and their life, or ‘future’ together is still untangable. Consequently the dream remains pure. And so Nick introduces the story telling the reader “No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.”
The narrator offers this brief opinion of how Gatsby turns out before introducing us to him. Nick claims that Gatsby turns out all right in the end, but we will later learn that Gatsby is murdered for a crime he did not commit. While undeserved death is not usually associated with turning out alright, in Gatsby’s case death preserves his dream. Perhaps this is because in dying his dreams are kept alive. He dyes without having obtained his only goal, which essentially, was Daisy. Had he completely won her heart over before death he would have crushed his own dreams. As Nick later states, even Daisy, as charming as she is, could never live up to the idealized version of her Gatsby has created. The ‘wake’ of Gatsby’s dreams is the path of destruction leading up to his death. The path created by Tom, Jordan, Myrtal, and Daisy.
The foul dust that preys on Gatsby is the corrupt exploits of those with money or power wasting their days away on the east coast. Tom and Daisy adulterate Gatsby’s dellusional world. Furthermore loose ends like Meyer Wolfsheim make the reality of his situation more apparent. While his personality is ‘gorgeous’ his dreams are speckled with corruption, lies, and lavish, immoral deeds. Although Nick is not one to judge he can’t deny the grossness of what surrounds him in east and west egg. Gatsby may have turned out alright but Nick witnessed the aftermath of his death, he was helpless but to realize that Tom and Daisy will continue to live their carefree life with each other no matter how unhealthy their relationship may be. He saw the destruction that Tom and men like Tom are capable of inflicting. The unscruppolous immoral lifestyle turns Nick off from the ‘abortive sorrows’ and ‘short-winded elations’of men.
The Great Gatsby is a novel as full of hope and dreams as sorrow and destruction. Gatsby is murdered, allowing his dream to live on. Nick, a nearly innocent bystander is defenseless against the turbulent, careless, self-centered lives that his cousin and her aggressive husband live. The love between Gatsby and Daisy is not what the novel centers around, rather Gatsby’s obsession with his idealized version of Daisy, and the lifestyle that she represents. While Jay Gatsby may end up alright, he leaves Tom and Daisy in a wake of destruction and Nick in a wave of cynicism.


-----Original Message-----
From: Hunter Biden [mailto:hbiden@rosemontseneca.com]
Sent: Sun 3/6/2011 4:33 PM
To: Naomi Biden
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