A dream is defined in the Webster's New World
Dictionary as: a
fanciful vision
of the conscious mind; a fond hope or aspiration; anything
so lovely,
transitory, etc. as to seem dreamlike.
In the beginning pages
of F. Scott
Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway, the
narrator of the
story gives us a glimpse into Gatsby's idealistic dream
which is later
disintegrated. "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
elation's of men." Gatsby is
revealed to us slowly and
skillfully, and
with a keen tenderness which in the end makes his tragedy
a deeply moving
one.
Jay Gatsby is a crook, a bootlegger who has
involved himself with
swindlers like
Meyer Wolfsheim, the man who fixed the 1919 World
Series. He has committed crimes in order to buy the
house he feels he
needs to win the
woman he loves. In chapter five Nick
says, "...and I
think he revalued
everything in his house according to the measure of
response it drew
from her well-loved eyes." Everything in Gatsby's house
is the zenith of
his dreams, and when Daisy enters Gatsby's house the
material things
seem to lose their life. Daisy
represents a dreamlike,
heavenly presence
which all that he has is devoted to.
Yes, we should
consider Jay
Gatsby as tragic figure because of belief that he can restore
the past and live
happily, but his distorted faith is so
intense that he
blindly unaware
of realism that his dream lacks. Gatsby
has accumulated
his money by
dealings with gangsters, yet he remains an innocent figure,
he is
extravagant. Gatsby is not interested in
power for its own sake or
in money or
prestige. What he wants is his dream,
and that dream is
embodied in
Daisy. Ironically, Daisy Buchanan, is a
much more realistic,
hard-headed
character. She understands money and
what it means in
American society,
because it his her nature; she was born into it. Gatsby
intuitively
recognizes this, although he cannot fully accept it, when he
remarks to Nick
that Daisy's voice "is full of money." Gatsby will not
admit this
essential fact because it would destroy his understanding of
Daisy. In the end, this willful blindness helps lead
to his ultimate tragedy.
Gatsby is a romantic, a man who began with a
high and exalted
vision of himself
and his destiny. He aspires to
greatness, which he
associates with
Daisy. If he can win her, then he will
have somehow
achieved his
goal. Gatsby's wealth, his mansion, his
parties, his
possessions, even
his heroism in battle are but means to achieve his
ultimate
goal. Gatsby is mistaken, however, in
his belief that money can
buy happiness or
that he can recapture his past if he only becomes rich.
One of these
examples is when the epigraph becomes clear: the four-
line poem of
Thomas Park d'Invilliers that Fitzgerald quotes on the title
page describes
exactly what Gatsby has done. He has
symbolically worn
the gold hat; he
has bounced high, accumulating possessions for this
moment, so that
when Daisy sees them she will cry our, like the lover in
the poem, "I
must have you." And Daisy does.
These shirts move Daisy
not because they
are mad of such fine fabric, or the shirts look very
well; they move
her because of what the shirts symbolize Gatsby's
extraordinary
dedication to his dream. This dedication
separates him and
makes him morally
superior that the materialistic society with which he
lives in.. In this case one could consider Gatsby as
morally superior
even when he
commits an error of judgment because of a flaw in his
character.
Gatsby is indeed morally superior to the other
characters in the
book, but this
superiority is another factor which contributes to Gatsby's
ultimate
misfortune. No matter what we think of
Gatsby or of his
dream, we are
drawn to him by the sad apprehension that dreams
themselves are
often more beautiful than dreams fulfilled.
Nick realizes
this, too, when
he says: "There must have been moments even that
afternoon when
Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -nor through her
own fault, but
because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone
beyond her,
beyond everything." What Gatsby and
Daisy have is so
much more than an
endeavor; it's beautiful, more intense, and finally
more painful in
the end. There is both a joy and sadness
in a love as
great as theirs. In some ways Gatsby is morally superior than
the society
at the time, but
this moral superiority is the cause of Gatsby's
dillusionment
dream, and inevitable fate.
Finally, Nick's approval is what allows Gatsby
to be called "great,"
but his greatness
has a curious, puzzling quality to it, since it cannot be
easily or
completely defined. Gatsby certainly
lacks many of the qualities
and fails many of
the tests normally linked with greatness, but he
redeems this by
his exalted conception of himself.
Gatsby has dedicated
himself to the
accomplishment of a supreme object, to restore to himself
an illusion he
had lost; he set about it, in a pathetic American way.
Gatsby is a man
with a dream at the mercy of the "foul dust" that
sometimes seems
only to exist in order to swarm against the dream. It
is a strange
dream, Gatsby's but he was a man who had hopes and
aspirations. He was a child, who believed in a childish
thing.
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