Argumentative Essay On The Great Gatsby

After eleven years of an unhappy marriage Myrtle sees her affair with Tom as an escape from the awful like she is living in. The fact that she knows so little about the upper class men and the poor judgement of her character makes her an easy target for Tom to take advantage of her. Although she finally buys everything that she desired for, she never could have Tom’s heart all to herself. Tom would rather not leave Daisy because their marriage represents a larger meaning than only love it almost a symbol that show their social status. " Daisy!

By the end of the First World War, the American novel had reached a new expressive self-sufficiency, eager and ready to absorb and project the complexity of American life. Scott Fitzgerald started writing when the young generation had just returned from the First World War. Distrustful of the past and disillusioned with culture and conventions, the young people had nothing to fall back upon except their own experience. Fitzgerald fixates on the relationship between individual and society as a tussle between the irreconcilable. Fitzgerald too agrees the same: "I am interested in the individual only in his relation to society” (Callahan 5).

His parties had everything one could ever imagine in one place, except for him, and most people left the party “without having met Gatsby at all” (Fitzgerald 45). Many of the guests did not find it odd that the host was never around, but this piece of information is quite significant in supporting Gatsby’s motif in throwing the party in the first place. The reason why Gatsby was never around and mingling with his guests was because he was feverishly surveying the crowd for Daisy’s radiant face to appear, but, unfortunately, it never did. In addition, Nick Carraway, Daisy’s cousin, just so happened to be invited to one of Gatsby’s great parties even though “people were not invited-they went there” (45). If people did not get invited to Mr. Gatsby’s parties, then why was Nick?

This is affected by the concept of the American Dream. The American Dream is an idea that believes that with hard work, you can achieve anything. Gatsby takes this idea into his past love life when he is told he cannot repeat the past, but he responds with, “‘Can't repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!’”

That made me feel special all over again. Mom might not ever be caught without batteries or tissues, but she just called me Ashleigh . . .and never promised me anything.” Because her feelings for him are so strong, he could persuade her to do anything he asked of her. Ashleigh was willing to steal money from her mother because she worried about the wellbeing of her father.

Tom cared more about his affair with Myrtle than his own wife. Neither Tom nor Daisy truly wanted to be in the relationship. George had his life all mixed up not knowing that Myrtle is being unfaithful to him. These instances of dishonesty from all of these characters against each other result in their own twisted realities due to unfaithfulness and dishonesty.

For Daisy to have been with Gatsby would have been forbidden, due to the fact that she was married. That very concept of their love being forbidden, also made it all the more intense, for the idea of having a prohibited love, like William Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet, made it all the more desirable. Gatsby was remembering back five years to when Daisy was not married and they were together: His heart began to beat faster as Daisy 's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his

“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone....just remember that all the people in the world haven’t the advantages that you’ve had.” This quote is from Nick who quoted this from his father. "Gatsby turned out alright..." This shows Nick’s actions and thoughts still remain the same about judgement at the end of story. I think F. Scott Fitzgerald uses this quote also to foreshadow the bad choices that take place and to reserve our judgment and try to understand the characters with a open mind.

Fitzgerald makes it apparent throughout the novel that Gatsby does everything in hopes to compete against Tom and impress Daisy. For example, Gatsby throws lavish parties every weekend with the hope that Daisy will stumble in, and then they will be reunited and return to their old ways. Additionally, when Gatsby moves to the West Egg, he purposefully purchases an extravagant mansion near the Buchanan’s mansion where he can view their emerald light on his dock. Throughout the duration of The Great Gatsby, Gatsby noticeably envies Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, for seizing the life that Gatsby was not able to achieve. Gatsby longs to return to the passionate relationship they had five years prior and maybe even create a family similar to the family Daisy has with Tom.

They nearly got married years ago but Gatsby did not have any money at that time and decided to wait. After meeting Daisy for the second time, they have an affair. After awhile, Tom is wary of Gatsby and tries to prove that the famous Jay Gatsby is not who he appears to be. Daisy becomes angry at her husband’s chauvinistic attitude and decides to leave her husband for Gatsby. However, she later discovers that her lover, Jay Gatsby is not the respected man he claims to be.

In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, it has many moments that can be argued that Nick can be displeased with the people he surrounds himself with. Nick even states that Gatsby stands for everything he hates and despises about the rich he corresponds with but yet by the end Gatsby is the only one that Nick appreciates on some level. With an almost fleeting passage in The Great Gatsby though it clearly show that Gatsby had a glamor that secreted from him that Nick idolized but was slowly being squandered as he had ‘talked with him perhaps six times in the past month and found, to my disappointment, that he had little to say. ’(pg 64) Nick then goes on to say that Gatsby started to lose the glamour that built up after the parties, especially the rumors he was told about how Gatsby came into his money.

This passage describes how Nick does not know what to make of Gatsby because of all the misconceptions and rumors that have been made towards him. There is only one metaphor in this passage and it describes how the narrator, Nick, wrote everything down that Gatsby told him about his past so as to “explode” the false rumors about Gatsby. This passage reveals to me that the book itself is a of biography of Gatsby by Nick because of the phrase in the first sentence that says Nick has “put it all down here”. So as to create the feeling throughout the book that the reader is experiencing the book in third person point of view as well as first person.

When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.” Gatsby loved Daisy so much that he even went to the extent to build his house across the sound from his love. He threw massive parties hoping Daisy would show at one of them. However, Gatsby had other motifs for his parties. The parties for him are also about putting on a good public display.

In Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the main character, Holden Caulfield, is challenged by the world around him. One of the main issues he faces is “ . . . constantly [feeling] as if he is being surrounded by his enemies. (Huber and Ledbetter 254)”

Imagine that George Clooney was your next door neighbor, threw extravagant parties every weekend, yet kept quietly to himself during the day; this describes the life of Jay Gatsby. While he appears to be the nation’s most mysterious, wealthy bachelor, his wealth is built on the illegal business of bootlegging. However, despite all the rumors against him, the allure of Gatsby’s character is based off of the slanted view of the narrator and the improbable way that he obtained his massive amount of wealth.