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Examples Of Denial In The Great Gatsby

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Everyone has disappointments in their lives. They did not get the job they wanted, the part in the play, or win their game. Growing up, people learn to deal with failures, but there are some who decide to deny what happens to them. Jay Gatsby has had both hardships and triumphs in his life. After he met his mentor, Dan Cody, and joined forces with Meyer Wolfsheim, it seems like Gatsby has all he could want. No one knows that he may have money, but Jay does not have his dream. Jay shows and hides his denial in a curious way. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald expresses that Gatsby’s extravagant parties are a sign of denial as he was unable to secure his American Dream. When Jay was stationed in Kentucky before being shipped off to war, …show more content…

He wanted to seem popular and that he had friends, so he hosted weekly festivities. Hundreds of people would come and party at Gatsby’s house. The people who attended never cared to become friends with Gatsby, but to enhance their own social status. Emin Tunc also comments on this occurrence stating that “Fitzgerald uses Gatsby’s elaborately staged weekend parties as another metaphor for the greed, material excess, and unrestrained desire for pleasure that resulted in the corruption and disintegration of the American Dream” (para. 16). Jay continuously underestimated the desire and integrity of those around him. Gatsby was denying his loneliness and the fact that he had no friends by throwing these parties. The number of attendees caused the illusion that Gatsby contained a considerable amount of friends. It is shown that his expectation that parties would generate caring people was a failure when no one showed up to his funeral. In The Great Gatsby Nick narrates that “The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came” (Fitzgerald 174). No one cared enough about Jay Gatsby to attend his funeral, but they frequented at his parties not because they were friends, but to splurge in the wealth Gatsby possessed. His parties once again masked the truth of Jay’s

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