Examples Of Illusions In The Great Gatsby

F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is a story of illusions. It seems as though almost every character in the novel is living a double life. Jay Gatsby’s life is essentially a cover up for the way he obtained his money. Married couple Tom and Daisy Buchanan are both having affairs with other people, neither one knowing about the other’s until near the end of the book. Why did Fitzgerald focus so intently on these deceptions? The following essay will delve into The Great Gatsby and attempt to find out. At the beginning of the story, the reader learns that the narrator, Nick Carraway, has recently moved to New York, specifically a fictional region called West Egg. His modest home happens to sit adjacent to the home of Jay Gatsby, an

Myrtle is married to George Wilson, an old, boring man. Tom does not try very hard to hide his affair, except from his wife. He takes Myrtle out and shows her off to his friends, including Nick. Daisy, knowing of her husband’s affair without telling him, feels no guilt in her affair with Gatsby. The book comes to a climax when Gatsby attends a get together with Tom, Daisy, Nick, and Jordan in New York. Gatsby fails to hide his infatuation with Daisy from Tom, who deduces that the two are having an affair. Gatsby demands that Daisy tell Tom she’s never loved him, and she reluctantly complies. She then tells everyone that it’s not true. She really does love Tom. Tom realizes that he has nothing to worry about and sends Daisy home with Gatsby. Daisy drives, and, on the way home, accidentally runs over and kills Tom’s lover, Myrtle. Gatsby takes the fall for her but pays for it with his life when Myrtle’s husband George takes the law into his hands and kills Gatsby just before taking his own life. The novel ends as Daisy and Tom move on with their lives and Nick moves away from New York, realizing he wasn’t made for the big city