How Did The Great Gatsby Change Throughout The Novel

People are always what they seem. In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, characters change throughout the novel. One character named Gatsby slowly changes over the course of the book.

Gatsby’s character changes in his early years. When Jay Gatsby was a little boy he was raised in poverty in North Dakota; however, this experience he hates being poor. Gatsby looked down on his parents, “His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people-his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all” (98). Gatsby separates himself from his parents in order to achieve wealth. Gatsby does anything to become rich. He dropped out of college after two weeks because he was tired of being a janitor which paid for his tuition. A couple years later, he started to work with Meyer Wolfsheim who is a person who owned many alcohol stores which was illegal at the time. Gatsby is no longer the poor boy of the past, “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God – a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that – and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious

Tom and Gatsby began to fight over Daisy’s affection when Gatsby pressures Daisy into admitting her love for him, “There, Jay,” said--but her hand as she tried to light a cigarette was trembling.” (132) Gatsby raises his voice and targets the person he loves. He is no longer the kind man she knew. Later, Tom tries to discredit Gatsby’s name and brings up Gatsby’s bootlegging business and secrets which are threatening. Tom noted, “That drug-store business was just small change,” continued Tom slowly, “but you have something on now that Walter’s afraid to tell me about.” (134). Gatsby has kept his reputation a mystery but shows it in the end. Overall, Gatsby isn’t the Gatsby that everybody