The Importance Of Selfishness In The Great Gatsby

“Concerned exclusively with oneself: seeking or concentrating on one’s own advantage in disregard of others-” this is the definition of selfishness (Merriam-Webster 's Collegiate Dictionary, 2003). Self-centeredness can often cause people to be blind to those around them, and causes them to neglect others in pursuit of their own desires and wishes. Jay Gatsby only thinks of himself and views himself to be the center of his own reality he lacks the ability to think about how his actions affect those around him. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby’s ego and self-centered personality stifles any consideration he may have for others. Throughout the novel Gatsby’s actions towards others are used to support his own amusement and pleasure, and once that person served their purpose Gatsby cut them out of his life forever. Gatsby views himself as divine while his sense of self-importance makes him believe that he is above everyone else. At times Gatsby speaks of himself as though he were actually divine: "The truth...that he... Sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of a God" (Fitzgerald 98). This causes him to view others as less important and provides him with

No one cares about Gatsby because he never made any worthwhile connections as doing so was never important to him. Instead, he only made superficial connections with people. In the latter parts of the book, we are given an almost hyperbolic example, when, "The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn 't any use. Nobody came" (Fitzgerald 174). Throughout his life he was so selfish that even when he died only a few people came to his funeral. His lack of any worthwhile connections with people is a product of his selfish pursuits in life like Daisy and how he disregarded anything in his way simply to benefit himself. He had simply made connections that allowed him to use and benefit from people. His lack of