Theme Of Memory In The Great Gatsby

Memories can be precious and can be painful. While precious memories are fond to and remember, painful memories are often hard to forget. The Great Gatsby is a book written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925 that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional towns of West Egg and East Egg on the prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. Through the eyes of the narrator Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald denotes Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy Buchanan and the past, which ultimately leads to failure and eventually death of himself. From the tragedy end of Gatsby and his irrational actions throughout the book, Fitzgerald had elucidated the notion that memories hinder people in their effort to learn from the past and succeed in the present.

This hinders Gatsby from moving on and focusing on his own life and happiness. In the beginning to gain Daisy's affections, Gatsby accumulates extortionate wealth and displays extravagant gestures, such as organizing luxurious parties every Friday and showing her his grandiose mansion after the Tea Party with Nick. To Gatsby the memories of the past with Daisy are everything that he wants. Therefore winning Daisy back becomes his primary goal in life. When Nick tells Gatsby, “You cannot repeat the past,” Gatsby replies incredulously,“Why of course you can.” (Fitzgerald 116). However, Gatsby is blatantly proven otherwise when he meets Daisy’s daughter, who is a constant reminder of Daisy’s new life with Tom Buchanan, her husband. Gatsby realizes that this little girl will never go away and any life he might have with Daisy would include this new element. Even after Gatsby has seen Tom and Daisy's daughter he continues tries to deny the present. He insists that Daisy tell Tom she never loved him. He feels that if she does this her relationship to Tom will be "wiped out forever"(Fitzgerald 132) and they will be able to return to what they once had, but the events do not unfold this way. She does tell Tom that she never loved him, but it isn't true and when she says it it doesn't have the effect that Gatsby was convinced it would. Her relationship with Tom

For Gatsby was living in the past and when he comes to the present, he is no longer there. Preoccupying Gatsby with what the past represented, the present and the past has become inexorably mingled. Gatsby tries very hard to separate the present and the past, and he only wants to grasp the past. But It is as if the past memories of Daisy are blue and the present is red. Once they are mixed together they can never separate them into red and blue again. Ultimately, it is learned that memories hinder people in their effort to learn from the past and succeed in the