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Gatsby’s Pursuit of Ideals

Uploaded by sas108 on Sep 10, 2006

Gatsby’s Pursuit of Ideals

In Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the protagonist, Jay Gatsby, is transformed from a poor working class boy to a wealthy romantic, all due to his pursuit of ideals. The Ideals that Gatsby strives to achieve are: the acquisition of wealth, re-defining his character in pursuit of perfection, and attaining his ideal romantic love.
His first Ideal is to escape the working class and attain a position in the upper class. When Gatsby was young he was nothing more than a salmon fisher and a clam digger; just so he could survive. The turning point in his life is when he meets Dan Cody, Who allows Gatsby to work for him. As Gatsby works with Cody he gets accustom to the luxurious life style, and is taught to idealize wealth. The life style is latter ripped from him when Cody dies, even though Dan Cody’s will stated that Gatsby is to receive his fortunes, Gatsby never does because of a law suite against him. After the Great War, Gatsby Goes into illegal business; he works with a man who had fixed the worlds Tennis cup, and they owned a chin of pharmacies that sold grain alcohol over the counter at times when all alcohol was prohibited. Gatsby’s reasons his wealth are not solely due to this life style that he is grown accustom to, he also tries to impress his love Daisy. That is why he has the car he does and the sumptuous mansion that contains a library that is modeled after one in a university with thousands of new books. However, in order to impress his love he needs something more than just lavish items.
An other ideal of Gatsby is the pursuit of perfection, because he started to idealize characters who are perfect, in his eyes, and so he began to revolutionize his own character to achieve perfection in himself; in order to have Daisy. Not only is Gatsby trying to reach perfection but he is also trying to attain a place in the upper class. Even though Gatsby only when to Oxford for a mere five month, he picked up the saying: “old sport” when he is referring to someone because he thinks it will help him to get into the upper class that he so desires to be in. It is not just the way the Gatsby speaks the he re-defines but the...

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Uploaded by:   sas108

Date:   09/10/2006

Category:   Great Gatsby

Length:   3 pages (718 words)

Views:   7314

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