Jay Gatsby Idealism and Failure
Uploaded by baadasskid69 on Oct 27, 2011
This essay discusses the ideas of idealism and failure as presented in The Great Gatsby.
I Introduction
F. Scott Fitzgerald is more strongly associated with the 1920’s than any other writer. He is generally considered the voice of his generation, but his insight into human behavior means that he is never out of print, for his flawed heroes and heroines speak to all of us.
Perhaps no one is more fully drawn than Jay Gatsby: a self-made millionaire who retains his idealism, and in so doing, is destroyed by it.
II Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby’s Idealism
Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby’s best friend, narrates The Great Gatsby to us. Of course there is a literary device known as an “unreliable narrator,” someone who tells us the story but deliberately lies for some purpose of his or her own, but that isn’t the case here. Nick, though obviously biased in Gatsby’s favor as any friend would be, still gives us a straightforward account of the events. He passes harsh judgment on the Buchanans, but there is no reason to believe that his description of what actually happened is faulty.
Jay Gatsby is an idealist, someone who believes in his vision of things as they ought to be, not as they really are. It’s important to note that Gatsby is not unblemished: there is a strong indication, though it is never actually proven, that he made his money bootlegging. Still, Gatsby has not been corrupted by his wealth, and in that he differs radically from the Buchanans, arguably the villains of the piece.
Gatsby loved Daisy, lost track of her, and found her again, now married to Tom Buchanan. He realizes he has never stopped loving her, and sets out to win her back. In so doing, he acts upon his beliefs, rather than the facts; an example of his idealism. Nick tells us in the first pages of the novel that he doesn’t want to hear any more “revelations” about the human heart; that he is sick of confidences and learning other people’s business. The only person he exempts from this is Gatsby; Gatsby, who “represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.” (Fitzgerald, p. 2). But Gatsby, despite the money that ordinarily would have driven Carraway away, is precious to him. And this is because of his idealism, which is what...