It tells of the mysterious Jay Gatsbyâs grand effort to win the love of Daisy Buchanan, the rich girl who embodies for him the promise of the American dream. With this conclusion, Fitzgerald suggests that wealth alone does not guarantee entrance into the upper echelons of elite society. The outline of his life emerges during the course of the novel, in fragmentary and overlapping narrative episodes, with several false trails and some contradictions. The Great Gatsby is a tragic love story on the surface, but it's most commonly understood as a pessimistic critique of the American Dream. But The Great Gatsby and all of Fitzgerald's works are best compared to those written by other Americans such as Ernest Hemingway, members of the "Lost Generation" of American writers who moved to Europe after World War I. Gatsby is the ultimate idealist, falling in love with Daisy and then pursuing her after her initial rejection of him, in an attempt to be reunited with her and reclaim her love. He becomes very wealthy but his inability to gain acceptance in class conscious high society reveals the inadequacy of the American Dream. Instead, the rich characters' negative qualities are put on display: wastefulness, hedonism, and carelessness. However, at the novel's conclusion, Daisy chooses to stay with Tom despite the fact that she genuinely loves Gatsby; her reasoning is that she could not bear to lose the social status that her marriage to Tom affords her. The American literary critic Lionel Trilling (1905â75) argued that, in a sense, Gatsby is America, and it is certainly the case that an overarching concern of the novel is the condition of America in the early twentieth century. In general, the novel takes a fairly cynical view of love. The Great Gatsby makes it clear that America has in some respects failed in this aspiration, as the persistent imitation of European models suggests. The whole culture of today seems to be pointing to another Great Depression that will make the Great Recession of 2008 look like just a little housing bubble that burst. The Effect of Truth on Idealism in The Great Gatsby. He begins to see the elite social circle as careless and hurtful. Nick discusses the act of self-creation that produced the man he calls âThe Great Gatsbyâ. However, Gatsby's single-minded pursuit of those dreams—particularly his pursuit of the idealized Daisy—is the quality that ultimately destroys him. "The great Gatsby" is the story of a man and a woman: she loved a regret, he an ideal, quoting Fitzgerald "an incorruptible dream". Nick introduces Tom and Daisy as restless, rich, and as a singular unit: they. The Great Gatsby - Romanticism. Nick Carraway is the protagonist of the novel. That illusion is dispelled with this honest look at Cody. Her history and arts writing has been featured on Slate, HowlRound, and BroadwayWorld., 'The Great Gatsby' Characters: Descriptions and Significance. Nothing can deter him from his belief in the possibility of dreams and romance. The novel's events are filtered through the consciousness of its narrator, Nick Carraway, a young Yale graduate, who is both a part of and separate from the world he describes. Gatsby's is the dream of deceiving time and starting all over again, as if five years had never passed, rather as if they had given him greater credibility in the eyes of the woman he loved. "A stunning piece of work. Significantly, we are told that Gatsby himself âinventedâ Jay Gatsby, and that this creation of a 17-year-old remained intact until his death at 32. Home > University study tools > English Literature > The Great Gatsby - Romanticism. In fact, his entire pursuit of wealth and influence is carried out in hopes of making his dreams come true. During this time, Daisy marries Tom Buchanan, who is a very wealthy man. The Great Gatsby is set in the volatile Jazz Age of the 1920s. 2014 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 180 Pages 1925 Point of View The Great Gatsby is told in first person, through the eyes of Nick Carraway. As a young military officer, Gatsby fell quickly for debutante Daisy, who promised to wait for him after the war. By having Nick Carraway as the narrator, readers get to experience what it is like to live in a wealthy, elegant world. Gatsbyâs Unrealistic American Dream in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The novel suggests that she married him in hopes of being upwardly mobile, but instead the marriage is simply miserable, and Myrtle herself ends up dead. However, Gatsby is miserable. Even the central romance between Daisy and Gatsby is less a true love story and more a depiction of Gatsby's obsessive desire to relive—or even redo—his own past. Nonetheless, he has the power to However, any chance at a real relationship was precluded by Gatsby's lower social status. And because of his humble background, he remains an outsider in the eyes of elite society. The 1920s was also a period of increased freedom for women, as young women of this generation distanced themselves from more traditional values. In the novel, Jay Gatsby overcomes his poor past to gain an incredible amount of money and a limited amount of social cache in 1920s NYC, only to be rejected by the "old money" crowd. Tom, Daisy, and George all come to mind as the characters that have done the most moral damage throughout the novel.