Post by Supriya on Apr 26, 2014 7:10:17 GMT -5
Gatsby Critical Essay – Blind to Reality
I re-drafted this, could you please mark it?
“The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a classic novel which portrays the different social classes and dreams. The central character Jay Gatsby dreams of winning back Daisy Buchanan and being part of the aristocracy. He does everything he possibly can to win her back and his blind ignorance of reality stops him from seeing the obvious fact that he can’t repeat the past.
Gatsby is a dreamer and is described as having an “extraordinary gift for hope,” which marks him out as unique and is the reason for his ignorance to reality. When Gatsby dreams he believes that he can make it happen, even though “foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams.” His dreams leave a path of death and destruction but this doesn’t stop Gatsby from going after what he wants, had he not been blind to reality he would have realised a dream which causes destruction s not possible to achieve. Throughout the novel Fitzgerald uses the colour “green” to symbolise dreams. The first time we are introduced to Gatsby he is reaching out towards the “green light” across the darker waters of West Egg where he lives. Green can be seen as greed or jealousy. It goes back to Shakespearian times when he called it “the green eyed monster.” The green light which Gatsby is reaching for seems to be on East Egg which is where Daisy lives. It is flashing which seems to hypnotise Gatsby but just as you can’t physically touch light then Gatsby will never be able to achieve his dream. Gatsby does not want Daisy for herself but because marrying her would be “like marrying the King’s daughter.” If he marries Daisy then he has a way into the aristocracy which is his ultimate dream. The other characters, Daisy and Tom (her husband, are seen to be dreamless people who have already achieved their potential and do not need to dream as they don’t have anything to look forward to. Myrtle Wilson is seen as another dreamer in the novel. She is Tom’s mistress and dreams of being part of the aristocracy which is in a sense similar to Gatsby’s dream but Myrtle and Gatsby’s ignorance to reality is the result of their ultimate demise.
In order to see the lengths that Gatsby has gone to achieve his impossible dream. We must look at their houses, Gatsby’s in West Egg and Daisy’s house in East Egg. Fitzgerald uses a running comparison of the two settings; East Egg and West Egg throughout the novel which highlights the element of competition between the two social classes living in each. East Egg is where the aristocracy lives whereas West Egg is where the nouveau riche lives, Nick the narrator says: "I lived at West Egg...the less fashionable of the two... The white palaces of fashionable Egg glittered along the water." The word "palace" has the connotations of royalty and the fact that they are white suggests that they are well maintained. It isn't a contrast between the poor and the rich but it is more about the subtle things, it is that one group has somewhat a higher class than the other. It is the contrast between the nouveau riche West Egg and the aristocratic East Egg. Fitzgerald describes Tom and Daisy’s house: "Their house was even more elaborate than I had expected: a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion...when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines.” Here by the way Nick describes Daisy and Tom’s house shows that he is clearly impressed by it, “mansion” indicating the sheer size of it. Tom and Daisy’s house is from the Georgian period and the ivy that runs up the side proves that the house is an original and that it’s old. On the other hand Gatsby’s house in West Egg is described as “a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy." "Factual imitation" suggests that Gatsby's house is a direct copy, a fake of it, which then in a sense cheapens the house. This idea is further continued by the description of the ivy; "a thin beard of raw ivy." The ivy on Gatsby's house is not established, therefore the house is again pretending, this time to be older than it actually is, which shows that Gatsby is pretending to be part of the aristocracy when in actuality he is nouveau riche, the houses on East Egg have truly established ivy. Looking at both houses and where they are situated implies that Gatsby, living in West Egg, is trying to compete with East Egg, this highlights the social atmosphere and tension between the two Eggs. Gatsby had to buy a house so big in order to be like the aristocracy but he does not have the background or the history and he would know that he couldn’t be part of the aristocracy where he not so blinded by his dream. He had to go to the trouble of having a status that nearly matches the aristocracy to get his dream but the dream seems to be more trouble than it is worth. Gatsby doesn’t realise this fact due to his ignorance of reality.
In order to get into the secret society of the aristocracy and achieve his dream Gatsby created a completely new identity for himself. He wiped out his past and claimed his parents dead all for achieving his unattainable dream. The fact that he had to do such unnatural things should have made him aware that his dream was impossible to achieve but Gatsby was blind to reality. “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island had sprung from a platonic conception if himself.” Plato had a theory that everything had a right shape and form and Gatsby thought that Jay Gatsby was the right character for him. He invented this identity at the tender age of 17 which mean s that his personality and identity wouldn’t have been well rounded but rather one dimensional. If a normal person had to wipe their identity in order to achieve their dream than they should have realised that it is an unnatural thing to do and directly goes against nature, it should have warned them that the dream was unachievable. If Gatsby had paid attention to these things then he would have had a different ending but his “extraordinary gift for hope” stopped him from seeing the obvious and caused him to ignore these obvious signs along with reality which in the end caused his downfall.
Gatsby’s dream should have ended with the confrontation with Daisy’s husband Tom in a hotel in New York, which is ironic as New York is seen as the city of dreams, a great melting pot. It is a glamorous city where people are socially mobile; cars allow people to travel to different communities and to mingle with people from different social classes. Tom attacks Gatsby by calling him a “Mr Nobody from Nowhere.” Tom is basically tearing and mocking Gatsby's "fake" identity and attacking his nouveau riche class whilst showing his condescending attitude towards him. Tom knows that Gatsby made his money through questionable means, not much is known about him and add to this the fact that he's not from an affluent family and therefore according to Tom, Gatsby is not good enough for the likes of Daisy, from the upper class. This insult seems to destroy Gatsby in Daisy's eyes and she drifts further and further away from him. Which links to the glass ceiling portrayed between Gatsby and the aristocracy, it is a concept which means that you can see your dreams and it feels like you can reach out and touch them but they are not tangible. Gatsby was so close to achieving his dream but it was not to be. In addition to this Gatsby asks too much OF Daisy. He asks her to “say you never loved him!” Daisy can’t say this as she did love Tom at one point and proof of that is her and Tom’s daughter. Daisy says to Gatsby; “you ask too much. I love you now, isn’t that enough?” He’s pushing her and she’s close to the breaking point, she isn’t ready to offer him that much. It is now clear that Gatsby will not be able to win back but he still doesn’t see this. He continues to hope that she will come back to him, once again proving that he is clearly blind to reality. Fitzgerald then goes onto tells us that there was “indiscernible barbed wire between” Gatsby and the aristocracy. Just as a barbed wire separates land into that which can be accessed and that which can't, therefore this shows that there's a definite divide between Gatsby and Daisy with the degree of aristocracy acting as a barrier. Attempting to cross barbed wire can be of great danger, this illustrates that if Gatsby tries to break-through it then the consequences for him will be dire. This relates to the glass ceiling as his dream is off getting back with daisy, which he can see, but social class is the barbed wire between them that no matter how hard he tries he won't be able to cross and so won’t be able to achieve his dream.
As a result of Gatsby going against nature and being ignorant of reality, according to the Tragic Hero structure, Gatsby must be punished. First of all he had a flaw in his character which was his ability to dream. He then committed Hamartia and Atè where he took this dream to the excess and tried to go against nature. He tried to hold onto and repeat the past, when Nick, the narrator, tells him that he can’t repeat the past, Gatsby replies, “can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can.” This just shows how badly Gatsby wanted his dream. When it’s autumn and the servant asks Gatsby if he can drain the pool, Gatsby replies no. this shows that even after everything that has happened he’s still holding onto his dream and refusing to see that he will never be able to achieve it. He is blind to reality and what’s going on around him. So, following the Tragic Hero structure Gatsby is killed and the “holocaust is complete.” Even right at the end Gatsby didn’t realise the truth and face reality but now Gatsby and his dreams are dead.
Fitzgerald finishes the novel with “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” It is our nature to go back into the past, no matter what we do, how much we achieve; we will always go back to the past, with our history, we will always be reminded of it. No matter what. By wiping out his past Gatsby went to pursue a dream which was not possible and due to his ignorance of reality it was the cause of his death.
In conclusion, Gatsby the dreamer is killed because he was blind to actuality and people like Daisy and Tom Buchanan, part of the aristocracy and the one who create a glass ceiling, live. It is unfair but it is reality which is what Gatsby refused to face. Even today, dreamers die with their dreams unfulfilled because they didn’t know the limits and fantasy from reality and because they also had a Tom and Daisy in their life who created a glass ceiling and didn’t let them achieve what they wanted. So, it is seen that, had Gatsby not been blind to reality he would not have died as he would have realised that his dream was impossible.