How far a person will go to accomplish a dream has no limits. If it includes self-reinvention, illegal acts, and self-indulgence the dream may not be as a result significant. But that is the case, in The Great Gatsby, by F Scott Fitzgerald, as the narrator Nick tells the accomplishments and wasted acts of the man known as Gatsby. Nick chooses to tell us this story to illustrate the consequences of Gatsby a man who he in the end has a positive opinion of and respects for his courage at attempting to fulfill a futile dream. Nick, the narrator, tells Gatsby’s story to paint a picture of an American Dream and how it becomes so crucial to accomplish a certain part of the dream that one becomes careless; which leads into other outside ambitions that alter the dream and which is therefore never accomplished. Nick summarizes this by saying “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (189).
This quote is most significant because it sums up the book and how it can be applied to Gatsby’s life and the life of numerous others. It says “we” are like boats beating against the current meaning that people struggle to prosper for a dream but never truly achieve happiness. Although people to some extent do prosper they desire more and more that ultimately forget, dim or glorify the purpose of the dream and that leads t them into never attaining happiness. Gatsby’s life is an example of all of this because he reached high for Daisy’s love but in the end did not receive it because he was rather immoral in his journey in doing so. The end of Gatsby’s story is full of sad events and the reader must read between the lines. The reader must come to understand that Nick tells us Gatsby’s story as an example of what not to do, so that somehow readers can learn from the mistakes others commit and their own so that humanity can live more of a complete life.
The Essay on Jay Gatsby Daisy Nick Impress
... Nick with his proof and his stories, this disturbed Nick because this proof that Gatsby was showing him made Nick ... let it go until he accomplishes it. The things that Jay Gatsby values the most is money, ... when people think of America and the American Dream, they think of wealth, acceptances and the ... his past except certain fabricated highlights of his life which were designed to impress others. The ...
From the beginning Nick tells us how he controversially feels about Gatsby. Nick says “Gatsby who represented everything for which I have and unaffected scorn” (6) later goes on and says “Gatsby turned out all right at the end” (6).
It is difficult for the reader to come to a conclusion as to what Nick’s opinion of Gatsby is. But it can be interpreted, that he feels differently about some aspects of Gatsby.
Such as that he admires him for attempting to a great extent to make his dream come true. Gatsby changed his whole life reinventing himself and reengineering his own destiny just so that the women he loved, Daisy, could take another glance at him. But Nick does not agree with Gatsby immoral dishonesty and illegal acts that Gatsby relies on to make money; Nick expresses his feelings of this near the end of the book by saying “I disliked him so much by this time that I didn’t find it necessary to tell him he was wrong” (151).
But Gatsby death in the end serves as the sympathetic conclusion which Nick expresses by saying “It wasn’t worth a decent stroke of work but it was more than that-I didn’t want to leave Gatsby” (161).
This meaning that Nick feels sympathy and somewhat pity towards Gatsby because he dies perusing his dream that was worthless and a bit foolish, which leads to the overall positive opinion that Nick feels in the end of Gatsby. Coming to the conclusion that because Nick feels sympathy towards Gatsby, he believes that Gatsby’s story is one worth telling from which a lesson can be learned.
This lesson can be applied to the many lives of the people searching for the American dream. So that they do not fall into the same foolish traps and truly achieve happiness without waiting for or relying on other outsize ambitions.
