THE GREAT GATSBY ESSAY!

The Great Gatsby is written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story is told by Nick Caraway, he is in love with Jordan Baker. Jordan’s sister, Daisy Buchanan is married to Tom Buchanan, although Daisy is really in love with Jay Gatsby. Tom is having an affair with Myrtle Wilson, but Myrtle is married to George Wilson. The Great Gatsby is portrayed as the American dream in the beginning but once you get into it, suddenly it does not seem so perfect. There are affairs left and right, Gatsby seems like this perfect person, he is always throwing huge parties that people go to from all over. Tom is an alcoholic and abuses his mistress, Myrtle, and Daisy married the wrong person, and she loves someone else now. The Great Gatsby is not the American dream.


Gatsby is the perfect person in the book, he is someone everyone wants to be and know. He is always throwing elaborate parties and everyone goes to them weather they were invited or not. Gatsby portrays the American dream in the beginning of the book, everyone wants to be friends with him and go to his parties. The ironic thing is though when Gatsby dies no body went to his funeral, not even Daisy who said she was in love with him. The only people who went to his funeral were Nick, Mr. Gatz who is Gatsby's dad, and old owl eyes. For someone who had parties all the time, that’s not very many people who really and truly cared about him. I would have at least expected Daisy and Tom to be there.


Gatsby starts out as the ideal American, rich, famous person. But as you get into the book you start to unravel the story, Gatsby is lying about everything, his name, his background, even his family. There are rumors left and right about him. He says he graduated from Oxford, well that’s a lie. He dropped out after a month. When he was 18 he legally changed his name to Jay Gatsby, his original name was Jimmy Gatz. Another rumor was that his family was a rich, wealthy family from Germany. But really they were just from some state in the mid east, they owned a farm and Gatsby was ashamed of that life. He made up a whole other identity so that he could win back Daisy.


Gatsby and Daisy knew each other from back before Daisy and Tom got married. They loved each other but Gatsby went away to war so they broke up. When Daisy saw Gatsby again she claimed to fall madly in love with him once again, however this new Gatsby is rich and popular so I think she was in it just for the money and fame. Daisy claims to have married the wrong man, Tom. When she meets Gatsby again she falls in love with him and starts to have an affair with him. Tom finds out about the affair and soon Gatsby and Tom are competing for Daisy's love. All of these intertwined affairs are all confusing and get locked up in the big picture of the American dream. None of these relations ships are perfect and can represent the American dream, almost all of them have something going on beneath the picture perfect people.


Shortly into the book there is a dinner party that Nick, Myrtle, Tom, Catherine, and Mr. MeKee all go to. It starts out as the ideal dinner party that anyone would want to go to. They are having fun, drinking, laughing, and talking. But some are drinking too much. Tom and Myrtle start drinking too much and start to fight, until Tom slaps Myrtle across the face and breaks her nose. So what started as a perfect party does not end up well and is not like the American dream at all.


The Great Gatsby starts out as a book where all the characters are perfect and they have money and lots of friends, but once you really get into the book and discover the truth about the people in the book then you discover that none of them are good examples for the American dream. Tom cheats on Daisy with Myrtle. Daisy cheats on Tom with Gatsby. Myrtle cheats on George with Tom. Gatsby Lies to everyone about his life. Nick and Jordan are the only sane ones and somewhat represent the American dream. The Great Gatsby and the characters in it do not represent the American dream at all.