![]() Miss Baker’s friendship with Daisy is just as secretive and manipulative. Tom isn’t even truthful with Myrtle, his mistress, and tells her he cannot marry her because Daisy is Catholic and will not file for divorce. Tom and Daisy’s relationship is the most obvious example of secrecy leading to conflict regarding Tom’s “woman in New York” and Daisy’s long-lasting infatuation with Gatsby. Characters constantly act and speak behind each other’s back, making it difficult to trust or predict anyone’s motives in the novel. The Destructive Nature of Dysfunctional Relationshipsįitzgerald’s novel is littered with questionable characters and suspicious situations. Whenever Daisy is forced into the present, she is visibly uncomfortable and anxious. Even in casual conversation, the Buchanans, particularly Daisy, reminisce about the past or plan for the future, always planning trips to the city or recollecting old acquaintances. Tom’s mistress, Myrtle, is always rhapsodizing what she and Tom will do once they are married to one another, something Tom clearly does not see in his future. Nick recognizes this immediately, feeling that Tom would “drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game” (Fitzgerald 6). The past also consumes Tom Buchanan, his one claim to fame being his football career in New Haven. Gatsby is so overcome with visions of his past that he is shackled by his own imagination and kept from forming a genuine connection with the real Daisy. The reader soon learns that Gatsby is continuously reaching for a green light at the end of the Buchanans’ dock, signifying his continual pursuit of Daisy, who is always just out of his reach. Nick observes him “stretch out his arms toward the dark water” (Fitzgerald 21). Gatsby is the clearest example of a character stuck in the past due to his obsession with Daisy. Failure to Live in the Present Obsession with the Past and Future ![]() One of the most poignant quotes of the entire novel is at the end where Nick states in reference to this unattainable dream that “We beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” showing the vanity and utter pointlessness, in his eyes, of this “American Dream” (Fitzgerald 180). Much like Gatsby, Americans still today work their entire lives to achieve their idea of the American dream, only for some to meet an untimely end before reaching this dream. To paint a picture for the reader, Nick personifies Gatsby’s pursuit of the American Dream in the green light at the end of the Buchanans’ dock, calling it the “orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (Fitzgerald 180). Fitzgerald uses Gatsby’s devastating realization to criticize people’s perception of the American Dream as simply the “culmination of wealth” (Pumphrey). However, even after seemingly fulfilling his dream by becoming filthy rich, those who inherited their wealth still treat Gatsby as an outsider -namely, the Buchanans. Born penniless, James Gatz, or Jay Gatsby, was determined to achieve his own American Dream the only way he knew how: by attaining massive wealth by whatever means necessary. Then, as now, many Americans believed that “anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, attain their own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone” (Barone). ![]() One very evident theme in Fitzgerald’s novel is the Pursuit of the American Dream during the 1920s. Other themes - such as obsession with the past or dysfunctional relationships - all tie in with this singular idea of the vanity of pursuing wealth as the only means to true happiness and success. ![]() The Great Gatsby lends itself to many themes, but the primary purpose of the novel is to provide a sharp criticism of the American Dream as defined during the 1920s. The Destructive Nature of Dysfunctional Relationships.Failure to Live in the Present Obsession with the Past and Future. ![]()
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