The Great Gatsby :: essays research papers

A good novel has a number ofthemes. The following are important themes of The GreatGatsby. The degeneracy of the American dreaming, quid andinsight, the meaning of the past, and the education of a youngman. The American Dream was based on the assumptionthat each person, no matter what his origins, could succeedin feel on the sole basis of his or her own skill and effort. Thedream was embodied in the ideal of the self-made man, justas it was embodied in Fitzgeralds own family by hisgrandfather, P. F. McQuillan. The Great Gatsby is a novelabout what happened to the American dream in the 1920s, aperiod when the old values that gave substance to the dreamhad been corrupted by the vulgar pursuit of wealth. Thecharacters are Midwesterners who know come East inpursuit of this new dream of money, fame, success, glamour,and excitement. Tom and Daisy must have a huge house, astable of polo ponies, and friends in Europe. Gatsby musthave his enormous mansion before he can feel confident ge nerous to try to win Daisy. The energy that might have goneinto the pursuit of noble goals has been channeled into thepursuit of power and pleasure, and a very showy, butfundamentally drop off form of success. The characters mightbe divided into three groups 1. Nick, the observer andcommentator, who sees what has gone wrong 2. Gatsby,who lives the dream purely and 3. Tom, Daisy, and Jordan,the "foul dust" who are the prime examples of the corruptionof the dream. The primary images and symbols thatFitzgerald employs in developing the theme are 1. the greenlight 2. the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg 3. the image of theEast and Midwest 4. Owl Eyes 5. Dan Codys yacht and6. unearthly terms such as grail and incarnation. Both thecharacter groupings and the images and symbols suggest asecond major theme that we can call "sight and insight." Asyou read the novel, you will come across many images ofblindness is this because hardly anyone seems to see what isreally going on? Th e characters have little self-knowledgeand even less(prenominal) knowledge of each other. Even Gatsby- wemight say, especially Gatsby- lacks the insight to understandwhat is happening. He never truly sees either Daisy orhimself, so blinded is he by his dream. The only characterswho see, in the sense of "understand," are Nick and OwlEyes. The ever present eyes of Dr. Eckleburg seem toreinforce the theme that there is no all-seeing presence in the