The Great Gatsby –
Characters, modern society and the end of a dream

by: Shiva Rezaeifard

Table of contents

1. Introduction

2. Characterization of the leading characters

2.1.1 Jay Gatsby: A romantic or a comic hero
2.1.2 Daisy′s significance for Gatsby′s dream

2.2.1 The l - Narrator: Nick Carraway

2.3.1 Characterization of Tom and Daisy
2.3.2 Relation between Tom, Daisy and Myrtle

3. The profile of a modern society

3.1 The settings and their figures
3.2 The features of this society and the reason for the tragic end

4. The end of a dream

5. Supplement

6. Literature

1. Introduction

Reading the “The Great Gatsby”, I was very impressed about the style and the way the author let his actors behave or the description of the settings. At first sight it gives the impression of a lucid and meaningless novel, but it contains many disguise and metaphoric meanings. What impressed me most was the ascent and downfall of a kind and naive man by the cruel and wicked society. In the following pages, I try to explain and to analyse Gatsby’s sole dream: his obsession for his one-time love – Daisy. First of all, as a foundation, I will characterize the main actors, then analyse the important settings and their influence on the figures and finally try to explain why it ends in this way.

2. Characterisation of the leading actors

2.1.1 Jay Gatsby: a romantic or a comic hero?

Jay Gatsby represents the type of a romantic hero as his whole behaviour serves as a means to fight for a woman’s love which has become the sense of his life. Instead of living in reality, Gatsby desperately tries to catch the past and to transfer it to an illusory future. “`Can’t repeat the past?´ he cried incredulously. `Why of course you can!´ He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.”¹ His present wealth and extravagant way of life are only a transitional stage that is to precede final fulfillment of his eternal dream, personified by Daisy, his one-time love. He is the prince or the knight in a fairy-tale without happy end since all his endeavours are in vain. Contrary to most of the superficial people surrounding him, Gatsby still believes in eternal and true love, a value he considers to be more important than money. “He was a son of God - a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that - and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty.”² But as Daisy, “the golden girl”³, belongs to a world in which money rules people’s mind, Gatsby knows that the only way of regaining her love is to offer her the life style she is used to. His party-guests are ignorant extras that can’t look behind Gatsby’s facade. Nick, the observing narrator, is the only one who sees through Gatsby’s real motives, but being a member of the “unromantic” and realistic American society, he is not able to understand Gatsby or even to protect him from the destructive influence of Tom and Daisy. Gatsby’s enormous power is based on his imagination, which is the essential element that builds up his dream world. Similar to the atmosphere in a fairy tale, time sometimes seems to stand still in his life, especially the afternoon Gatsby and Daisy spend together at Nick’s house. But this scene also reveals the instability and transitoriness of Gatsby’s dream. Realizing that a repetition will be impossible because of Daisy’s lack of real emotions and her superficial character, Gatsby loses all his selfconscience and control over himself. He must accept that, for five years, he has struggled in vain. “He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock.”⁴ His misjudgement on the situation, his lack of realistic farsightedness and his desperate way of fulfilling his dream let him appear in a comical or even ridiculous light. “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dream – not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion.”⁵

There are too many discrepancies between Gatsby’s illusory world and the conventional and hardened society around him. A man like Gatsby, reaching for a higher aim than money, cannot be taken seriously. His comedown starts when he unveils his secret love for Daisy. “[…] his career as Trimalchio was over.”⁶ He turns into a comic hero when he realizes his defeat and begins to fight with his last ounce of strength. His outward appearance, his nervousness and his exaggerated self-pity give the impression of a naive dreamer that cannot cope with reality. “Then I turned back at Gatsby – and was startled at his expression. He looked […] as if he has killed a man.” “[…] he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been made.”⁷ It is a question of perspective if Gatsby should be considered as a romantic or a comic hero. Nick is definitely the only character concerned who is aware of Gatsby’s sincere motives and who knows that people like the Buchanans are to blame for Gatsby’s tragic death.

2.1.2 Daisy’s significance for Gatsby’s dream

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1 (p.117)

2 (p.105)

3 (p.126)

4 (p.99)

5 (p.102f)

6 (p.119)

7 (p.141)