Examples Of Narcissism In The Great Gatsby

Many pathological narcissists, like Gatsby, feel a strong sense of entitlement, often in situations that they want to have total control over. Gatsby feels that he deserves Daisy’s love and seems to ignore both Daisy and Tom’s feelings. This is evident in Gatsby’s obsessive need for Daisy to retract her romantic feelings for Tom when Gatsby “wanted nothing less than that she should got to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you’” (Fitzgerald 109). These selfish desires also contradict his “love” for Daisy as he seems to completely ignore her feelings in this situation, and this further explains his narcissistic personality. Gatsby also feels that he is entitled to clearance from the law, simply because he is “the” Jay Gatsby. When Gatsby and Nick are driving, they are approached by a policeman but the policeman lets them go after Gatsby shows him some sort of card (Fitzgerald 68). Gatsby also seems to use his …show more content…
Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) provides a glimpse into the mind of Mr. Jay Gatsby, a passionate and wealthy man that exhibits many characteristics of a pathological narcissist in his relationships with other characters, his personal decisions and interests, and his general behavior. By recognizing this narcissistic behavior in Gatsby’s character, readers can recognize and fathom the ugliness of narcissism in real life situations. It is often easiest to understand psychology through example and experience, and novels are an ideal source for these examples since they do not exploit a real person, only a fictional character. By examining and analyzing this example of pathological narcissism, we can gain insight into an area of behavioural science that is mysterious and difficult to study. Taking a psychoanalytic approach to Jay Gatsby’s character in The Great Gatsby also allows us to better comprehend Gatsby’s choices and behaviors, deepening our understanding of the story’s plot as a whole, and perhaps even reinventing our perception of the