F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby '

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a classic American story that found a big screen adaption in 2013 by Baz Luhrmann. While a film adaption is never perfect, Luhrmann’s film emphasizes certain parts of the novel more than others. Something that is seen in both the book and movie, but more emphasized in the movie, is how dependent Gatsby’s identity is on Daisy. Daisy is the girl who Gatsby fell in love with before he went to war, yet was never able to reunite with. As the story progresses it becomes obvious that there is more to Gatsby than meets the eye. Fitzgerald’s book and Luhrmann’s film both show how Gatsby’s identity is interwoven with Daisy, but it is made more evident in the film. From the beginning of the book and movie no one is clear as to who exactly Gatsby is. At the first party Nick attends, partygoers speculate that Gatsby “was a German spy during the war” or “killed a man once” (Fitzgerald 44). In the film these wonderings are seen as well. This suggests that …show more content…
Gatsby, originally named James Gatz, was the son of a poor family growing up. Jay Gatsby “sprang from his Platonic conception of himself” in the hopes to disassociate from his past (Fitzgerald 98). Jay Gatsby was who James Gatz always wanted to be; someone who was rich and respectable. This is something that is made evident in both the book and film when Gatsby speaks of the first time he kissed Daisy. In the film it is stated that Gatsby knew he couldn’t provide for her the way she expected, and needed time to improve himself on his own. The book leaves more room to speculate that Gatsby was only in love with the money and Daisy just happened to fit that picture, but does iterate that his desire “wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath” (Fitzgerald 110). This is a major way that the film gives a one dimensional argument that Jay Gatsby was created for Daisy, and without her he is