The Great Gatsby Reality Analysis

Life in the Roaring Twenties revolved around parting and money. The Great Gatsby offers a view of how people probably were back then. Many of the characters refused to live in reality and instead lived with the illusions they had created for themselves. The characters fool themselves and others into believing they are better than they really are. As they turned illusions into reality they created a life of misery and uncertainty. Nick Carraway is the narrator of the novel and the judge of the events going on. He is an empirical and traditional young man who wanted to get away from his small town, so he moved to New York. While in New York he meets Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Jay Gatsby, and many other interesting people. Nick describes himself …show more content…
Daisy is introduced in the first chapter sitting on an “enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house.” (Ch.1) From the beginning Daisy is associated with purity and otherworldliness. She is always at the height of fashion and addresses people with endearing terms. As more of Daisy is discovered she becomes less and less admirable and beautiful. She doesn 't do anything about her husbands affair because she enjoys the money and benefits she gets from him. When Daisy and Gatsby reunite at first she appears to have found love, but that isn 't true at all. She uses Gatsby to get back at her husband Tom for his affair. Daisy 's true self really is revealed when she hits Myrtle Wilson with her car and just leaves her. Gatsby in the illusion he created for Daisy, takes the blame for the accident and Daisy returns home like nothing happened. She and Tom make up and leave New York behind. Daisy doesn 't even call Gatsby before his death or feel guilty that an innocent man is taking the blame for her crime. Daisy 's illusion is her purity and beauty. Her reality is that she is really a selfish, shallow, and hurtful woman who only cares about her social …show more content…
The novel also describes the Jazz Age perfectly. The passing of the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the sale and drinking of alchol in America. This made millionaires out of many bootleggers like Gatsby. Fitzgerald 's entire novel can be seen as the way he views the American Dream. He shows his disillusionment with the Dream in the separation of the East and West Egg. He believes the American Dream is a lie and you must be born into money to truly enjoy the benefits. The lake between the East and West Egg symbolizes the separation of the new and old money and the social classes. Fitzgerald believes the poor will never achieve or have what the wealthy do no matter how hard they try. This novel gives many warnings against excessive love of money and material