Misperception Between Reality And Reality In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

In the battle of ones trues existence the battle between reality and fantasy is at its peak, leaving one in a constant fluctuating state of confusion. The misperception between reality and fantasy leaves the view of the past in present indistinguishable. We must accept that reality is not in the eye of the beholder, otherwise we will have an obscured view of our current surroundings left to fill in the missing blanks with our own mental constructs. In the novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), F. Scott Fitzgerald ventures on the tempting nature of ambition and how his character’s struggle with the issues that arise when they attempt to differentiate between illusion and reality. The novel portrays this theme through the personality and motivations …show more content…
Gatsby continuous to grasp at the life he once had by ignoring the present and trying to pick up where he left off with his last encounter with Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby had never stopped believing that one day he would end up with Daisy causing Gatsby to develop a narrowed vision towards his goal. Nick Carraway suggests that “you can’t repeat the past.” Gatsby responded, “Why of course you can!” He remains composed, maintaining an innocence in his corrupt world. He fails to realize that the past is gone and this illusion is what drove Gatsby through life. Gatsby has been caught in a web of lies and has entangled the life that he had imagined with the life that he truly lived. Though with each falsehood in Gatsby’s stories he always maintains a bit of the truth which in turn “deepens our fascination of Gatsby” (4 Cartwright). The irony to Gatsby’s dream is that it is an item that no amount of accumulated wealth can buy. Selvi Bunce states even “she represents what new money can’t buy” (164-168). Gatsby was fully aware of Daisy’s status and even compared her to money herself implying that with enough hard work one can attain any variety of wealth. The reader is given a view into the lives of these characters by Nick, the narrator, He is an idealistic mid-western salesman trying to make a go of it on Wall Street. The entire a novel is filtered through Nick’s vision of Gatsby and is recalled entirely through his memory, …show more content…
Fulfilling the American Dream’s dedication to the opportunity that “anyone, no matter how lowly his origins, could rise and become a success” (4). Roger L. Pearson states the American dream is “a metaphor, the aforementioned exponents of The American dream were The Old Testaments prophets predicting the coming of a golden age.” This would explain that The American dream is a replacement for religion and is the reason for the lack of it. Gatsby both exemplifies and ignores this dream. His chase for the American Dream is a just a stepping stone on his path to achieve Daisy and his capacity to chase these illusions which drives the ethics in the novel. Gastby’s ambition to understand something other than his true reality is what lead to his ultimate downfall. Those that did not already live the life of the dream yearned for it and believe it was a was at their fingertips. The characters who pursue their unrealistic dreams may lose themselves in the self-battle for what they truly desire and what they really need.
In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald even the most fascinating of characters are fooled by these illusions, whether it stems from society or the era they lived in was surrounded by indiscretion. A viewer from the outside would see the disorder of the of the character’s mental constructs of society. These illusions would be cemented into reality when it was truly believed as fact. When chasing