Ambition In The Great Gatsby

“He had a big future before him, you know. He was only a young man, but he had a lot of brain power here,” says Henry Gatz as he touches his forehead. “If he’d of lived, he’d of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill. He’d of helped build up the country.”
The title character of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a new power player in the New York City of the roaring 20’s, where alcohol is illegal yet still consumed, and where parties are common among those who can host them. However, what sets him apart from the rest of his peers is a sense of purpose, his neglect for indulging in the finer things of life, and his pursuance of goals not yet attained. He works for a better future for himself and those around him, where another might simply fall into the addiction of a comfortable life. Jay Gatsby is an ambitious and committed man, whose powerful optimism is both his greatest strength and his worst weakness.
The first of his defining traits, his ambition, has been around ever since his childhood, where …show more content…
He begins with a simple schedule and a dream, and works from there, even past the setbacks of Cody’s death and the war, until he finds a way to come so close to his goals that he can feel them on his fingertips. If not for his foolishness with Daisy Buchanan, he might grasp, and even secure, his plans for the future. His ambition leads him to strike out on his own, to find a way to the top, and his commitment to such a goal allows him to become closer to that which he desires than most ever would be, and his optimism, no matter how blind, convinces him to keep on pushing, even if he has already begun to fall from grace. If not for some outside elements, he may have fulfilled his father’s prediction. He may have become the man that builds the country up from the ground up and instills a work ethic to make the world a better