Amber Carlson

Morrow

English IIIA

11December 2017

Great Gatsby Character Dialects

Jim Gatsby “Then It is the purpose of a society to form a system of lives that maximizes

came the war, old its members quality of life. A society that allows a life to become so

sport. It was a great miserable that death is preferable, has failed in that most fundamental

relief and I tried purpose. As James Baldwin said, “the most dangerous creation of any

very hard to die but I society is the man with nothing to lose.” For a soldier to die in his

seemed to bear an country’s name is one of the few means of intentional death that

enchanted life.” (4, society doesn’t condemn, a means Gatsby lost upon his safe return

70) from the war. This forced him to choose between the prison his own

life had become and being remembered with pity and a sad shake of the

head. What was left to turn to but denial, humanity’s first defense

against unwanted knowledge? Surely a cage forgotten is not really a

prison. So, he built his disguise, he wrapped the bars in ribbons and

sparkling lights, surrounding himself with satin and cheerful music.

He changed his name, collected the virtues preached by his jailors and

pinned them like framed butterflies to his walls, an ornate display of

corpses, beautiful and empty. Wealth, culture, knowledge, popularity,

 sophistication, dedication, all husks arranged, each in their place,

perfect and meaningless, every detail meticulously arranged until

Gatsby himself forgot their fallacy. All who beheld him, gazed in

wonder, unable to believe or refute the masterpiece which they beheld,

that living death, antithesis to all they thought they knew, born of their

ignorant judgement and fictitious conceptions of idyllic life, irrefutable

proof against of their materialism and hollow ideals. They saw and

looked away, forgot, afraid of those truths that once acknowledged can

never be unlearned. Better to walk in ignorance than to tear the veils

masking their own prisons.

Jim Gatsby “He The American Dream would say that Gatsby should be happy because

hadn’t once ceased he is successful and wealthy, but this is not the case. Because he has

looking at Daisy and decided that his sole purpose is to win Daisy, his possessions bring him

I think he revalued no joy save the progress they make toward that goal. I would compare

everything in his this single-minded dedication to a quote from Game of Thrones,

house according to “Every time I'm faced with a decision, I close my eyes and see the

the measure of same picture. Whenever I consider a question, I ask myself, 'Will this

response it drew action make this picture a reality?' [I] pull it out of my mind and into

from her well-loved the world ... and I only act if the answer is yes.” Gatsby acquired

eyes.” (5, 96) wealth and acclaim to impress Daisy; he bought the house with a view

of her own; he threw grand parties every week watching for her around

every corner and in every face; for all his prestige, he all but begged his

neighbor to plan a ‘coincidental’ meeting. Every action he takes is

 solely intended to take him one step closer to Daisy. The only dream

that matters to him is a memory turned fantasy through countless

rememberings

Jim Gatsby “His Gatsby has dedicated much of his life to the acquisition of wealth,

bedroom was the furnished his mansion with masterful attention to detail, and throws

simplest room of extravagant parties every week. Yet, for all his toil, this display,

all” (5, 97) epitomizing the American Success Story, is nothing more than an

illusion. He builds a character, a success story, based on society’s

chosen virtues. He walks through life playing the role he feels is

expected of him, yet cares for it not at all. Every room he fills with

character, with decorum and purpose, each room an exhibit embodying

those traits society praises: a library for a learned man, a grand piano

for a cultured man, a swimming pool and hydroplane for a genial man,

every detail a testament his good taste and sophistication, all save his

own room lying bare of these projections. The illusion is so complete

that none can find its flaw, yet so empty of meaning that all suspect

him of his duplicity. It is vice they suspect, for that is easy to

understand, but they cannot begin to guess that Gatsby himself should

be the lie. He takes no joy from his library of unread books, from the

piano he cannot play, the swimming pool used only once. His room is

a shell, as empty and hollow as its occupant.

Jim Gatsby “’I’m going We lose things that matter to us on a daily basis from car keys to

to fix everything just homes swallowed by a hurricane. Most of these can be found or

the way it was before,” rebuilt, but some cannot, for time is immutable. They say that youth

he said, nodding is wasted on the young, for they do not know its value until it is

determinedly. “She’ll gone. Such knowledge is a double-edged sword, for like youth,

see.” He talked a lot ignorance lost can never truly be regained. When Gatsby was

about the past and I young, in the time he first knew Daisy, he was happy. He did not, at

gathered that he wanted the time, question the source of this joy and contentment until it was

to recover something, gone. When he went off to war, he saw many horrors and learned

some idea of himself many dark truths that sapped from him that easy, innocent joy he

perhaps, that had gone had once known. Not knowing the true source of his past happiness,

into loving Daisy. His he chose one to believe in and dedicated his life to the pursuit of it.

life had been confused He believed Daisy to be his only source of happiness, and that belief

and disordered since is what made the illusion so convincing. The problem arises when

then, but if he could he is reunited with Daisy and is faced with the reality behind his

once return to a certain delusions, behind the empty American ideals, that happiness is a

starting place and go mindset that cannot be contrived through the collection of wealth or

over it all slowly, he even love. Not accepting this, he continues to cling to his love for

could find out what that Daisy while searching in the dark for that which he lost, never

thing was….” (6, 117) knowing what it is he seeks, or how futile the effort, because that

idyllic optimism of youth, that sheltered naivete, that blissful

ignorance can never be restored, only replaced. Happiness is a

choice given meaning only by one’s belief in it.

Jim Gatsby ““Was Sacrificing oneself to save someone they love, or even as specific as

Daisy driving?” “Yes,” confessing culpability for a lover’s crime, is an age-old archetype

he said after a moment, that has become even more popular with media’s defining love as

“but of course I’ll say I caring more for another than oneself. Gatsby takes the idea further,

was.”” (7, 151) by taking it for granted. So dedicated is he that, like his possessions,

the only value he can see in himself is that reflected in the eyes of

his beloved Daisy, while any costs to himself are immaterial. He

feels that to value his own welfare over Daisy’s, would be a betrayal

of that single-minded purpose. Like a house of cards, each pair

must stand alone before the queen may be balanced atop, but when

the queen falls, so too do the stanchions. Everything he built, his

wealth and acclaim, his every accomplishment, contrary to

American materialism, brings him no joy in and of itself, but for the

headway it makes in his quest for Daisy. Had these deeds stood

incomplete, they may have long endured, but to reach their end and

fail, razed the structure to its foundation. Better to pay any price,

then to watch his life crumble around him, burying Gatsby in the ash

of his deeds, a grave marked only by the looming skeleton of his

life, stiped bare of pretense for all the world to see. Self-sacrifice in

Daisy’s name is no more a choice to Gatsby than wearing a coat on

a winter’s day, obvious, hardly worthy of mention.