Wow, I am really gassing up this Shadow and Gatsby thing, huh? Once you fall down the rabbit hole, it’s hard to pull yourself out of it!
Shadow’s themes in Sonic Adventure 2, “Throw It All Away” and “For True Story,” can also serve as themes for Gatsby.
For “Throw It All Away,” I’ll be working with the first verse of the song.
Everybody tries to be straight But things are still unchanged It's useless to resist this Their effort will be wasted Head straight for your goal by any means There is a door that you never have opened There is a window with the view you have never seen Get there, no matter how long it takes
Lyrics like “There is a door that you have never opened / There is a window with a view you have never seen” echo Gatsby’s fixation on the life he imagined with Daisy—a future akin to a mirage that appears on the horizon from the rising sun; it’s not real. Gatsby’s relentless delusional belief that he can recreate the past parallels another lyric in the song: “Get there, no matter how long it takes.” The line encapsulates the obsessive drive, vengeance and hopeless romanticism, fueling both characters in the present. Similarly, “Head straight for your goal by any means” musically mirrors Gatsby’s single-minded self-destructive pursuit of Daisy. He reinvents himself by accumulating wealth through questionable means and in turn, Gatsby sacrifices his peaceful reintegration back into society for a past out of reach. My favorite lyric that parallels Gatsby, and very perfectly I may add, is “You see the light wherever you go / You have to face it again and again.” It eerily mirrors Gatsby’s constant reach for the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. What started out as a symbol of hope in the beginning of The Great Gatsby, eventually turned into a painful reminder of everything he can’t truly attain.
In the case of “For True Story,” the song creates an emotional backdrop with its stark repetitive imagery.
Stars don’t twinkle The moon doesn’t shine Birds don’t sing The wind doesn’t blow
The desolate world it paints represents the emotional numbness hidden beneath the waters of Gatsby’s charismatic front. When the party’s over, he is surrounded by the deafening silence of his own longing. There’s no more music and no more laughter to distract him from the hollow echoes of an unrealistic dream. Finally, “I’m shivering with cold / I struggle against despair” brings us closer to the core of Gatsby and Shadow. They’re haunted by loss and cursed with chasing illusions based on the past.
Multimodal Final Project & Presentation: EXPO 1213-001 with Dr. Catherine Mintler
When you think of The Great Gatsby, your mind certainly does not immediately think of Shadow the Hedgehog (honestly the entire Sonic franchise as a whole really). I certainly didn’t until a couple nights ago I decided to mess around with ChatGPT. I had already been messing around with ChatGPT’s capabilities with seeing who it’d cast in a live-action adaptation of Part 3 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders. I was laughing around with one of my friends over an Instagram post where Jack Black was Jotaro Kujo. We asked ChatGPT who he’d be replaced by and had a blast with its answers. After we had our fun, I thought to myself, “I wonder what else I could ask for…” I have been struggling with keeping up with blog posts, so I decided to ask if it could find any similarities between Shadow the Hedgehog and Jay Gatsby for gits and shiggles.
Boy, was I shocked.
I wasn’t shocked at the similarities. I was shocked at the obscurity of it. Like, who would’ve thought?
So, for my Multimodal Project and Final Presentation for this course, 21st Century Great Gatsby, I will be discussing the parallels between Shadow the Hedgehog and Jay Gatsby using literary and musical analysis.
Ghosts of What Once Was: The Wounds That Never Closed
Both Shadow and Gatsby are haunted by their pasts, and their trauma drives all of their motivations in the present.
For Shadow, it’s the tragic loss of Maria, his sister-like companion whom he had rich platonic love for. Shadow was created by Gerald Robotnik, Maria’s grandfather, to be the Ultimate Lifeform—an immortal, invulnerable, biological weapon commissioned by the United Federation (Sonic Universe United States) onboard the Space Colony ARK. However, after some time passes after his conception, the implied danger that Shadow poses to its commissioner causes GUN (Guardian Units of Nations, Sonic Universe CIA) to raid the ARK which kills Maria in the process. Shadow is captured by GUN and placed into suspended animation until he wakes up fifty years later by Dr. Eggman. Maria’s tragic death left him broken that he embarks on a quest for vengeance and retribution against humanity believing that by making humanity suffer as much as he has (by crashing the ARK into the Earth to destroy everything), he might finally find the peace to allow him to live in the present without Maria.
Similarly, Gatsby’s motivation is rooted in his lost, romantic love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met and had a brief romance with before being shipped off to Europe to fight in World War I. While away, he visualizes a perfect future with Daisy upon his return all while enduring a hellish landscape. It’s what keeps him going, but when he returned, Daisy had moved on and married another man: Tom Buchanan. Combining Daisy breaking his heart with the silent shell shock of WWI, Gatsby spirals into the man we meet through Nick Carraway. Everything he does as a result of reality discouraging his vision—his wealth, his mansion, his lavish parties, his careful reinvention and construction of his iconic charismatic persona—is a desperate attempt to rewrite the present in manner that would free him from the traumatic shackles of the in-between. He clings to the belief that if their love can be restored, he’ll truly be able to live in the present and for the future.
Facing Reality: Sonic & Tom
Both Shadow and Gatsby face counterparts who represent the lives they could have led.
Shadow with Sonic, and Gatsby with Tom Buchanan.
In Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow’s debut game and main source for this project, Sonic and Shadow are rivals not just through their equal power but also in ideology. Sonic is carefree, grounded, and heroic by choice—everything that Shadow could have been under different circumstances. Their face-off is very intense, reflecting a collision of purpose and thought, but it’s not the wake up call that puts Shadow on the path of heroism just yet. That comes later on after his battle with Sonic when Amy Rose (one of Sonic’s friends) begs Shadow to change his mind and help them save the world from the ARK descending onto the Earth. During her pleading, she accidentally triggers his memories of Maria which caused him to put aside his rage to reorient himself in accordance to what Maria would have wanted.
Gatsby also has a physical confrontation with his rival: Tom Buchanan. Their fight is characterized by a dramatic clashing of class, control, and legitimacy. Tom ruthlessly destroys Gatsby’s dream with brutal blows that expose the cracks of his fantasy. But even then, Gatsby still refuses to let go. He still believes that Daisy will leave Tom for him. He doesn’t reorient himself to fit the best interest of Daisy. Gatsby continues plowing forward acting in his own selfish desires.
Both of these confrontations serve not only as physical reminders of what they are doing is wrong, but they also function as internal moments of doubt. However, their pursuit of chasing their dreams does not end here despite their face-off with reality.
Tragic Endings: A Memory Worth Dying For
Despite their similar struggles, the endings for Shadow and Gatsby are fundamentally different, though both are tragic in their own respective ways.
Shadow’s death is one of self-realization, self-actualization, and peace. After the iconic climactic battle against the FinalHazard (Sonic Adventure 2’s true final boss) which required him to team up with Sonic, Shadow chooses to sacrifice himself to protect humanity before it completes its deadly descent onto the Earth. In doing so, he honors Maria’s memory and finally acceptsthepast. In his final moments, hechoosestolivewithit in exchange for throwing his vengeance away as an act of redemption. Though his death is tragic, it is also empowered by choice.
Gatsby’s death, on the other hand, is a tragic culmination of hisrefusaltoletgoofthepast. It reeks of the TikTok meme phrase, “Well if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions.” He is murdered by George Wilson while waiting for a call from Daisy that was never going to come in the first place. His death is passive. His end is the result of misplaced hope and toxic romanticization of an idealized life with Daisy. Unlike Shadow, Gatsby dies still clinging to a dream that was never meant to be. He was unable to break free from the illusion of his past.
Of Green Lights and Green Emeralds: What Did We Learn?
“…he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light…”
– Nick Carraway, seeing Gatsby reach for the green light.
“It all starts with this…A jewel containing the ultimate power…”
– Shadow the Hedgehog, implying how the Green Chaos Emerald is the beginning of reaching satisfaction.
Shadow the Hedgehog can serve as a modern reflection of Jay Gatsby—a character who is famously defined by his trauma, idealism, and tragic end. While both characters are shaped by the events of their past, their journeys reveal a profound difference in how to confront reality. Shadow ultimately finds peace through his sacrifice as an act of redemption and closure, while Gatsby remains willfully shackled to the past, refusing to accept the destabilizing elements of the present. They’re two sides of the same coin.
Shadow dies with newfound, yet short-lived, purpose and clarity to honor Maria by choosing to save the world rather than destroying it.
Gatsby dies clutching to an illusion. He died alone, misunderstood, and forever waiting for a call that never comes.
The obscure, though comical in nature, literary parallel found in Gatsby and Shadow the Hedgehog not only serves as a testament to why The Great Gatsby continues to endure in the 21st century, but it also illustrates the extremities of what happens when we choose to live in the past or when we choose to accept it—another key reason to why the story of Gatsby resonates in modern-day media.
Continuing off of my metaphorical high generated from my analysis of Sonic the Hedgehog and Daisy Buchanan being literary parallels, I couldn’t help but continue to traverse deeper into the rabbit hole of finding unexpected parallels between anthropomorphic hedgehogs and the world of TGG. My brain has never been so unseriously, yet intellectually, stimulated like this before. The combination of a deeply rooted personal interest stemming from my childhood and a newfound appreciation of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby alongside taking a course dedicated to its endurance in the 21st century has allowed for connections one would never even conjure nor entertain.
When you think of The Great Gatsby, your mind certainly does not immediately think of Shadow the Hedgehog (honestly the entire Sonic franchise as a whole really). Shadow is one of the most complex and well-written characters of the Sonic franchise. He gives the blue blur a run for his rings in their iconic rivalry and when it comes to winning the affection of the fans. There are a surplus amount of feature film-length video essays on YouTube that do deep dives into Shadow as a character, what he represents, and why he’s the unofficial 2nd face of the Sonic franchise. Sorry Tails!
Why Shadow the Hedgehog Resonates
Besides his contrasting design and color palette compared to Sonic and his friends, Shadow maintains interest from the fans because of his oddly adult-like, mature characterization. What makes Shadow such a compelling character isn’t just his edgy 2000s demeanor or his sleek design—it’s the emotional baggage from his traumatic past constantly weighing him down (until 2024’s Sonic X Shadow Generations, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves). The nature of his internal conflict is pretty heavy for a franchise rated E for Everyone.
Actually, there was almost an exception to that rating. The exception being Shadow the Hedgehog [2005] which would have received a rating T for Teens if they didn’t manage to squeeze it into the E10+ rating under the suffocating terms “fantasy violence” and “mild language.” Shadow was really pushing it. His solo game featured him throwing out the word “Damn!” like a kid that just discovered curse words. Of course, I can’t leave out the part where SEGA let him use guns to shoot at the Sonic equivalent of federal government agents.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Excuse me.
A Rival Forged by Grief: Shadow’s Role in SonicAdventure2
Shadow made his debut in Sonic Adventure 2 back in 2001. At the time, Shadow was only a mysterious brooding hedgehog with striking similarities to Sonic and nothing more until later entries in the franchise.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking. “…Sonic and Shadow don’t really look alike at all.” You are correct in thinking that because, well…yeah. Sonic is an electric blue hedgehog and Shadow looks like a Hot Topic mascot. It should be noted that during the development of Sonic Adventure 2 Shadow’s design was changed at the last minute because the team and execs weren’t really feeling the vibe. Cold feet. Unfortunately due to how far they were into the development process, they just decided to keep the plotline of “He looks just like you Sonic!” It was only until last year, 2024, where Shadow’s beta design was released to the public in celebration of the Fearless Year of Shadow. I am unable to verify whether this is Sonic Team’s official name or if it was a name coined by the fans (both are equally possible honestly), but his beta design is referred to as Terios the Hedgehog. Some fans joke around about how Terios is what Shadow looked like before his Black Arms ancestry was inserted into him.
Putting a hold on that thought, let’s return back to the topic of Shadow’s debut game: Sonic Adventure 2. We meet Shadow through both the Hero story (Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, etc.) and the Dark story (Shadow, Rouge, and Dr. Eggman). It doesn’t matter whether you’re Team Hero or Team Dark, you’ll inevitably cross paths with Shadow. One thing remains constant within Shadow through both storylines. He’s a character full of internal inconsistencies. Alongside being Sonic’s new rival who can keep up with everything Sonic can do, Shadow acts as a narrative foil to Sonic in a way that reshaped the emotional core and complexity of the franchise. Sonic zips through life fueled by optimism, a love for freedom, and is constantly assured by nature itself for him to continue living this way. Shadow walks through life carrying the weight of loss, betrayal, and existential dread all of which are a result of his past traumas. His burdens manifest through his anger, confusion, and search for a satisfying conclusion for what caused him to be the hedgehog he is in the game. But what exactly would that look like?
What even happened to Shadow in the first place?
The Ultimate Lifeform: Origins of Project Shadow
That question forms the emotional spine of Sonic Adventure 2. Shadow doesn’t even fully know the answer himself. His memories are fractured, resurfacing in broken inaccurate flashes of a girl named Maria, a space station called the ARK, and a promise he doesn’t fully understand. Unlike Sonic, who lives firmly in the present and by flying by the seat of his pants, Shadow is haunted by the past—a past he can’t clearly remember, but one that defines his every action.
As players, regardless of whether you’re Team Hero or Team Dark, we uncover Shadow’s origins alongside him. We learn that he was created on the Space Colony ARK to serve as the “Ultimate Lifeform” by Professor Gerald Robotnik, Eggman’s grandfather. The Ultimate Lifeform, or Project Shadow, was commissioned by the United Federation (Sonic universe United States) to create a biological, invulnerable, and immortal being for “science.” Obviously whether it’s fiction or reality, if a powerful global entity is requesting a project with those characteristics, they’re intending on using it as a weapon. Gerald saw this, so he initially refused to work on it for that reason and another: creating an immortal and invulnerable being was like playing God. That scared Gerald. But what changed his mind?
If he could create an immortal, invulnerable being, then perhaps Project Shadow can serve as a means of discovering a cure to all illnesses and the key to all manner of medicines. While that is a noble mission to take on in itself, Gerald’s main purpose for changing his outlook was due to his granddaughter Maria. Maria was terminally ill, presumably with NIDS (Neuro-Immuno Deficiency Syndrome), and Shadow functioned as a desperate scientific hope for curing her. (She boarded the ARK so that the low gravity could keep her condition in remission.) Thus, Gerald returned to the United Federation to accept the duty of overseeing, bearing the responsibilities, and giving Project Shadow life.
Gerald created the Biolizard, a mutant salamander with destructive tendencies, as the first attempt at creating the Ultimate Lifeform. How did we get from a salamander to a hedgehog? Why use a salamander?
Gerald Robotnik's Journal
Entry #530
Research into “Project: Shadow” is in full swing. The first step has been learning how to siphan [REDACTED] Emerald energy and apply it to living tissue. To that end, I’ve developed the “Chaos Drives.” Direct application seems too harsh. Any organism that could directly interface with an emerald would be fearsome indeed! The initial tests were promising, so we’re now moving on to the next state in trials. I will be using salamanders for their regenerative abilities and manageable size. We will begin applying Chaos Drives to the test subject and see how its vitals respond.
Entry #568
“Project: Shadow” has reached an impasse. The subject exhibits accelerated cellular growth, to the point it cannot support its own biological systems. I’ve developed an external life-support system to compensate, but it will need to be upgraded and redesigned as the subject continues to grow. The way it thrashes and roars…it is uncontrollable.
Entry #616
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I am a desperate man.
The Black Comet returned to Earth on its fifty-year orbit. I had no idea it actually harbored [REDACTED]. Aboard it was [REDACTED]. Somehow he knew about the [REDACTED] and seemed impressed with my work. He offered me a Faustian deal. I accepted.
Using his DNA, I was able to overcome every hurdle “Project: Shadow” had put before me. The small, sturdy biped I developed can perfectly interact with [REDACTED] energy.
Now that we know how Shadow was conceived, how does this play a role in the brooding amnesiac hedgehog we know in Sonic Adventure 2? The nature of Project Shadow is inherently risky and dangerous due to its Faustian nature. The United Federation would call off the project at the first sight of any danger Project Shadow would put its creators and commissioners in. Referring back to Gerald’s Journal, the Biolizard still exists in secure confinement due to its failure and destructive nature. While this hot pot of water is simmering on the stove, Shadow is living on the ARK with Gerald and Maria very happily. Shadow and Maria form a close sibling-coded companionship. It’s one of my favorite elements of Shadow’s origins and elements in the Sonic franchise as a whole. They’re just so darn cute and sweet.
Blood and Traumatic Memories: The ARK Disaster
So what happens to her? Remember the Biolizard and its destructive nature? Yeah…so the Biolizard decided one day that it had enough and started wrecking everything to a very noticeable degree. The accident gave GUN (Guardian Units of Nations, Sonic world CIA) the green light to raid the ARK. GUN was tasked with locating and securing everything relating to Project Shadow alongside capturing Gerald Robotnik. What about everyone else on the ARK? The ARK had unrelated Project Shadow inhabitants aboard; Maria being classified as such. GUN decided that anything outside of their designated parameters was to be dealt with “accordingly.”
By that, I mean that they killed Maria in front of Shadow. Before she died, she was able to save Shadow by getting him to an escape pod and sent him off to Earth. Before she collapsed, she shared her final words.
Shadow, I beg of you…Please, do it for me…for a better future! For all the people on that planet…Give them a chance to be happy.
Shadow crashes on the surface of the Earth and is soon quickly discovered by GUN. He is put into suspended animation for fifty years until Eggman wakes him up and kickstarts the events of Sonic Adventure 2.
Memory, Trauma, and the Warping of Self-Purpose
Alright, so if Maria’s last words were lined with very clear instructions, why is Shadow so confused on what he wants or who he is in Sonic Adventure 2 fifty years later?
The answer lies in the way memory and trauma interact. Shadow wasn’t merely put into stasis for five decades; he was sealed away with a freshly traumatic event implanted into his brain. His psyche was unstable and fractured. Can you imagine that gruesome scene replay in your mind on an endless loop for fifty years? His memories of Maria, the tragedy of the ARK, and even the purpose of his existence were damaged and distorted by both time and trauma. His trauma manifested as anger, so his brain twisted Maria’s final words to fit a vengeful narrative when he reawakened. It’s a tragic emotional imprint rather than a coherent directive. Shadow didn’t wake up with clarity; he woke up with grief and a heavy heart. Maria’s plea is not a clear memory anymore. It’s now a corrupted memory due to being put through the filter of his internal suffering.
So when Shadow returns to the world in Sonic Adventure 2, he is not driven by Maria’s hope. He is driven by vengeance masked as purpose. He thinks he is fulfilling Maria’s dying wish, but he misremembers it as a command for retribution instead of peace. This tragic confusion creates the emotional core of his character arc. Shadow isn’t evil; he’s misled by his own brokenness. His internal conflict—between destructive purpose and selfless legacy—is what ultimately leads him to his climatic decision: to save the world by sacrificing himself, believing that it was the only way to atone for his vengeful actions and immoral decisions he made since his reawakening and honor Maria’s true wish.
Shadow’s Soundtrack: “Supporting Me” and the Echo of Pain
Much like my leitmotif segment of my post about Sonic and Daisy Buchanan, I would also like to dedicate a similar music-related segment towards Shadow to continue to support my assertion.
One notable way Shadow’s internal dissonance is represented in Sonic Adventure 2 is through music. One of the most pivotal tracks to Shadow’s story is “Supporting Me…for the Biolizard” which plays when he is fighting the Biolizard while Sonic and Knuckles are trying to retrieve the Chaos Emeralds from the core of the ARK. The song is very mournful, haunting, and raw. It’s not the music of a typical boss fight. It wails with the sounds of anguish. A similar example of this musical phenomena can be found in Avatar: The Last Airbender during Zuko and Azula’s final Agni Kai. Anyways, a lot of fans interpret “Supporting Me” not only as the Biolizard’s swan song, but also as a reflection of Shadow’s internal torment as well as foreshadowing to the true final fight of Sonic Adventure 2.
I believe in my future, farewell to the shadow It was my place to live, but now I need your hand Lead me out with your light, I have breathed in The disgusting air of darkness, but I never lose out To the pressure, everything is just like An illusion, I’ll be losing you Before long…
- From "Supporting Me...for Biolizard"
These lyrics—fragmented, desperate, pleading even—read like a dying confession. Whether you choose to interpret them as the Biolizard’s final thoughts or as an echo of Shadow’s inner psyche, they speak of a soul that has been twisted by isolation, hate, and stripped of clarity. “Farewell to the shadow” does not only just serve as a metaphor for leaving the darkness behind us. It’s also a literal farewell to being Shadow, the Ultimate Lifeform, the failed science experiment, and the symbol of tragedy of those who placed their faith in him. Shadow, in that moment, is finally confronting the place and intention that gave him life and all of the unresolved persistent pain it symbolizes.
The Biolizard, one of the most underrated Sonic villains in my opinion, represents what Shadow could have become if he had succumbed entirely to bitterness and destruction. It’s no wonder that the Biolizard is one of the first boss fights in Sonic X Shadow Generations [2024] because the Biolizard represents Shadow in both a literal and figurative sense. Their battle, in both games but mainly Sonic Adventure 2, isn’t just a climatic set piece for wow factor alone. It’s a confrontation of a mirrored self. The Biolizard is a grotesque, incomplete, enraged, vengeful, and shackled being which is everything Shadow fears he might be. Fighting it not only serves as a means of confronting the bloody and tragic legacy of Project Shadow, but it’s also a confrontation of the dark impulses present inside Shadow himself.
And then, when Shadow defeats the Biolizard, it fuses to the ARK to form the FinalHazard and begins its deadly descent towards Earth as an act of retribution. When all seems lost, Shadow decides to fight not out of vengeance but rather out of acceptance. The soundtrack shifts.
The most iconic song in the Sonic franchise, “Live & Learn,” kicks in.
(Sonic “kicks in” too by taking back the Chaos Emeralds and going Super alongside Shadow, but that’s beside the point.)
Live and Learn: The Climax and Closure of Shadow’s Arc in Sonic Adventure 2
We no longer hear the melodic cries of melancholic anguish. Instead, our ears are flooding with a booming rock’n roll song that embodies defiance, action, acceptance, and clarity. “Live and Learn” is fast, loud, and triumphant. The denial of pain is no more; acceptance has finally taken the reins. Acknowledgement is present through the lyrics “You may never find your way…” but still charges forward regardless of uncertainty. Thematically speaking, it’s as if Shadow is responding to the sorrowful, grief-ridden tones of “Supporting Me” by offering a resolution with “Yeah, I’ve breathed in the disgusting air of darkness, but I’m not going to let that define me.”
The shift in sound and genre reflects a shift in character. The emotional register of the game transforms. It is no longer mournful; it’s determined to see the end. Shadow’s character arc in Sonic Adventure 2 concludes in self-sacrifice rather than a spiral of despair and illusion leading to a tragic ending out of his hands. He made the choice himself.
After defeating the FinalHazard and successfully saving the world, Shadow falls down to Earth remembering Maria’s final words as Sonic watches him plummet to his end.
What a bittersweet, satisfying conclusion for Shadow.
Gatsby never got that.
Gatsby’s Silence: When the Music Never Shifts
Gatsby doesn’t get a “Live & Learn” moment. If anything, he lives and repeats. His internal melody is stagnant. It loops the same chords of hope, delusion, and longing until it finally fades out with the echoes of a gunshot. If Shadow’s “Supporting Me” and “Live and Learn” serve as metaphors for a journey from torment to freedom, Gatsby’s theme would be something jazz-infused—nostalgic, warped, and endlessly skipping on a broken gramophone. It’s never granted the space to crescendo into something transformative. It meekly drifts through his empty mansion like the ghost of a life he never truly lived.
If “Supporting Me” captures the weight of Shadow’s existential burden—an anguish born from the ARK tragedy and the death of Maria—then Gatsby’s equivalent is the silence that haunts Fitzgerald’s, or Nick Carraway’s, pages. It’s the eerie silence that follows the Roaring Twenties. It’s the stillness of Gatsby’s mansion after the guests leave. It’s the silent anticipation from waiting for a phone to ring. It’s the stillness of the pool before he’s shot. Where Shadow’s trauma screams and eventually learns to sing a new song, Gatsby’s internal dissonance is a strangled muffle—the sound of a man suspended in time, waiting for an answer that will never come.
War, Reinvention, and Shell Shock: Gatsby’s Emotional Fallout
There is a compelling parallel between the events that shape both characters: the ARK disaster for Shadow and World War I for Gatsby. Both are catastrophes that mark the end of innocence and the beginning of deep psychological fractures. Gatsby’s post-WWI reinvention is eerily similar to the purpose Shadow was given. Shadow was meant to be the Ultimate Lifeform—a project with Faustian origins and implications—but as we discover through his character arc, he takes back that label and redefines himself. Gatsby transforms himself into the “Oxford man,” a wealthy hopeless romantic, to win the hand of Daisy. But just like Shadow at the beginning of Sonic Adventure 2, Gatsby doesn’t fully understand what he is doing. Shadow misremembered the nature of Maria’s final wish and interpreted it as a call for retribution against humanity. Gatsby, too, misremembers Daisy, or in more accurate terms: he remembers a version of her that never truly existed. His memory of her isn’t really her.
Gatsby is captured in the lingering deafening silence that follows war. The silence is the personification of those moments of unbearable stillness that haunts soldiers long after they have returned home from the battlefield. His reconstruction of life is a coping mechanism. He is trapped in the liminal space between who he was before the trauma and who he pretends to be now to cope. This could be said of anyone that suffers from PTSD; Gatsby is one of most notorious examples from classic literature that comes to mind.
The Dream That Killed Him: Gatsby and his Romanticized Past
At the heart of Gatsby’s tragedy is not just his death and delusion, but his failure to bridge the past with the present. “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can,” he says whilst blind to the fact that his dream—Daisy, the green light, the version of himself he obsessively constructed to win her hand—is nothing more than an illusory dream. It’s a delusion built on memory and denial. Shadow wrestles with forgetting; Gatsby is cursed with remembering too much. Despite their differing motives—vengeance versus romantic love—they mirror each other in their refusal to let go of a world that no longer exists.
While Shadow loses Maria and suffers amnesia, Gatsby loses his sense of self and suffers from a form of emotional shell shock. He comes home from war and reinvents himself, not as a means to survive but rather as a means to chase a phantom. Like Shadow, Gatsby becomes a man defined by a past he cannot fully grasp or reconcile. However, unlike Shadow, he is never given the narrative space to heal. The outcomes of their stories are drastically different.
Hope vs. Stillness: The Diverging Fates of Gatsby and Shadow
There’s a reason why The Great Gatsby ends in death while Sonic Adventure 2, despite Shadow’s sacrifice, ends in hope. “Live and Learn” doesn’t just reflect Shadow’s growth; it’s a thesis statement. It’s a musical release of emotional tension. Shadow chooses to move forward: to live with the past rather than in it.
Shadow returns in later entries of the Sonic franchise not just as a rival, but as someone who learns to define himself outside the trauma that once consumed him. Shadow is allowed to live. He is allowed to change. He breathes beyond the weight of “Supporting Me” and answers it with the triumph of “Live and Learn.” Gatsby never gets that luxury. He’s killed by his past. He doesn’t get to challenge his theme. He doesn’t get a reprise. All he gets is Nick carrying on his memory.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Gatsby died, and he stays dead.
Narrative Mercy and Narrative Doom: Who Gets to Heal?
In the end, what separates Shadow the Hedgehog and Jay Gatsby is not the depth of their trauma, nor the scale of their losses, but the narrative possibility each is offered. Shadow is granted the space to remember, to grieve, to self-actualize, and to transform into what he is today in the franchise. Gatsby is frozen, beautifully and tragically, in the amber of Fitzgerald’s prose. He is never given the chance to grow beyond the dream that sentenced him to death.
In an odd way, both characters are born from experiments. One was conceived in a laboratory orbiting Earth, and the other is the product of the crucible of war and reinvention. Both are haunted by the dead—Maria and the Daisy he “knew” before WWI—and both construct elaborate complex personas and motivations that are represent what they think their lives are supposed to be after it all.
But only one of them learns to see beyond the illusion. He gets to live.
“Goodbye forever…Shadow the Hedgehog.”
Shadow’s final words in the “true ending” of shadow the hedgehog [2005]
Shadow’s arc tells us that trauma is not the end; it’s the beginning of something painful but transformative. Gatsby’s story reminds us what happens when we let the past imprison us. They’re two sides of the same coin: characters built on tragedy and suspended between memory and identity.
But Gatsby’s story ends in death.
Perhaps that’s why so many fans still resonate with Shadow and are so invested in his story. Shadow acts as figurative literary proof that even in a kiddie high-speed video game universe, a story of loss, confusion, and healing can take place. The reason why we continue to discuss Gatsby is why his story remains a classic a century later. It’s not because we admire him, but because we recognize that all of us, at some point, stare longingly at a light we’ll never reach.
Pixels and Parenthood: How Gaming Shaped My Childhood
Growing up, I spent most of my time with a controller in my hands and a TV screen a foot away from my face. Whether it was a Wii remote, a PlayStation controller (before it was called DualShock kids!), or an Xbox controller, I was always engulfed in the medium of gaming. My childhood was shaped this way due to my dad being substantially more present and involved in my life growing up. It was inevitable. My dad was (still is) a huge advocate for gaming; he loved anything related to nerd and geek culture. Much to my mother’s dismay, her daughter was a tomboy because of dad. Instead of Barbies, princess dolls, and playing dress up, I was much more interested in playing with videogames instead. I loved spending my days as a kid with Mario, Link, and Sonic the Hedgehog; I still do actually, and I am not ashamed to admit it!
The Dark Age: Sonic’s Lost Momentum in the 2010s
Although…my interest and enjoyment of Sonic in the 2010s rightfully waned. I would not enjoy it again until the 2020s. What happened in the 2010s you ask? Nothing good. The Sonic franchise was a dumpster fire, and Sonic Team just kept adding fuel to the fire because they’d rather go down with the sinking ship since their funding was dramatically reduced by SEGA during that time. I blame it on the failures that were Sonic Lost World [2013] and SonicBoom [2014]. For some reason, Sonic Team could not keep the momentum they created from 2011’s Sonic Generations. I still continued to check in every once in a while to see how the blue blur was doing out of nostalgia and foolish hope. As YouTuber Alpharad said while playing Sonic Forces (a horribly received game by the way)back in 2017, “It’s like a car crash, y’know? Like when you see one, you can’t look away even though you know it’s horrible.”
The Sonic Renaissance: Sonic’s Roaring 20s
So what happened to make me hop back into the series in the 2020s? It all started with the success of Paramount’s movie adaptation and interpretation of Sonic the Hedgehog back in 2020. Yeah, that movie—the one with the now-iconic “Ugly Sonic” redesign that forced Paramount to halt the film’s release to properly redesign him. Heck, Disney even poked fun at that in Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022). As much as I’d love to talk about “Ugly Sonic” and how it caused one of the only instances (that I can think of) where the internet successfully bullied a massive media and entertainment company into delaying a major film, this would turn into a full-fledged scholarly essay about how protesting actuallyworks rather than a fun blog post about Sonic and Daisy Buchanan.
Point is: Paramount reviving Sonic by kickstarting the first-ever successful movie gaming trilogy back in 2020 is what drew me back to a series that heavily defined my childhood. I am now unashamedly enjoying Sonic as an adult. You can bet I saw Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)on its debut day! I was actually more excited for that film releasing in my graduation year rather than my actual graduation.
A Hedgehog Without Origin: Sonic’s Elusive and Ambiguous Identity
With the revival of Sonic in my personal life, I inevitably retaught myself lore that I had forgotten due to the long passage of time. While revisiting the franchise, I realized something strange. I know a lot about Sonic’s universe, but I don’t know much about Sonic himself. That’s not entirely my fault; there actually isn’t a lot to know about him on his own. Sonic doesn’t have a canon backstory (at least not one that’s stuck). His identity isn’t grounded in origin; he only exists through his adventures and what he’s perceived as.
I watched a video by YouTuber ALtheBoi titled “Leitmotifs in Sonic” awhile back that supports my assertion. If you are not familiar with leitmotifs, they are a recurrent theme that is associated with a certain character, object, setting, or event. Leitmotifs are found in all forms of media, not just Sonic. They’re a unique tool used by composers to establish identity, emotion, and continuity without relying on visuals or dialogue. Isn’t that cool? Anyways, in Sonic’s case, he actually doesn’t have a traditional leitmotif. By traditional, I mean that his “theme” is not consistent at all compared to one of his most notable competitors, Mario. Everyone is familiar with Mario’s theme. Once you hear it, your mind instantly pictures the famous Italian plumber. But with Sonic? He doesn’t really have that. Why?
Sonic, despite being the face of the franchise, rarely has a clear, consistent leitmotif compared to other characters in the series like Shadow or Metal Sonic. The absence of an official leitmotif reflects Sonic’s ambiguity as a character. He’s less about who he is and more about what he is doing. He’s speed, he’s freedom, he’s action, and he’s a hero. That’s his identity, nothing more. ALtheBoi notes how Eggman, Sonic’s main antagonist, has a consistent leitmotif across the franchise regardless of what he’s doing while Sonic doesn’t. A commenter on the video offers a possible explanation saying, “Maybe it’s a reference to how Sonic is always moving and changing and becoming better than before while Eggman just stays the same.” So…what can we take away from that? ALtheBoi says that Sonic does not possess a single defining leitmotif because no one theme represents Sonic. He’s built different. More specifically, he’s built by the adventures he goes on. ALtheBoi proposes that perhaps the main themes of the gamesare supposed to represent Sonic and the adventure he embarks on in saidgame.
Here are the examples ALtheBoi provides:
“Knight of the Wind” by Crush 40 — Sonic’s stoicism and how it ties to his journey to understanding and challenging the codes of chivalry.
“It Doesn’t Matter” by Tony Harnell— Sonic’s philosophy on everything: he’ll never give up, he’ll never back down from a fight, and that it doesn’t matter who is wrong or who is right because he will always keep running until the end.
“Sonic Heroes” by Crush 40 — The bonds of friendship and camaraderie Sonic has made throughout life that he values dearly.
So what is Sonic’s theme? All of them.
ALtheBoi says this is evidence of Sonic being a well-done static character in the context of gaming, but what about in the context as a character in a story? It appears that Sonic has a lack of fixed internal self. He’s a symbol, a brand, and a hero that exhibits the projections of the people he is saving rather than a character with emotional depth or personal history.
Just a Guy Who Loves Adventure: The Illusion of Simplicity
There’s this one iconic line that Sonic says in Sonic Adventure 2 while conversing with Shadow before their famous iconic rival battle.
Shadow asks, “What are you?”
Sonic replies, “What you see is what you get! Just a guy that loves adventure!”
As a kid, Sonic just seemed really cool to me when he said that. He’s so free-spirited, confident, and defiant. I remember thinking that I wanted to be carefree like that. However, as an adult with media literacy skills, it just seems kind of…empty and deflective. Sonic defines himself by what others view him as. No depth, no history, no room for questioning, he is just Sonic: the guy who loves adventure—that is what he is and all he is. He accepts and embraces it. It can be seen as liberating, but if we take a closer look, something more fragile lies beneath that bold declaration. Sonic didn’t actually answer Shadow’s existential question. He doesn’t say whoheis; he says whatheappearstobe. His identity is grounded in what he is perceived as by others which shows through his response and his leitmotif mobility. He is quite literally “just a guy who loves adventure.” Very simple and easy to digest.
And that, oddly enough, reminds me of Daisy Buchanan.
Enter Daisy Buchanan: Sonic’s Surprising Literary Mirror
Daisy is another character that is shaped more by how others see her than by who she truly is. Just like how Sonic is the embodiment of adventure, Daisy is the embodiment of the American Dream and all its glitz, glamour, elegance, and drowning materialistic riches. In The Great Gatsby, she is idolized, adored, and obsessed over by Gatsby because of all those things she represents rather than who she actually is. Keeping the objectivity going, Daisy is essentially a mirror, one that reflects others’ desires for the fantastical life she lives. She knows she is perceived as the ultimate trophy and is dangerously desirable. She knows what it means to be a woman in 1920s America.
And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.
Like Sonic, she plays the role assigned to her. She understands that being ignorant (or appearing to be) is an effective survival strategy for living in a patriarchal society, so she puts on a performance for the world around her to create security and detachment from the confining reality she is shackled to. Her voice is full of money. She floats through rooms like an alluring dream. And yet, upon closer inspection, there’s nothing but hollowness. She doesn’t say anything meaningful outside of the central conflict of The Great Gatsby. She doesn’t fight for self-actualization; she’s simply there for the adventure. Like Sonic, she is her assigned persona. Whatever may lie beneath that surface will never emerge from its shallow waters.
Regardless of how radically different the genres and worlds these characters come from, Sonic and Daisy exhibit the fragile nature of persona. They both perform the roles given to them with little to no resistance. That doesn’t mean there is no expense to them though. Sonic may come off as “cool” and be “that guy,” but his lack of introspection and depth makes him emotionally flat compared to the other characters in the Sonic franchise. Daisy may be beautiful, desirable, and an object of many’s affections, but her detachment from everything combined with her hollow and careless nature makes her a tragic character. Sonic and Daisy are characters who refuse—some argue unable—to look inward and truly reflect. In turn, that makes their identities feel manufactured, fake, and hollow in a sense.
Persona vs. Person: The Cost of Being a Symbol
In both Daisy and Sonic, we have two characters who are less about who they are internally and more about what they symbolize in their respective worlds. Sonic stands for freedom, action, adventure, and simplicity. Daisy stands for desire, wealth, and unattainable dreams leading to unforeseen tragedy. While these personas most certainly make them iconic and widely discussed amongst their respective fandoms, they’re also trapped by these identities. The tragedy of Daisy is that the world and era she lives in only wants her to be a symbol of wealth and grace rather than a complex, flawed human being. The irony of Sonic is that being consistently characterized as carefree and unbothered across his franchise is actually giving him no room for growth. At their core, both of them reveal how powerful and limiting it can be to live behind a non-self embraced image.
The Show Must Come to an End: Who are We Without a Role?
For us as readers, gamers, or just as humans in general, we can’t help but wonder what will happen to us when we define ourselves by how others see us? What happens to us when we confuse our identity with the others’ perception of us? And what, if anything at all, is left of us when the show comes to an end?
Perhaps it’s not as simple as “What are you?”
What if it’s “Who gets to decide?”
Of Hedgehogs and Heiresses: A Curious and Unlikely Connection
I know it’s a very strange comparison, and this could also be seen as me wanting to rant about one of my peculiar interests alongside me giving voice to my inner-music nerd with the (unnecessary, yet supporting) section about leitmotifs, but I think Sonic and Daisy reveal interesting things about how persona and perception is portrayed in fiction as a whole. Whether it’s a blue hedgehog rolling around at the speed of sound or a socialite lounging around in her East Egg mansion, what you see isn’t always what you get.
