Is Gatsby a hell-bound hero or dream fool? Fitzgerald resists the temptation to define him and instead demonstrates to us Gatsby was great and evil. He’s grit and hope and unyielding faith in the future to his credit. But to his debit account he charges that he builds his life on lies, founds his existence on a mythical past, and reaches for something sure to disappear. The tragedy of Gatsby is that he feels that he can recreate the past. He sacrifices his life to deserving Daisy, hoping that once rich, everything will be alright. But Gatsby’s dream of Daisy is not true, a snapshot in time. He loves not the woman she is now he loves the memory of whom she used to be. Fitzgerald characterizes Gatsby as romantically profound but tragically innocent. His own idealism is beautiful, even heroic, but it keeps him in the dark about what life is really like. He will not see the shallowness of Daisy or the class divide between them. He clings to the dream to the end, waiting for a phone call that never comes. Finally, Gatsby dies alone in defending a woman who leaves him behind. His death is in vain but symbolic it’s the death of a dream that was built on deception. The world he was trying to infiltrate rejects him, and the ones he was trying to impress them with forget about him. Gatsby’s story cautions us that ambition unbundled is a gamble. His dream was great, but his failure reminds us of the cost of holding on completely to something that never existed.