Life in a Gatsby Mansion

Presentation:

The American Dream was created to propose freedom success and wealth to those that work hard. We have all had a dream in life but our dream can turn into our worst nightmare. Dr. King had a dream of equality amongst all races and that dream came true for him yet came back to bite when he was shot and killed. So the question is are dreams could for our mind or do they control us in a way to where we can’t escape because we are to deep making this dream dangerous to our kind mentally, physically, and spiritually. I write a poem to relate to our time and The Great Gatsby.

Dreams are dangerous illusions. 

They bring hope to what we want  

They occur in the most random times. 

And in reality, they’re termed Great 

Dreams don’t fade easily, 

They make us feel safe and useful 

It’s the perfect temperature for the mind, 

And the sweet feeling of praise 

Dreams give us a reason to live  

Gives reason to soar into the sky 

Like a baby bird finally learning to fly. 

It’s a great escape from the chase of reaper 

Dreams are subtle and gentle in their care 

They are unique and specific to every person 

They can provide a reason to chase love 

Or to chase a new identity  

Dreams can propose change in life  

They can show addicts the way to the light, 

Carry the addict to the new clean world 

Provide guidance for a new vision for oneself 

Dreams brought us to the green breast of the Neworld. 

Sailing new people to new land for new opportunities. 

It created brilliant kingdoms and unbreakable societies 

So, is being a dreamer great?  

Take time and recall your textbooks that were created off a dream 

Dreams have brought nightmares to the world  

It has brought war and created terrifying egos 

That terrorizes the hope of the innocent dreamers 

Remember dreams are dangerous illusions  

Dreams have created fear in the media, 

Insecurity among many generations 

But society shall tell us still to dream on. 

We are all dreamers in our own world. 

However, dreamers have crossed other people’s dreams, 

And created division among color, 

It leaves some dreamers with the ideal that dreams can’t come true 

So, is a dream innocent anymore? 

Do you think that the great dictators of the world weren’t dreamers? 

As history shows, their dream became the world’s nightmare, 

So, we call them deviants of the world  

If a man dreamed of being with a woman he loved before, 

Who has given up her ring finger to another man. 

Would he be a dreamer or a homewrecker? 

Shouldn’t that man be described as a nightmare to a marriage? 

However, it is the brain’s desire to conform to what it is being told. 

We listen to the bias and run like the wind. 

Without seeing the whole story, 

We let a dreamer determine that another dreamer’s dream was nothing but an innocent dream. 

Gatsby is a very interesting character when it comes down to identity. He is a mysterious man yet is wealthy and well know around his area. Yet, he lives his life the premises of living in the past and running from the past. Gatsby was not born wealthy as we know he was born poor. It wasn’t until he got his big break till, he broke the cycle of being poor. Before that break he meets Daisy, who is wealthy and has lived in wealth all of her life.  He falls in love with her and then gets shipped out to the military but comes back as James Gatsby the self-made man who is wealthy for who knows what. So, we ask why live chasing and running from the past? Is his love and hatred strong opposite polarizations? I say that he isn’t even trying to run or chase the past. Instead, he is chasing the hope he built for himself as a child. The hope to one day become a somebody in a world filled with lots of nobody’s and few somebody’s. He runs this marathon that seems to be running from him, yet he doesn’t give in. He proves his self-efficacy but due to the harsh nature of the world we can’t always get what we want and soon our past shall catch up to us and every word, lie, or story we ever told can either benefit us or haunt us for the rest of our lives.

Aldifianto, Islam Fickih. PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF JAY GATSBY AS SEEN IN FITZGERALD’S “THE GREAT GATSBY”. Diss. Universitas Mataram, 2015. 

In this study by Islam Fickih Aldifianto the important idea was to identify the psychological mind of Jay Gatsby through his journey of the American dream. The study found that the major conflicts of Gatsby’s psychology were shame and love. The author observed that Gatsby was trying to hide his past of lower-class status to try to impress Daisy to be with him. This means that Gatsby’s main goal of his own wealth was to show materialism to Daisy to win her over. The author supports my “I SAY” by showing the use of Gatsby’s Identity change and giving a way to explain his goal of the identity change to pursue the goal of his dreams. 

GOLDBLATT, LAURA. “‘Can’t Repeat the Past?’ ‘Gatsby’ and the American Dream at Mid-Century.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, 2016, pp. 105–24, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44162974. Accessed 20 Apr. 2022. 

This article by Laura Goldblatt talks about how the American dream is a utopian ideology and that that Gatsby’s dream of repeating the past is not possible for him to accomplish. The author uses the comparison of Dutch sailors and Gatsby’s demeanor of the American dream to emphasize the world that Gatsby sought out for himself. This relates to my topic as his sight to the world explains why he would try to make a new identity of himself. Gatsby tried to see a “New World” for himself to escape the past that he had. Even after he changed his identity, he changes himself to conform for a dream that he has which is getting back with Daisy which was in his past. Instead of believing in going forward he kept himself in the past which was already past him. 

Jeanpierre, Shani. The Great Gatsby and the Struggle for Wealth, Purity, and the Pursuit of Identity. Diss. California State University Bakersfield, 2013. 

Shani Jeanpierre focuses on the role of class, purity, and identity and the struggle for the characters to obtain and to contain those things in their life. The author explains the past struggles of most of the characters like how Gatsby was born into a poor background and was not wealthy enough to marry Daisy before the war. It even goes to point out how Gatsby only wears white to get closer to daisy and usually wears different colored suits compared to the other four main characters. An important observation that Shani shows is that Tom shows dominance over Gatsby without flexing money instead he uses brute force through his words to get to Gatsby and expose who he is. This observation proves my “I SAY” as Gatsby has built his identity off of his mysterious nature and wealth so when he is exposed to Daisy the tide turns against his dream of getting Daisy. 

MURAKAMI, Yosuke. “The Great Gatsby as a Critique of the Self-Made Man.” The scientific report of Kyoto Prefectural University. Humanistic science 34 (1982): 39_a-29_a. 

Yosuke Murakami’s article dives into the creation and the innovation of Jay Gatsby as a Self-Made Man. Yosuke highlights how Gatsby viewed his past and how he disowned his impoverished history almost as if he wiped it from the timeline of his life. Yosuke also shows the lies that Gatsby told to escape the life from before the success which is important for my topic as this proves that Gatsby changed his identity to fulfill his dedication to escape the time before his wealth and he would do anything to make sure people didn’t know who he really was and what he really came from. 

Roberts, Marilyn. “Scarface, The Great Gatsby and the American Dream.” Literature Film Quarterly., vol. 34, no. 1, 2006, p. 71. 

This article by Marilyn Roberts compares the self-invention and tragic downfall of Scarface and The Great Gatsby. She then ties them together on how they both play a part of the belief of the American dream. She shows the drive that both Tony and Jay Gatsby have to fulfill their rags to riches story. This article goes to show the influence of the Great Gatsby’s story as a tragic hero and the influence it had on gangster films. This article is relating to my topic by showing an external source comparison of Gatsby’s important choice of changing his identity. Gatsby wanted to get away from the past and used his use of hope and determination to do so and with him doing so and become the Jay Gatsby we know he was able to live the life he probably would’ve never gotten if he stayed in the rags form 

Fitzgerald’s Rendering of a Dream Hearne, Kimberly The Explicator, 2010-07-12, Vol.68 (3), p.189-194. 

The article by Kimberly Hearne looks into the perception of the American Dream by Fitzgerald. She goes on to show how Fitzgerald showed the flaws of the American Dream in the novel and translate the meaning to the article. This topic supports my I Say by referring the dream as flawed and shows that my stance repeating the past and  the dream which can be anyone’s dream can be deceptive and cause harm to ones self if not careful. 

Magistrale, Tony, and Mary Jane Dickerson. “The Language of Time in ‘The Great Gatsby.’” College Literature, vol. 16, no. 2, 1989, pp. 117–28, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25111811. Accessed 14 May 2022. 

In this article Tony Magistrale and Mary Jane Dickerson talk about how time works in the Great Gatsby. They go on to talk about how the novel portrays time as a fluid concept. Thid article supports my I Say by showing the details of what Gatsby does with his past in the future. They show how he doesn’t give it up and instead wants to go back to that past to do what he wanted to do before he was rich. 

Vince, Raymond M. “‘The Great Gatsby’ and the Transformations of Space-Time: Fitzgerald’s Modernist Narrative and the New Physics of Einstein.” The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, vol. 5, 2006, pp. 86–108, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41583114. Accessed 14 May 2022. 

In this article Raymond Vince explains how time and space has changed over time. Then he turns the time into a way to relate to The Great Gatsby. He also highlights the struggle of time which relates to my I Say by showing the past and present colliding with each other through Gatsby’s time in the novel.  

The Great Gatsby provides a rivalry that we all seem to one side on. The Gatsby vs. Tom rivalry or the battle for Daisy. Both sides have their advantages and disadvantages. Tom is very rough yet provides the use of material to Daisy. Gatsby is the lover of Daisy yet; Daisy cannot bear to be in the world without security. Daisy is a golden girl as described by Nick who knows that she is very materialistic and has always been materialistic. She requires to live in money for her own comfort. However, in the time she lived in she believed in being a “beautiful little fool”. Although, she loves Gatsby she knows that to be at the top she must stick with those who can stay at the top and with Tom convincing George that Gatsby was the one who killed Myrtle the decision had been made. Gatsby was to go down and the two reckless people were to get out of town quickly. 

The question would be in today’s society would the same outcome happen for Gatsby or would the new societal standards of women having their own way to success change the behavior of Daisy? Would she instead build with Gatsby as she has the power to get away from Tom? As we see today society would side with Gatsby over Tom, yet we have a different sense of freedom in our time of day. However, the power would still be in the hands of the beautiful little golden girl that chose the brute over the hero.

The past is a very important to our daily lives. We tend to recall our mistakes to not repeat it. In psychology our brain some memory is processed into the long-term memory and some to short term. Long term memory helps us keep knowledge of the world we know today. However, some people use this special detail of the brain to repeat history. Is it good to repeat our past or can it damage the future? Jay Gatsby uses his long-term memory to escape his past and create a new future for himself yet uses the past to try to regain lost love that happened in his past. He does his good in creating a successful man out of a person who had nothing. His goals are to avoid being nothing and going out to chase the American dream. He becomes a self-made man that people that go to his parties admire. Yet, he also tries to regain a past of love with Daisy who is married to another wealthy man named Tom. Gatsby believes that Daisy truly loves him and not Tom. This could be true yet, his chasing of the past leads to chaos that would eventually find him killed when he was innocent. Instead of leaving the past in the past he chose to let the past choose his future. Now the question now stands as a “What if?” What if didn’t chase daisy and instead chose to chase new love and a new future. However, this can no longer be answered because he is gone and it is all because of that past that he so desperately desired that brought him down to having nothing but a friend that could’ve helped him named Nick.

Is Gatsby really all that great? Do we only believe that he is great because of a title or maybe his actions? I believe most people don’t analyze the title too much. Its an important detail that has many underlying meanings that we don’t seem to focus on too much.  Gatsby created a certain allusion to escape his past. He wasn’t born great in fact he was born poor. Gatsby keeps himself isolated from the public to keep this mask of fame on. He throws the biggest parties that are considered great.  The questions people may ask about Gatsby is how he got his wealth. Yet us the reader really don’t know this question either. If he is so great, what does he have to hide? Maybe he could be great because Fitzgerald finds him be a great dreamer. Gatsby dreams to get back with daisy. To relive the past is a huge demand to ask for that could be determined to be great. The great part of Gatsby is only determined by Nick as he gives us the reader the insight of Gatsby. Nick is the only one who sees Gatsby’s true self. He finds his dreams to be extensive, yet his belief speaks wonders. There can be different things said about Gatsby.  Some can say he isn’t great, and some can say he is great, but we can never say that one opinion is right. The one thing that can be said is that the character of Jay Gatsby is and will forever be a mystery that Fitzgerald perfected for history to talk about.

To be successful you must be at the top of your profession. The top of the pyramid isn’t for every person in life, yet some may get to this point by luck, past fortune, or even just hard work.  No matter how someone gets to the top its always met by the same challenges and disadvantages. The fortune of being at the top comes with competition that’ll do anything to get the upper hand over you. It may come with people who pose as friends but only want to get a piece of the fortune and much more. To be at the top means that you are set to be lonely. Once you get to the top of a pyramid there is no other part to go up to. It is a constant need to watch your own back to keep safe from harm. This can be potentially harming to mental help.

Gatsby must live with the pain of being lonely until he meets Nick. He throws the parties to hide the fact that he is lonely even though people don’t even know him personally. He never sees the love but always sees the hate from others in the story. Sadly, in the case of Gatsby he starts out alone and ends up alone as the one he loves leaves him after he took the fall for a murder he didn’t commit. Even after death no one shows up to his funeral besides Nick who truly was his friend. Though he had the money and the success the top had its like, yet the dark side takes over in the end.

In today’s world there is a difference in relationship dynamics between men and women. In the early 20’s the standard for women was very simple. It was almost like the women were treated as robots that are used for showing off to the public. Now in today’s world women have more choice and freedom of who they marry, what they do with their career, and what lifestyle they choose to convey. However, Daisy and Tom do not live in our time. In our time this relationship would be described as toxic, abusive, or unloving. Unfortunately, in Tom and Daisy’s age this relationship is sadly to be considered normal.

Through Nick narration he describes Daisy as attractive yet sad as she lives in a relationship that isn’t built off true love but wealth and money. She marries Tom even with his abusive nature so she can be provided with a lavish lifestyle. Almost like she is dressed to impress but is depressed in her true self. In today’s time Daisy wouldn’t have the mindset that living in this way is necessary towards success.

In the case of Tom, he is a brute force that is also a liar and a cheater. He is ruthless and seems to treat Daisy as an object. In today’s world Tom would have to answer for his crimes as the power is in the hands of whoever wants to have it. Being the way Tom would see him in a jail as the power to speak up for Myrtle will increase in the present.

This relationship will not and is not normal and the toxic behavior that is displayed would not fly in the present time. Yet you could question if Daisy lived in such a time where women had power to use her voice would she use it or would she stay in the shadow to continue living in a false and abusive reality in exchange for material that means nothing to one’s true self.

Nick is a very addicting character at least to most people around. He’s boring yet interesting, very cool, calm, and observative. Scott’s use of Nick was a very unorthodox move in writing at the time. As we see in today, we don’t see many T.V. shows or movies told by a non-protagonist character. You could say Nick was a blessing in disguise for Scott’s novel. Through Nicks interaction he brings a new element that the reader doesn’t know or wants to know about the other main characters. Nick relates to a lot of the readers as he likes to stay back and observe his surrounding, but he brings a bias that many people can say persuaded them on who they liked and who they hated. I don’t think you’ll ever hear someone saying they hate Gatsby because of Nick’s power of telling the story. However, it seems that everyone hates Tom because the action we’ve seen him do around Nick. It’s like an addiction we have with the person who knows all the drama. We can dip one toe into the cold pool, but we can take it right out because Nick gives us the information we want to know. We may all have that one friend to call to get the daily scoop of the gossip around the school. Nick is the news outlet to his audience. He has the control of what he wants us to know. We may have never understood Gatsby or Daisy or Jordan if it wasn’t for Nick. As if it were Gatsby who told the story through a letter of some sort The Great Gatsby landscape would be much different than ever in today’s world.

Life as we know is based on what we as humanity has built around the world. Whether that invention be the light, the car, or the phone, these things are essential to human life. The stop light was created to tell cars when to stop, be cautious and go. We all know that the green light means go but what if the green light we get keeps moving away and or so far that we can barely see it. Green is associated with harmony, rebirth, and more things that we want in life. It is almost like a hope or a dream to get the harmony or peace we want in life. Everyone should want the green light, but the question is can everybody reach that green light? Can everyone get that go ahead to peace? Gatsby tries to obtain that peace with Daisy as he tries to persuade her to be with him and not Tom. To rekindle the fire, they had before he went off to war. However, Gatsby says, “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.” This symbolizes dock as the symbol of him and Daisy’s harmony together but, in chapter 9 Nick says, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.” This is after Gatsby dies and goes to show that reaching out to the light was a dream that would never be obtained. The green light is something we all desire but is it a green light that we desire or an American dream that is just always too far out of reach to get into our hands?