After reading The Great Gatsby, it seems as though Jay Gatsby has it all. He has money and lots of it, has a great home, nice car, and is chasing after the girl he loves, who he believes to love him back. He hosts huge outlandish parties, in which many are in attendance. Of those who come many if not most are not invited, but they come anyway, because it is a big deal to be affiliated with him. Not to mention no one really knows his background story or anything about him really, which makes him even more interesting and fascinating because he has this mystery about him and let’s be honest most people kind of like that. So by most accounts he seems to be successful and to really have it all. His life sounds like it is pretty great, or at least that is how it seems when looking at it from the outside.
But, I know there’s always a but… He doesn’t actually get the girl in the end, she doesn’t actually choose him. He ends up dying for something she was guilty of, some sort of irony, I think. Gatsby doesn’t actually have friends, which leads to not many people coming to his funeral. Most who came to that were people who worked for him. This for me at least kind of shows just how lonely of a life Jay Gatsby lived. After he died, it seems as though he was forgotten, people moved on to something new. Almost as if he did not even exist. So what is success? Did Gatsby really have it? Or was it just a part of this persona of his?
