Essay on The Great Gatsby -- English Literature

Essay on The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby is a novel about a man who tries to win over a woman he had lost many years ago. Jay Gatsby is the hero in this novel because he stands out amongst the rich. Unlike the rest of the rich people in this novel Gatsby has moral values, and the rest of them can only grasp things of material value. Gatsby spends his whole life trying to hide the fact that he wasn’t like the others. Gatsby never fits in among them because what he perceives of them is all wrong, they were as uncivil as anyone else. Through being less primitive than the rich, determination for love, being ruled by his emotions that erase any doubt, he is quiet tempered; which upholds his greatness, and he is protected by others that tell us of his importance. Gatsby is not as primitive as the rest of the rich humans, he is more mannered and civil. The people at his parties are all wild and not civil, what you would not expect from people of this stature. Gatsby is this way because he has had to earn his money and has not just inherited it like the lazy lot of them. The only other person that comes close to Gatsby is Nick, but we don’t get to see what he would be like with wealth. Throughout the novel Gatsby looks out upon the crowd, when he comes down to greet Nick he is very polite to everyone surrounding him, knowing they spread rumors and lies about him. He doesn’t think anything of it because he knows it’s natural for people to gossip, he can’t judge them on it because it is the crowd he wishes to become. Nick tells Gatsby he is better than the whole rotten bunch of them, Nick realizes this because he knows what it is like to be poor and he knows Gatsby still acts like a poor man, but he has all t... ...new him. He always wants Nick to come with him on things he is unsure of, like when meeting daisy for the first time in eight years (p.83). He needs others to fulfill his confidence in himself, it is how he got as far he did in the novel (money wise). He only meets new people through association with someone else in the novel, he meets Nick through Jordan and Daisy through Nick. He is like this because he expects things to come to him like they have in the past like his job from Meyer Wolfshiem. James Gatsby is the hero in the novel through: his modern acts, determination for love, his conquering emotions, his quiet temperament, and his protected state. A hero is someone unlike the others and Gatsby fills this character perfectly in the novel. Therefore Gatsby is the character and no one else should even be considered for his place in The Great Gatsby.