The Great Gatsby's Exploration of Value and Happiness

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Puig
Fernando Puig
FYW 102
Dr. Steinbrink
Annotated Bibliography
Is “Value” Really That Important
The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott. Fitzgerald analyzes the
grave disparities between the upper and middle class during the
1920’s. Shedding the light on the carelessness of the wealthy
and the precarious nature of the lives led by middle class
citizens in The Great Gatsby. Furthermore, notions of
demonstrating popularity and wealth, led to be the concepts of
viewing different kinds of social class in The Great Gatsby. The
main character named Jay Gatsby gives attention to a woman by
using his popularity that would lead him to allure the lover. The
Great Gatsby personifies how a person can be obsessed with the
idea of accumulating wealth to impress a love. Improving to a
better type of class helped him in becoming a wealthy person
but didn’t really help in accomplishing the real goal. F. Scott.
Fitzgerald had career problems that lead him to disappointment
and used his personal mistakes with characters in The Great
Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life experiences are reflected with
Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby; the fixation on creating wealth
by any means and becoming someone of “value” does not lead
to happiness but to a failure and rather to a life of hollow
existence.
Canterbery, E. Ray. "Thorstein Veblen and The Great Gatsby."
Journal of Economic

Issues 33.2 (1999): 300-01. Macdonald Kelce Library. Web.
19 Oct. 2016.
Gatsby and Daisy are facing a love issue. Gatsby dies
disillusioned, while Daisy lives on, oblivious. Also, it uses
hopes for Gatsby alluring Daisy, but there were no chances for
him. This situation gives an understanding that after becoming a
person of “value”, Gatsby doesn’t get the chance because of his
old aristocracy.
Donaldson, Scott. "II. Love and Money." Possessions in The
Great Gatsby. Garden City,
New York, Doubleday, (1983): 192-97. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 19 Oct. 2016.
Myrtle and Tom are facing insight into the social and monetary
problems in their relationship, making the love not mutual. This
problem givesreflection to the type of wealth class during the
time of The Great Gatsby. Also,shows how Tom (high class) is
attracted to Myrtle (middle class) demonstrating that the type of
class doesn’t matter, giving a reason to why Daisy should
accept Gatsby for who he is and not for what he has become.
Eble, Kenneth. "The Great Gatsby." F. Scott Fitzgerald. By
Kenneth Eble. NewYork:
Wayne, 1963. Print. 86-107
Characters in The Great Gatsby are using lies for the truth of
the romantic vision. Trying to illuminate that essential truth is,
in the large pattern of the novel, a matter of disposing the
characters around Gatsby. This romantic vision will benefit by
showing how people have to hide characteristics about
themselves to show value.
Froehlich, Maggie G. "Gatsby's Mentors: Queer Relations
between Love and Money
in the Great Gatsby." Journal of Men's Studies (1992): 209-
226. ProQuest

Research Library. Web. 19 Oct. 2016.
The relationship between men and the role patriarchal
capitalism plays in the construction of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
sexuality. The Great Gatsby, a novel written during a critical
period in the history of sexuality, as well as of homosexual and
lesbian history. The ambivalence about male bonds in particular
to the simultaneously loving and abusive provides insight into
the author’s well-known lifelong anxiety about his gender and
sexuality. This source helps in investigating reasons why Daisy
never gave an opportunity to Gatsby.
Friedrich, Otto. “F. Scott Fitzgerald: Money, Money, Money.”
The American
Scholar, (1960): 392-405. JSTOR. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.
The Great Gatsby gained high popularity for the author making
his dream become fulfilled. Having information about the time
period of the 1920’s when The Great Gatsby started will help
with understanding why the author chose to use different type
of classes.
Lance, Jacqueline. “The Great Gatsby: Driving to Destruction
with the Rich and
Careless at the Wheel.” Studies in Popular Culture (1977):
25–35. JSTOR. Web.
27 Oct. 2016.
The automobile in The Great Gatsby, was showed in a rich
cream color that creates value, perhaps a symbol of money, and
how the automobile by being a popular form of transportation
created an impact in the story that lead to the death of Myrtle.
Also, how Gatsby and Daisy when using the famous automobile,
demonstrated the type of class they are when using the rich
cream color automobile. This idea will give further information
about the high-class society and will show how the people of
the superior class express their way of abundance.
Magi, Tony, and Mary Jane Dickerson. “The Language of Time

in ‘The Great Gatsby.’”
College Literature, (1989): 117–128. JSTOR. Web. 27 Oct.
2016.
Fitzgerald puts emphasis on clocks, watches, and time passing.
This article analyses the deeper meaning between the time and
space in some occasions in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald asks
more from the readers, for them to acknowledge the major
scenes that intersect between time and space. Giving the reader
the ability to predict that Gatsby needs to destroy the present so
that he might repeat the past and have things be the way they
were before. This argument will give illuminating information
on how; with time people can change their values.
Mizener, Arthur. "The Career: The Authority of Failure." F.
Scott Fitzgerald: A
Collection of Critical Essays. United States of America:
Prentice-Hall, Englewood
Cliffs, 1963. Print. 20-24.
The life of the author is explained through Gatsby, saying that
The Great Gatsby is a story of failure and preoccupation.
Talking about Fitzgerald’s background when working as a
writer brings many worries of whether the book will be good or
not; but there will always be a failure on your path that will be
the key to moving forward and finding what a person wants.
Failure is a connection with The Great Gatsby because going
through failure clears the way for you to find your passion,
which will ultimately help you find your happiness.
Vot, André Le. "Success, Love and Money." F. Scott Fitzgerald:
A Biography. Garden
City, New York: Doubleday, 1983. Print. 76-92.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's fascination with writing books had been
disappointing because the first book that he wrote didn't make
him as "rich" as he thought it would. Fitzgerald had to work
hard and the number of stories he had to produce each year
measured his independence. Because of the time and effort that

he put into his work, Fitzgerald ended up being a wealthy and
popular person. This source will support claims with the
background of the author and the fact that a person has to work
to achieve the meaning of “value”.
Alienation and Annihilation
Franz Kafka’s writings are not only popular and widely read,
but they have also inspired a new descriptive term for literature
as a whole: “Kafkaesque.” Per the Merriam-Webster dictionary,
Kafkaesque not only describes Kafka’s own writings, but also
anything “having a nightmarish complex, bizarre or illogical
quality” (“Kafkaesque”). People who have read Kafka will
understand how this word was coined to have that meaning.
Kafka can take a realistic situation and add disturbing and
bizarre elements that seem to turn the whole subject upside
down into a seemingly unrealistic scenario. Joseph Strelka, a
scholar, discussed Kafka and his writings: “he was aiming at the
human ‘essential,’ and perhaps he himself put it in a nutshell
when he spoke about…the question of ‘fear’ and ‘longing’”
(435). Despite the unusual and unpredictable elements in
Kafka’s stories, they are still relatable and describe the anguish
of the human condition in a way that no other author does, and

fear and longing are a part of everyone’s lives at some point or
another. No one is a stranger to difficult times or desires for
something better. As another scholar puts it, Kafka’s work is
“the ultimately incomprehensible mystery of the human
condition” (Kuehn lxi). So many people are searching for the
answers to life and trying to find meaning for their time on
Earth. Kafka is able to relate this in such a way that is very
impinging, right to the heart of the problem. These Kafkaesque
elements of fear, longing, and the human condition are very
apparent in Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.”
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At the center of “The Metamorphosis” is Gregor Samsa, a
travelling salesman who was once a very industrious worker,
and is now unable to resume his working class routine due to
the fact of having been transformed into a giant bug overnight.
Gregor originally strives to disregard his transformation and
attempts to continue working; but he soon discovers he is
unable to communicate and is no longer perceived as the Gregor
his family and boss once knew. Instead, he is estranged and has
become something to be abhorred. Gregor endeavors to hang on
to the idea that he will become himself again and will be able to

lead a normal life, but after a short period of his taxing and
callous new life he eventually becomes disabused of this idea.
While this sequence of events sounds extremely implausible to
the point of farce, this story points up something much greater.
As Strelka put it, “nothing would be more wrong than to take
Kafka’s narrative prose at its face value” (436). There is so
much more to this story than meets the eye; it is more than just
the words on the pages. This tale evokes a deeper meaning, not
only related to the human condition, but also about
circumstances related to times before, during and after Kafka
wrote it. Indeed, Gregor’s experiences in “The Metamorphosis”
are a Marxist commentary on the exploitation and alienation
created by capitalism, as well as a premonition about the Third
Reich, with its brutality and annihilation of the Jewish people.
Prior to Gregor’s transformation, he worked as a travelling
salesman; a job which he disliked:
Oh God, he thought, what an exhausting job I’ve picked on!
Traveling about day in, day out. It’s much more irritating work
than doing the actual business in the office, and on top of that
there’s the trouble of constant traveling, of worrying
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about train connections, the bed and irregular meals, casual

acquaintances that are always new and never become intimate
friends. (Kafka, 106-107)
Gregor is extremely frustrated with his work and all the
responsibilities and problems that go along with it. The job
throws him around like a puppet or a robot, doing the same
repetitive actions over and over, traveling to different locations
but running into the same scenarios in each location. It is
draining and mundane, like most middle or lower class workers’
jobs. Gregor’s trials at work are evocative of Karl Marx and his
theories on the many shortcomings of capitalism: “These
laborers, who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a
commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are
consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to
all the fluctuations of the market” (1386). Marx is asserting
that the common workers of the world have become nothing
more than pieces of a great machine. A little bit at a time they
are becoming less and less human and more and more like an
object or a commodity. Any change in the job has an effect on
the worker, instead of the worker having an effect on the job.
Gregor is the same as one of these workers; he has become fed
up with being treated as a possession of his company and wants
a change.
Not only does Marx criticize capitalism for making workers
prone to all of the market’s repercussions, but it also alienates
and estranges the workers: “the worker is not merely alienated
from himself as an individual; he is estranged from his
humanity” (Sokel 149). Kafka made Gregor a prime example of
this. Gregor has become as alienated as possible, both from
himself and humanity, by becoming a large insect. He is no
longer part of the human race and cannot communicate, as the
chief clerk remarked upon listening to Gregor’s attempt to talk,
“That was no human voice” (Kakfa 113). Instead of hearing the
words that Gregor thinks he is saying, the

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chief clerk, along with the rest of Gregor’s family, only hears
squeaks. Gregor has lost his last connection with the human
race and is thus fully estranged.
Another aspect of Marxism that Kafka makes a commentary on
is the “exploitation of the laborer” (Marx 1387). Gregor is a
lower level laborer in his company and his bosses, who are
representative of the bourgeois class, run him stringently.
When Gregor realizes how late he is for work following his
transformation, he contemplates the trouble that he will be in
for not being on time:
The chief himself would be sure to come with the sick-insurance
doctor, would reproach his parents with their son’s laziness and
would cut all excuses short by referring to the insurance doctor,
who of course regarded all mankind as perfectly healthy
malingerers. (Kafka 107)
Gregor knows he will be thought of as a lazy employee just for
being late once in all the years he worked for his company. He
is of no value to them unless he is working for them and

bringing in income. Gregor’s own personal well being is of no
concern to the executives of the company. That is not
something the bourgeois regard as important. To them, any
excuse not to be at work, whether legitimate or not, is just
shirking one’s duties. These proletariat laborers are “slaves of
the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily
and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker…”
(Marx 1386-1387). By the mere fact of being a low-level
worker, it compels Gregor to be one of the slaves of his
company and its executives. These executives only want to
make a profit within their capitalistic society, and they will run
Gregor and the rest of their laborers to the bone if necessary.
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Kafka’s criticism of capitalism and reference to Marxism
through the description of Gregor Samsa’s life directly ties in
with his premonition regarding Nazism and the Holocaust. Less
than a hundred years following the publication of Marx’s
Manifesto of the Communist Party, Nazism became a powerful
force within Germany and Hitler rose to power as Germany’s
Chancellor. As one author pointed out, “Nazism…fulfilled
Marx’s prophecy and represented an inevitable intensification

of capitalism in crisis” (Snell 730-731). Following World War
I, capitalism was in effect in Germany to a degree, but the
economy was not doing well at all. Germany was in a financial
crisis, with an abundance of people in poverty, high
unemployment and several monopolies absorbing most of the
economy’s profits. Hitler and his National Socialist Party
(Nazi) were very unhappy with the economic situation and knew
they had to oust capitalism. When Hitler gained power in 1933
and the Third Reich began, he was already firmly set in his
beliefs of creating a superior Aryan race and having a strong
anti-Semitic hatred.
These convictions, combined with the deplorable economic
situation in Germany, and the “poverty, unemployment and
frustration provided substantial incentives for organized Jew-
baiting” (Pawel 40). The Jewish people were perfect scapegoats
for Hitler and his Nazis. By blaming Germany’s problems on
them, through the use of his exceptional oratory ability, Hitler
was able to get a majority of Germans on his side in this matter.
As a first step to get rid of the Jews, Hitler had them
“politically and socially disenfranchised, stripped of their rights
and privileges as citizens” (Dwork and van Pelt 71). Laws were
passed to the disadvantage of the Jews and much anti-Semitic
propaganda was promulgated throughout Germany. Jews
became looked at as sub-human and were not fit to be a part of
the same human race as the Germans.

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Gregor Samsa’s transformation into a giant bug portrays this
extreme societal alienation. When he first tries to approach his
family after his transformation, “Gregor’s father drove him
back, hissing and crying ‘Shoo!’ like a savage” (Kafka 117).
Gregor is being treated like so many of the Jews were treated
during the Third Reich, pushed out of society for being inferior
and a blight on the human race. The Nazis felt justified in their
abuse of the Jews because of their inherent inferiority, and there
needed to be a “harsh but necessary recognition of the
inequality of men and of the difference between them based on
the laws of nature” (Dwork and van Pelt 88). Just as insects
and vermin are treated as inferior towards the human race, so
were Jews to be considered; and Gregor is subjected to this
similar plight.
As time goes on for Gregor, living his new life as an insect, he
becomes more isolated and ostracized. He spends all of his
time cooped up in his bedroom, segregated from the rest of the
family. Yet he longs for his former life as a human and a
member of his family as he looks out of the windows in his
room: “obviously in some recollection of the sense of freedom
that looking out of a window always used to give him” (Kafka
124). Gregor longed for his former freedoms, the times when
he was considered a relative equal member of society. Inside he
feels like the same person, yet all others view him differently.
He is kept secluded in his room, just as the Jews were in the
concentration camps and the ghettos, which “constituted mini-
republics of Jews, largely cut off from the outside world”
(Marrus 120). The Jewish isolation was prevalent during the
Third Reich, thus these ghettos and concentration camps became
very large congregations of Jews living together. They too were

ostracized and were only able to return to their former lives of
freedom through their dreams or imaginations. Any sense of
freedom was a notion of the past.
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The final segment of Gregor’s life parallels the Holocaust.
Firstly, he is savagely attacked by his father with apples,
“determined to bombard him,” which permanently injured him
(Kafka 131). This is a violent attack on Gregor by someone
who he thought he knew and trusted. Similarly, during WWII,
there were Jews who had previously dealt with Germans in their
day-to-day lives, now betrayed by most of them and persecuted
instead. Ultimately, Gregor’s family decides that they must get
rid of this horrible insect that Gregor has become. Grete, his
sister, attempts to convince their parents of this fact:
My dear parents, things can’t go on like this. Perhaps you don’t
realize that, but I do. I won’t utter my brother’s name in the
presence of this creature, and so all I say is: we must try to get
rid of it… He must go. That’s the only solution, Father. You
must just try to get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The fact
that we’ve believed it for so long is the root of all our trouble.
(Kafka 139-140)

Grete realizes the abomination that Gregor has become, even to
the point of a complete lack of semblance of humanity at all.
Although he was once a part of their family, he no longer exists,
so they must all get rid of him in their minds, disassociate the
large insect from Gregor, and exterminate it.
His family’s intention to do away with the insect that Gregor
had become has an ominous relationship to the mass
extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust. “Striking
comparisons have been made between Kafka’s nightmares and
certain of the historical aberrations of our time” (Carrouges 67).
This horrible living nightmare that Gregor is enduring can be
compared to moments in history when extreme alienation and
ostracizing has resulted in death, such as during the Holocaust.
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Although Kafka wrote “The Metamorphosis” before WWII, he
nevertheless had created a story that has foreshadowing
qualities of a terrible nature:
Kafka’s fantasies were to gain a validity which could hardly
have been foreseen—when, under the rule of the Nazis and the
Soviets, men were to find themselves arrested and condemned
on charges that had no relation to any accepted code of morals

or law, or were driven from place to place to labor or to fight by
first one then another inhuman unpetitionable government
which they hadn’t the force to defy or the intellect to grasp and
disintegrate. (Wilson 94)
This fictional narrative that Kafka created took on a whole new
meaning following WWII and the discovery of the Holocaust.
Gregor’s maltreatment and estrangement following his
transformation are harsh new realities for him that are most
unwelcome. His new existence is completely dictated by his
family, mostly his sister who acts as his caretaker, and he has to
adjust himself to their rules, with no means of recourse. He is
subjected to inhumane treatment toward the end of his life, and
it is this inhumanity that is his ultimate undoing. This similar
pattern of treatment can be seen when looking at the treatment
of the Jews during Hitler’s Third Reich. Moreover, Gregor’s
untimely death mirrors the ultimate acceptance of death that
many Jews had to face during the Third Reich: “In giving up at
last all hope of reentering the human circle, Gregor finally
understands the truth about his life; which is to say he accepts
the knowledge of his death” (Greenberg 79). Gregor struggles
with his bizarre estrangement from humanity and finally resigns
himself to his ultimate fate of death. He realizes there is no
point left in attempting to fight the inevitable. Similarly, many
Jews who were sent off to concentration

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camps such as Auschwitz realized they were being sent to their
deaths and there was no way for them to get out of it.
Franz Kafka’s portrayal of Gregor’s Kafkaesque experiences in
“The Metamorphosis” leaves many readers with a myriad of
nightmarish ideas about the true meanings and interpretations of
Gregor’s plights. As one scholar points out, Kafka made his
visions a reality through his literature: “Evidently it was only in
his fiction that he felt both safe and articulate enough to give
voice to his sense of terror” (Pawel 204). Kakfa was able to
communicate his horrible fears and anxieties best in his
writings, as opposed to just speaking about them. It is much
easier to talk to a blank sheet of paper than to originate a
conversation with a person. Yet it is not only in fiction that one
encounters such nightmares and bizarre occurrences. One can,
and many do, have their own Kafkaesque experiences in
everyday life. Particularly with the working class, one is
susceptible to being controlled by several different factors: the
whims of the business executives and their profit-driven
motives, the underhanded competitive behavior of other workers
all striving to be the ones to get the promotion, and the
oscillations of the economy, likely influenced by the few big
banks controlling the lion’s share of the money. Feelings of
loneliness and fear are also not uncommon in today’s world,
such as the anxiety and worry at the possibility of getting fired,
or the difficulties and uncertainties of finding a job if one is
unemployed, or the concern about being able to put food on the
table and make the monthly mortgage or rent payments to keep
a roof over one’s head. These and many other nightmares of
alienation innate in Kafkaesque occurrences can happen to
anyone, fictional or real.

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Works Cited
Carrouges, Michel. Kafka Versus Kafka. Alabama: U of
Alabama P, 1962. Print.
Dwork, Deborah and Robert Jan van Pelt. Holocaust: A History.
New York: Norton, 2002. Print.
Greenberg, Martin. The Terror of Art: Kafka and Modern
Literature. New York: Basic Books,
1968. Print.
Kafka, Franz. “The Metamorphosis.” 1915. Literature: A
Portable Anthology. Eds. Janet E.
Gardner, Beverly Lawn, Jack Ridl, and Peter Schakel. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 106-145. Print.
“Kafkaesque.” Merriam-Webster Online. Merriam-Webster,
2012. Web. 2 Nov. 2012.
Kuehn, Heinz R. “New Light On Kafka.” Rev. of Franz Kafka:
Representative Man:

Prague, Germans, Jews, and the Crisis of Modernism, by
Frederick Karl and
Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka, by Joachim
Neugroschel.
The Sewanee Review 102.2 (1994): lviii-lxi. Jstor. Web. 27 Oct.
2012.
Marrus, Michael R. The Holocaust in History. Rhode Island:
Meridian, 1989. Print.
Marx, Karl. “The Manifesto of the Communist Party.” 1888.
The Norton Anthology of Western
Literature. 8th ed. Ed. Sarah Lawall. New York: Norton, 2006.
1382-1390. Print.
Pawel, Ernst. The Nightmare of Reason. New York: Farrar,
1984. Print.
Snell, John L. War & Totalitarianism: 1870 to the Present.
Boston: D.C. Heath, 1966. Print.
Sokel, Walter H. “From Marx to Myth: The Structure and
Function of Self-Alienation in Kafka’s
‘Metamorphosis’.” Franz Kafka: A Study of the Short Fiction.
Ed. Allen Thiher. Boston: Twayne, 1990. 147-156. Print.
Strelka, Joseph P. “Kafkaesque Elements in Kafka’s Novels and
in Contemporary

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Narrative Prose.” Comparative Literature Studies 21.4 (1984):
434-444. JStor.
Web. 2 Nov. 2012.
Wilson, Edmund. “A Dissenting Opinion on Kafka.” Kafka. Ed.
Ronald Gray. Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1962. Print.
Fernando Puig
November 16, 2016
Dr. Steinbrink
Writing and Research
The Great Gatsby (1925) written by F. Scott. Fitzgerald
analyzes the grave disparities between the upper and middle
class during the 1920’s. The author uses Nick Carraway as the
narrator, or storyteller, of the Great Gatsby. Nick has a moral
background that allows him to judge the main character, Jay
Gatsby accordingly.
F. Scott Fitzgerald presented this ethical trick to expose people
delusions about becoming a person of “value”, and uses Nick to
show sympathy for strivers. People chase success and
prosperity through hard work and determination to pursuit
happiness while some of them believe that wealth will fix

everything in life. For the same reason, other people are
idolizing Gatsby. Chasers are inspired by achievers just like
how Nick is fascinated by Gatsby before knowing him. The
Great Gatsby it’s a novel of triumph and tragedy, noted for the
remarkable were the author captures a cross-section of the upper
and middle classes in The Great Gatsby. Furthermore, notions
of demonstrating popularity and wealth, led to be the concepts
of viewing different kinds of social class in The Great Gatsby.
Gatsby being distracted with Daisy demonstrates how a person
can be obsessed with the idea of accumulating wealth to impress
someone. Gatsby has in his mind that the only person that can
inspired him as a person is Daisy and that distraction is causing
him to not appreciate the life of a wealthy and happy person.
Improving to a better type of class helped him in becoming a
wealthy person but didn’t really help in accomplishing the real
goal. Not only the main character was facing problems, also F.
Scott. Fitzgerald had career problems that lead him to
disappointment and used his personal mistakes with characters
in The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life experiences are
reflected with Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby; the fixation on
creating wealth by any means and becoming someone of “value”
does not lead to happiness but to a failure and rather to a life of
hollow existence.
In the period of the 1920’s is that Fitzgerald started
growing as a writer. Not only did Fitzgerald was facing
disappointments in his life, but also the main character, Gatsby.
Fitzgerald was taking his career very seriously that after a week
passed, the first book had twenty thousands marks and for him
wasn’t enough. The book sold “40,000 copies in its first year, a
genuine success” (Le Vot 76). That was a disappointment for
him because he compared himself with other publishers that
sold “180,000 copies in the first six months” (Le Vot 76). It was
a genuine success, but not enough for him because he wrote for
a living and can’t live a life that way. Fitzgerald had a
fascination with writing books but like he said, “The book

didn’t make me as rich as I thought it would nor as you would
suspect from the vogue and the way it was talked about,” (Le
Vot 77). This success wasn’t a good income for his career. As a
writer, “Fitzgerald had to live by the pendulum because as soon
as he stopped grinding pulp for the big magazine and turned to
serious writing, he found himself on the brink of financial
disaster” (Le Vot 77). Then by the time of hard work and
dedication, Fitzgerald started having big money and wealth. As
you can see, it is not easy to overcome the fear of failure, but
once you build up the confidence to not let nothing hold you
back you’ll achieve much more.
The life of Fitzgerald was “the real basis of preoccupation with
failure” (Mizener 23), which is explained through Gatsby,
saying that The Great Gatsby is a story of many problems that
lead to preoccupation of characters. Talking about Fitzgerald’s
background when working as a writer brings many worries of
whether the book will be good or not; but there will always be a
failure on your path that will be the key to moving forward and
finding what a person wants. Fitzgerald mentioned, “his failure
was the defect of his virtues” (Mizener 24), meaning that this
problem was defection of his personality. Failure is a
connection with The Great Gatsby because going through failure
clears the way for you to find your passion, which will
ultimately help you find your happiness. As Fitzgerald said:
“Our passion is our task, and our task is our passion” (Mizener
24). The only way that a person can find he or she passion is by
working hard to achieve success. The same way Nick is inspired
by Gatsby and Gatsby is inspired by Daisy, is the same way
Fitzgerald is inspired with his writing and career.
Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby is one of the most
recognized books in American literature. The 1920’s was known
as a time of social change in rural America. In many aspects of
life, people were changing their past accepted lifestyles and
quickly adopting lavish lifestyles. Published in 1925, The Great

Gatsby is not only an important work of English-language
literature, it’s an excellent period piece that displays the social,
cultural, and political tensions in the 1920’s. The greatness of
The Great Gatsby appears to have caused by a change in
Fitgerald’s outlook, a change that can be traced by serious
problems” (Friedrich 396). Fitzgerald used this novel to reveal
his feelings and opinions on times in the US and adds it to
characters in The Great Gatsby to make the novel more vive.
Prior to Fitzgerald writing, his work was a success stating:
The novel is as brilliant in its characterizations, in its individual
scenes and its dialogue as in its general effects. We could
restrict its scope to that of the novel of manners and still find
the novel an admirable achievement. The characters are
constantly measuring themselves or inviting us to measure them
on a scale of social values (Eble 97).
There are different kind of personalities in The Great Gatsby
that is what makes the story very admirable. In Fitzgerald’s
novel, he writes about the relationship that go on and with these
relationships there is loyalty, self-indulgence, violence, and
disregard to morals are brought with them. The relationship
between Daisy and Tom Buchanan is one of infidelity and lies.
Characters in the Great Gatsby had to lie to have peace between
them and hide the acceptance of the romantic truth. This
loveless relationship consists of Tom cheating on Daisy with
many women, one whose name is Myrtle, and Daisy cheating on
Tom with Gatsby. Myrtle is a middle class women and her
smoldering sensuality enables her to attract Buchanan.
Buchanan is using Myrtle as a toy and abusing her to take
advantage of her. Tom is an aggressive man who, one day,
“shows his violence towards Myrtle when she went so far in
repeating Daisy’s name, Tom breaks her nose with a slap of his
open hand” (Donaldson 195). Tom who is the person, who treats
everyone in a bad way, had the courage to have relations with
Myrtle and not care, even though the love isn’t mutual. Daisy is
aware of Tom affairs, but she still gives the same attention and

accepts Tom for who he is, because he gives everything that she
wants to her. Although the abusiveness is too much, this
situation gives demonstration that the type of class doesn’t
matter, giving a reason to why Daisy should accept Gatsby for
who he is and not for what he has become for her. In preference,
a person should accept someone that he or she loves to have
happiness, instead of just being with someone for the “value”.
Taking in consideration a person that you love should be
someone that you can trust also and have loyalty. The Great
Gatsby is brilliantly composed, and involves many different
personalities. The type of classes were divided in East and West
Egg, they use one another to get what they want. The characters
in the Great Gatsby live in a luxurious society surrounded by
their owns lies and deception. Looking from the outside there
lives seem perfect and they have everything that money can
buy, but this is wrong, the one thing that their money cannot
buy them is a happiness, and this is why each character deceives
someone. Daisy is the person that has it all and it’s leaving a
wealthy life but the problem is her husband, Tom Buchanan, is
without a doubt very lucky to be with her but he’s cheating on
her and not giving her loyalty. Not only, Tom cheating on her,
but he’s cheating on her with someone of a far lesser class;
which makes the readers question why he’s with her in the first
place and why Daisy should give a chance to Gatsby.
Hablar de la luz verde…
Gatsby and Daisy knew each other from before. Gatsby is
determined to win the love back from Daisy. In doing so Gatsby
makes friends with his new neighbor Nick Carraway, the
narrator of the novel, in order to get closer to Daisy. Daisy is
everything Gatsby is striving for and he starts hosting weekly
parties for the high-class people, but most importantly for the
presence of Daisy. Daisy and Tom attended one of Gatsby’s
parties. Tom of course, spends his time chasing women, while

Daisy and Gatsby sneak over to Nick’s yard for a moment of
privacy while Nick, accomplice in the affair; keeps guard. After
a brief love affair, he planned to marry her, but his orders came
to ship out and Daisy won’t leave Tom because of his wealth
and power. If Tom had the guts to cheat on Daisy with a person
of a far lesser class, Daisy should accept Gatsby from the first
time they meet.
Gatsby didn’t give up on Daisy and he kept going. He took
Daisy on his automobile. The automobile was showed in a “rich
cream color” (Lance 26) that creates value, perhaps a symbol of
money and was a popular form of transportation demonstrating
a high-class car. The automobile results from the “combination
of the white of the dream and the yellow of money, of reality in
a narrow sense” (Lance 26). The white meaning the dream of
winning Daisy and yellow the symbol of money. This
automobile brought Daisy’s attention, which Gatsby offered to
let her drive the car. “Of course, it is Gatsby’s dream of
winning Daisy’s love and respect that is corrupted by his
obsession with possessing wealth and material objects, a wealth
that Gatsby owns a monstrous and fantastic yellow-colored car”
(Lance 26). This automobile brings attention to Gatsby and
brings up Gatsby’s illusion of conquering Daisy’s love. This
idea of leading Daisy drive the automobile, created a big impact
in the novel that lead to the death of Myrtle. Tom mistress has
been hit and killed by Gatsby’s car and they never bothered to
stop. They didn’t wanted to take blame of the cause, but the car
was seen and the people knew that the automobile was Gatsby’s.
After this car becomes the vehicle of Myrtle Wilson’s death, it
is simply described as “a yellow car”. Yellow, as “color
imagery unfolds, becomes purely and simply corruption. White,
the color of the dream, has been removed from the mixture”
(Lance 26).
The colors of the car express symbolic meanings in The Great
Gatsby, but the white, the color of the dream, wasn’t a valid
color anymore because the chance that Gatsby had with Daisy

was completely gone. For this situation Daisy and Gatsby also
tried to lie and hide the truth of the impact. Not only Tom was a
liar, also Nick had to lie to Buchanan. Nick lies twice, “Once to
Tom Buchanan when Tom charges Gatsby with being a
bootlegger, and once again to Tom when Nick has the chance to
tell him that Daisy was driving the car that struck Myrtle
Wilson” (Eble 95). Nick denies what he knows to be true, in
defense of Gatsby, his friend. As you can see, characters in the
story had to lie between them to keep the truth of the romantic
vision going and peace between them.
Unfortunately, sometimes when people lie, sooner or later the
truth will be find out. Wilson, Myrtle husband finds out that the
car was Gatsby but he didn’t know that Daisy was the person
driving and the person who killed Myrtle, but Gatsby takes the
blame for her. Gatsby learned the hard way that instead of
putting so much effort into someone, he should open his eyes
and think first of him and his life because sometimes the dream
that a person wants can become an unreal dream of hollow
existence. Nick gets disgusted by the morality and behavior of
the people with whom he has been friends with for the past time
but obviously he still cares for Gatsby. Nick reveals that Daisy
doesn’t need Tom in the same way that he needs her; she needs
Tom to remain emotionally stable. All of that effort Gatsby
didn’t had still the hope of conquering Daisy.
While Gatsby takes the blame of Myrtle death, Daisy keeps
leaving a good life with Tom Buchanan. She didn’t really care
for Gatsby as much as Gatsby care for her. Wilson, Myrtle
husband, found out that the automobile was Gatsby but didn’t
really know the real story. Wilson anger made him fight for
revenge of Myrtle death. Gatsby lying made the situation more
problematic and a cause of a dangerous situation.
Fitzgerald had a failure through his success that he
accomplishes. This situation reflects with the Great Gatsby, in a
way that Gatsby didn’t had the means to support himself when

he meet Daisy but then he work i
. Daisy was a person that depended of others
and The time period that The Great Gatsby was made

The Great Gatsby's Exploration of Value and Happiness

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