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The characters have to travel through this Hell to reach the "paradise" of New York City, the place where they work, play, and show off their wealth.
The eyes also symbolize the emptiness of the character's lives. They have money and lavish lifestyles, but none of them are happy. In fact, many of them end up dead by the end of the novel. The blue eyes on the billboard are empty of life, and so are the characters, so they are watched over by empty eyes as they go about their very empty lives. Daisy sums this up late in the novel when she says, "What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?' cried Daisy, 'and the day after that, and the next thirty years?' 'Don't be morbid,' Jordan said" (Fitzgerald 118). These people seem to have everything they could ever want or need, and yet, they are unhappy in their souls and in their reactions to life. The emptiness of the "wasteland" they have to travel through each day mirrors the wasteland in their hearts and their minds. They are as empty as the wasteland, and not just because they are shallow, but because they have no intellectual interests that stimulate their minds. They spend their nights drinking, socializing, and trying to outdo each other in money and possessions, but they do not exercise their minds, and so their lives are empty and bleak like the land where the billboard stands and watches over them.
6. In the end, Jay Gatsby is a sad, even pathetic figure in this novel. He finds out the woman he adores really does not love him like he thought, he finds the separation between old...
He has tried to become something he is not, and it has made him a very tragic and sad figure. Nick, the narrators says late the in the novel, "He [Gatsby] must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon he scarcely created grass" (Fitzgerald 162). Gatsby is not pathetic because his life is falling apart around him and he does not fit into the society he so desperately craves. He is pathetic because he has had dreams of Daisy for so long they have become his only dreams. When he discovers she really does not love him, he has nothing left to hope for or dream about, and that is what makes him such a tragic character. Nick sums up the emptiness of his life at the end of the story, when he talks about Gatsby's funeral. He thinks, "The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn't any use. Nobody came" (Fitzgerald 175). Gatsby's life is a waste, because he has hoped for things he can never attain, and loved a woman who does not love him. You have to feel sorry for a man like that. Fitzgerald has created a strong character with a fatal character flaw - Daisy. He is sad, tragic, and even pathetic, and you cannot help but pity him at the end of the novel.
References
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925.
Great Gatsby -- a Theoretical Analysis The Great Gatsby is one of the legendary novels written in the history of American literature. The novel intends to shed light on the failure of American dream that poor can attain whatever he wants and emphasizes on the hardships presented by the strong forces of social segregation. In order to understand this novel, there are various theories which tend to be helpful in order
Gatsby had built up this incredible illusion of what Daisy really was, and had gone off the deep end in throwing himself after her. Weinstein (p. 25) quotes from pages 102-103 of the novel: "There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion." It is typical of Fitzgerald to
However, his single focus on getting Daisy's green light, something he cannot have, creates a motive of greed in Gatsby that he is unable to control and eventually destroys him. For example, Nick talks of Gatsby's idealization of Daisy by saying: "There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his
Fitzgerald uses white to describe Daisy, and it is fairly certain he used white to depict Daisy's original innocence. Daisy's car is white, her clothes are white and the paint on the walls of her house are white. However, toward the end of the novel Daisy has been corrupted by Gatsby and the whole social scene, and she becomes careless and destructive. A reader can surmise that Fitzgerald is simply
Characters in the Great Gatsby -- the American Dream A. Nick Carraway is the narrator in this novel and plays a very important role 1) Nick is the readers' source of description and information about the other characters, especially Gatsby, Daisy, 2) Nick is an honest person in the beginning of the novel, but the more he becomes involved in the relationships with Tom, Daisy and Gatsby, and through his romantic relationship
Great Gatsby the old rich and the new rich. The power play between these two sectors at the East Egg and the West Egg is one of the most immediate themes of the novel. The old rich or traditional aristocracy is represented by Tom and Daisy Buchanan, and Jordan Baker who behave with ingrained grace, simple taste, subtlety and elegance. They are suspicious about, and discriminating against, the new