35. Within this paragraph Fitzgerald crafts the allusion of the holy grail as a major part of Gatsby’s dream. As Gatsby’s dream is compared with the journey to find the holy grail, Fitzgerald depicts the inherent failure of the dream. That Gatsby has “committed himself” (149 Fitzgerald) to himself to an object which is unachievable for a man of stature. By being raised up in a rather poor family in the West, Gatsby seeks to gain the wealth of the East. He builds this dream around Daisy, who is his “holy grail” (149 Fitzgerald) not due to his love for her but because of his dream of wealth.
Furthermore, attaining Daisy will serve as a symbol of his victory over his past portraying how his attainment of the prosperity and wealth held by the East. 36. Fitzgerald characterizes the love that Gatsby held for Daisy through a simile describing how Daisy was “gleaming like silver” (150 Fitzgerald). Therefore, Fitzgerald crafts Daisy to represent the vast amount of wealth held by the East, which Gatsby desperately seeks. That Gatsby’s dream has never been focused on his love for Daisy but instead seeks the plethora of wealth and status held by her.
Furthermore, Daisy stands above the hot struggles of the poor” (150 Fitzgerald) depicting how she lives in a position which Gatsby will never be able to reach. Likewise, due to his connections with the West, Gatsby has been born with a social status which will never be accepted by the East. Thus, he will never be able to reach Daisy, the epitome of Eastern wealth. 37. Fitzgerald constructs this specific paragraph to emphasize the emptiness of the Eastern rich. Through employing Daisy as an example, he emphasizes how the affluent people of the East lives the life of pleasure which separates them from the woes of the real world.
That orchestras were “summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes” (151 Fitzgerald) which allowed for the rich to forget about the problems of the day and become absorbed in their own lives. Moreover, the “hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers” (151 Fitzgerald) display the enormous amount of wealth within these communities which played into the “low, sweet fever” (151 Fitzgerald) of the parties in Eastern society. Thus, Fitzgerald is portraying to the reader the vacuity present in the East, which is often seen in people from this region such as Tom and Daisy. . Daisy marries Tom for numerous reasons directly connected with her being brought up in a wealthy Eastern household.
First and foremost, she marries Tom due to him being part of the same social status as her and having large amounts of money. Likewise, she does not seek to break her social status by marrying a man of lower status than her or marrying a man who lacks material wealth. Secondly, Gatsby the man who she fell in “love” with does not instantly return home after WWI and after time has passed she move on to other men due to the “pressure of the world” (151 Fitzgerald).
Thus, she marries Tom out of practicality as she seeks to marry in her prime when she can attract the richest suitor of her liking. 39. Through this sentence Nick is displaying how Gatsby believed that he had lost any chance of being in love with Daisy again. That when he came back to America only to see Tom and Daisy together the notion that he “had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever” (153 Fitzgerald) stuck with him. For the rest of his life he would never be able to regain the spark held between him and Daisy which he believed to be central to their ove.
Moreover, the events move “too fast.. for his blurred eyes” (153 Fitzgerald) leaving him feeling lost with his love for Daisy. Consequently, this realization pushed Gatsby into some of the darkest moments of his life where he would begin to craft his dream. The dream which he will never be able to achieve, yet continually tries for since his life has become centered around it. 40. Consistently throughout the story, Nick has never truly complimented Gatsby on any characteristics of his. Likewise, Nick has had nothing but hateful scorn for the rich who have ome to dominate society.
That higher classes inhabited by Daisy, Jordan, and Tom is plagued by emptiness and corruption which destroys the purpose of life. However, the paradox arises in that Nick is not scornful of Gatsby even though he is rich. This is due to the fact that Gatsby is not part of the rich of the East as he is a self-made man from the West. That while he may have a similarity in corruption to the affluent East, he does not compare to them in any other way as he has a been brought up in entire circumstance which defines Gatsby.
Moreover, Nick laims that he is worth the “whole damn bunch together” (154 Fitzgerald) which is the only compliment he ever gives to Gatsby. 41. Fitzgerald crafts this passage to attack the materialism and shift from traditional seen in the 1920s which disillusioned him from society. Wilson has come to believe that Myrtle was unable to escape the “eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg” due to the fact that you “can’t fool God” (159 Fitzgerald). However, Wilson had previously stated that he was not part of any church making it likely that he did not practice religion at all, yet he believed in God.
Thus, Wilson is depicting to the reader the effect which wealth has had upon the morals of the population. That materialism had become the central of the world leaving traditional values behind, making wealth their new god. Similarly, the “gray clouds” which form outside Wilson’s window represents the confusion and loneliness which plagues him and clogs his thinking. That he has become disillusioned with life due the materialism of others having a terrible effect on his life. 42. The “ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward Gatsby through the morphous trees” (161 Fitzgerald) is Wilson who has come to kill Gatsby.
By describing him as “ashen” (161 Fitzgerald) Fitzgerald is crafting Wilson to embody the Valley of Ashes, the area outside the West egg inhabited by poor men. Moreover, he is displayed to be coming through “amorphous trees” (161 Fitzgerald) depicting how the true intentions of Wilson were not fully understood until the killing occurred. That the destruction of Wilson’s dream has left his life to waste away as anger and hatred fill him. 43. Fitzgerald employs the word “holocaust” to mphasize the atrocity of events that have occurred towards the end of the book.
That one after another innocent people are dying from Myrtle being killed by Daisy driving Gatsby’s car to Wilson’s rash shooting of Gatsby. Thus, through the employment of this specific word, Fitzgerald is emphasizing that the deaths of these innocent lives were necessary for the rich to continue prospering. Moreover, the connection of the word with sacrifices is the most likely case as the coining of the term with the atrocities committed in WWII by Hitler towards the Jews had not occurred.