12652
1/4/04
Dreams: To Be or Not to Be
Many people are told to follow their dreams, but this advice should be taken cautiously. We all have within ourselves goals and dreams, yet, as optimists, we sometimes tend to vision only the bright side of the future. The cons are not taken much into consideration or even noticed until it is too late. Both the short story The Necklace and the novel The Great Gatsby contain characters that have followed the wrong dream. Madame Loisel from The Necklace helps reiterate the theme from The Great Gatsby that those who pursue impossible dreams will only suffer and taint their reputation.
First of all, Madame Loisel and Jay Gatsby are both in denial of reality and think whatever they please in attempting to achieve their dream. For example, distressed of the poverty of her dwelling, Madame Loisel feels “herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries” and “thought of long reception halls hung with ancient silk, of the dainty cabinets containing priceless curiosities and of the little coquettish perfumed reception rooms made for chatting at five o’clock with intimate friends, with men famous and sought after, whom all women envy and whose attention they all desire” (Guy de Maupassant 1). Madame Loisel’s dream is to become rich: she cannot cope with the fact that she was born a clerk and must live the ways of a clerk; she is in denial of her social status, encouraging herself that her true position lies with the wealthy. She thinks luxurious thoughts when she is physically unable to achieve these dreams. Madame Loisel also speaks for life when she states that she should have been born a rich woman: not all women are or can be rich, and there is no particular reason why she should be one of them. In addition, Gatsby still determines to watch over Daisy after Nick sees that “Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table…(Tom) was talking intently across the table with her and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own. Once in a while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement” (Fitzgerald 152). Gatsby, whose dream is to gain Daisy back, refuses to accept his loss in the battle against Tom for Daisy’s love. He is so engrossed with his past love with Daisy that he is oblivious to the meaning behind what Nick has just witnessed. Nick has witnessed Tom and Daisy’s reconciliation of their differences; they will stay together as they have, and Gatsby will not become an obstacle in continuing this. Madame Loisel and Jay Gatsby falsify their lives in chasing their dream.
