Both Gatsby and Carraway were exceptions for their period in American life, the 1920’s. Gatsby wished to win his only love not to make money. The only way though for him to win his love was to have money to show he could look after Daisy. When he saw this dream was over he gave up to the world and let destiny take its course. Fitzgerald wrote this in Gatsby's dying pages to confirm that all Gatsby wanted was to be with daisy, which was his single dream.
‘If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a singe dream.’
Everyone knew Gatsby had alcohol at his parties but they did nothing as they did not see the moral implications of the dangers it could bring. Fitzgerald wrote ‘The Great Gatsby’ before the Wall Street crash but prophetic suggestion of impending disaster in American society. Fitzgerald is depicting the weak foundations and moral grounds on which the world would fall, shown by Daisy and Tom’s disregard for everyone else and their ignorance of the world around them.
Tom started this disastrous claim of events by having an affair, with a garage mans wife, Myrtle, Tom did not have a care in the world for Myrtle, this is explained to us through Tom making sure that he is never seen with Myrtle and making sure see does leaves all her expensive clothes in their flat in New York. On Myrtle’s death Tom pointed any blame away from himself in order to protect his reputation and his wife, who he would have known was driving the car. It is ironic that it would be his wife that was driving the car that killed her husband’s lover. This thus left a convenient way for Tom to ‘get rid’ of Gatsby. Daisy had already made her decision to leave Gatsby and stay with her husband. All Daisy really wants is security, wealth and status. Daisy would have had security and wealth with Gatsby but would not have had the social status. This is because Gatsby’s wealth was ‘new money’. This term meant that their money was not acquired from family inheritance but from other sources such as alcohol, which was banned in the 1920’s. Gatsby is living in West Egg, the area associated with the ’new wealth’, where as Tom lives in the fashionable East Egg of long island. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being ostentatious and lacking in social graces and taste.
People believe that Fitzgerald is guilty of glamorising the prohibition era. Fitzgerald gives Gatsby’s parties a colourful description which is essentially imprudent. Gatsby’s parties are full of jazz age music and alcohol, which are immortalised but not condoned by the party goers. Gatsby always ‘disapproved of’ the parties despite throwing them. In Chapter III, Fitzgerald depicts to us what Gatsby’s parties are like. ‘On the buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d’oeuvre, spice baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold.’ This colourful description exemplifies to us how grand Gatsby’s parties were. Those that went to Gatsby’s parties must have been lonely and empty to covet to these parties. Fitzgerald possibly also presents Nick as being ‘too good’. This is the case as Nick seems to have no really unpleasant views on people. If Nick does have these views he keeps them to himself. Nick also does not prejudge people no matter what they have done. Nick appears to be to perfect. Nick though does show his disgust for people as he does not like Gatsby but admires what he is doing for love. It is only Nick’s tolerant and generous attitude that saves him.
If Gatsby could look down on his funeral he would see his only true friend was his next door neighbour, Nick Carraway, who organised his funeral and was one of the only people to be there. Gatsby would have realised that Nick was the only person that saw him for who he really was and what his quest was for, to win back Daisy. Many people believe that Gatsby was just using Nick as a connection to try and get his love back, Daisy. This may have been true to start off with, but after Gatsby got to know Tom well, he was still friends. After he realised that his dream was over; as he told Nick all about his life. This gives us a better view of who Gatsby truly was. It is said that Nick could have been after Gatsby’s money. This though I do not believe is true as we see that Nick never so much once mentioned touching Gatsby’s money. This is also shown by the fact that Nick organised the funeral within which we saw none of Gatsby’s so-called friends come to. Carraway is seen as being sympathetic and true friend to Gatsby as he doesn’t like him for his money but instead sees why Gatsby has gone down the road of crime. Gatsby’s main aim in life is to win back his love, Daisy.
“That's my Middle West … the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark…. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly inadaptable to Eastern life”
Nick’s quote from Chapter IX brings the motif of geography in The Great Gatsby to a conclusion. Throughout the novel, places are associated with the themes, characters, and ideas. The East is associated with failing moral values and the pursuit of wealth and social status. We associate the West with being people like Nick who does not judge people and have moral values that would be acceptable anywhere. Nick considers each character's behaviour as a reaction to the wealth-obsessed culture of New York. With this perspective on the East Nick decides to leave the East Coast and to return to his home, in Minnesota. This is partially because we see that Nick wishes to do away with the eastern culture of wealth as he saw that it partially crushed Gatsby’s dream. The crushing of Gatsby dream gave Nick a view of life that he should not live in the past but try and move forward, away from his past, Gatsby. Nick believes that Gatsby ‘turned out all right at the end’ because he started to diverge away from the traditional snobbish Eastern way of life from New York
Throughout the novel we see that Nick’s judgments of other characters are based on the morals he received from his father. Nick is able to make sense out of everyone but is unable to see around Gatsby but soon realises this is because Gatsby is so in love with the past that he will never be able to move on.
Nick, on Chapter VIII turned to Gatsby “‘you’re worth the whole damn bunch put together’……. It was the only compliment I ever gave him,” Nick elucidates to us that Gatsby was hated by many people but people could only like him for his one good characteristic of pursuing a dream. Nick tries to make us be sympathetic for Gatsby who had no true friends apart from Nick and who died alone and unloved.