The meeting of illusions with reality can have tragic consequences

07/11/2001

The meeting of illusions with reality can have tragic consequences

In the 1920’s the American attitude is one of hopes and dreams and the illusions created from them, and oftentimes their meeting with reality had tragic consequences. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is considered a novel that embodies America in the 1920’s. In it, the narrator, Nick Carraway, helps his neighbor Jay Gatsby reunite with Daisy Buchanan, with whom he has been in love since 5 years before, during World War 1. The affair between the two individuals fails, however, and ends in Gatsby being shot and killed. The reason for this is that Gatsby lives in a world of illusion rather than reality and he is striving for a dream that is unattainable. Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy, him hiding his past and trying to be someone else, and the death of Myrtle clearly show that Gatsby lives in a world of illusion rather than reality.

The basis of all of the illusion is Gatsby's obsession with Daisy and with meeting her. He did not want to deal with the reality that confronted him upon returning from the war. Fortunately, he had "an extraordinary gift, a romantic readiness," and he found in Daisy someone to focus this on. She is perfection to him, something for which he can strive, so he puts all of his energy into finding her again. He uses his inherited money to travel around the country, searching; when he runs out of it, he goes into the drug business, then oil, then liquor. He clips out articles about Daisy from every newspaper he can find; he buys a huge, romantic house that he hopes will merit her approval. The parties that he gives every night in hopes that she will come, become almost famous for their extravagance and the variety of people that come.

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As a result of his obsession with Daisy, Gatsby creates an illusion around himself, also. His past is shrouded in mystery and speculation: some favorites of the partygoers’ theories on why he is so free and generous with his resources are that “he once killed a man” and that “he was a German spy during the war”. He does nothing to discourage these rumors; rather, he often adds to them. He lets people believe that he was an Oxford man and that his money was inherited from his father, when in fact he only attended Oxford for a short time and his money all came from outside his family. Jay Gatsby is not even his real name, but part of the illusion of his identity; his real name is James Gatz. On page 105, Nick says “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.” Nick uses a striking comparison between Gatsby and Jesus Christ to illuminate Gatsby's creation of his own identity. By “Gatsby… sprang from his Platonic conception of himself”, the author wants to show how Gatsby transforms himself into the ideal that he envisioned for himself.

Even though the meeting with Daisy at Nick’s house went well, Gatsby cannot plan for reality. While he and Daisy are driving in his car, Daisy accidentally hits Myrtle Wilson, a woman who lives above a service station in New York. Her husband, Mr. Wilson, thinking that Gatsby was driving, comes and shoots him in the pool. This, however, is merely symbolic of reality crashing down on what Gatsby had created. Firstly, his fantasy could not have ever worked because Daisy is not perfect. She is instead more like her husband, Tom: reckless and spontaneous. In fact, Daisy was probably planning on leaving with Tom anyway. He had suspected her and Gatsby's affair and found out about his bootlegging operation. This darker side of him is what most destroyed her illusion about Gatsby. He, on the other hand, probably still believed in her to the end; the knowledge that Daisy was leaving with Tom would have had devastating effects perhaps equal to even his murder. On page 188, Nick concludes the novel by saying, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….And then one fine morning—“. He is talking about the importance of past to the dreams of future. What started Gatsby’s illusion was the need to recreate his affair with Daisy in 1917.

Illusions and fantasies meeting with reality have tragic consequences. The obsession with Daisy, Gatsby creating an illusion around himself, and Myrtle’s death and its consequences clearly show this. His hopefulness was the basis of what made Gatsby great and why the novel is so representative of the 1920s. The American attitude was, and still is, one of hopes and dreams and the illusions created from them, and oftentimes the meeting with reality had tragic consequences as it did with Gatsby. This relates perfectly to real life where people are willing to do almost anything in order to achieve their dreams, just like Jay Gatsby.