Identity In The Great Gatsby

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the story of Jay Gatsby is recounted through the starry-eyed perspective of Nick Carraway. Though Nick claims to be an unbiased narrator, his pompous vocabulary and privileged position suggest otherwise. Nick narrates the story in a different order than what actually happens, causing him, and readers, to focus too much on Gatsby’s love for Daisy. Still, readers catch glimpses of who Gatsby is through moments of his past, which show that Gatsby has always had a fascination with becoming a part of the upper echelons of society. Thus, it seems that Gatsby is willing to do whatever it takes to climb the social ladder, and this insatiable desire to be considered “old money” causes Gatsby to allow society …show more content…
Gatsby seems to believe that one cannot live a fulfilling life being poor, and never experiences an anagnorisis because he refuses to reject the influence of his environment and chooses to pursue an ideal that in reality, cannot be attained. As much as Nick would like to elevate Gatsby to an almost divine position, the truth is that Gatsby will never live up to the lofty goals that he sets for himself by the inherent nature that old money cannot be created, only passed down. Even Nick cannot help but to notice this contrast between old and new money when Daisy attends Gatsby’s West Egg party and finds it hard to enjoy herself, “’She didn’t like it,’ he insisted. ‘She didn’t have a good time.’ He was silent, and I had guessed at his unutterable depression. ‘I feel far away from her,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to make her understand’” (109). Nick refuses to accept Gatsby’s superficiality and instead, uses love to justify Gatsby’s actions and apparent nobility. The stubbornness of both characters creates a skewed perception of Gatsby which fails to admit that Gatsby is not in love with Daisy, but rather what she has to …show more content…
When Daisy marries Tom while Gatsby is at war, Gatsby becomes aware that although he can become rich through bootlegging and other means, his drive to succeed has its limits and that money cannot buy the privileges that the pedigree of being a Buchanan or Carraway can. Hence, to Gatsby, acquiring Daisy can help him break this ancestral barrier. Being with Daisy meant being a part of a “stratum” where Gatsby can obtain a sense of security and a “family standing” that can not otherwise be obtained solely off of wealth: “He might have despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under false pretenses. I don’t mean that he had traded on his phantom millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as herself – that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of fact, he had no such facilities, -- he had no comfortable family standing behind him, and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere about the world” (149). Through this viewpoint, Daisy is not a noble love that Gatsby pursued at all costs, but rather a means to an end, the ultimate symbol of status that he can

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