Jay Gatsby Flaws

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In the 1920s, much like the present, to many people the "American Dream" was to earn a lot of money, own a large house, own the newest vehicles and gadgets, and live in a safe environment. Gatsby, a classic well-known character in American literature, strives to obtain this Dream by using extreme measures so he could gain the love of a woman named Daisy. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses details about Gatsby's personality to describe what the average American might do to achieve his/her "American Dream". Jay Gatsby is a character who Fitzgerald made both attracted and alluring within the story line. An obvious quality that Fitzgerald gives Gatsby that makes him alluring is his huge amounts of wealth. Outside of his wealth, though, …show more content…
He is a consummate character who represents the person who strives for his/her "American Dream". Even though Nick thinks that Gatsby's character is massively flawed, he could not help but to admire the magnate's "[faithfulness] to the end" (98) as he constantly strived to achieve his Dream. At the end of chapter eight, Nick describes the death of Jay Gatsby as a "holocaust" (162) and, even though this story takes place several years before World War II, the term means "mass destruction". The death of only a few bodies is not merely a "mass destruction" so therefore it is inferred that it was used metaphorically to the destruction of the complete "American Dream". Although he is a consummate character, he is also a divided character because he is an innocent man but he was also corrupt. In the beginning of the book, Gatsby's descriptions gave him a hopeful personality who just wanted love. He is given a likable personality as which he is pleasant and generous. In chapter seven, readers are given the definite details of the criminal activities that Gatsby is involved in when Tom said that he had "found out what [his] ‘drug-stores' were" and claimed that he was a "bootlegger" (133). When Gatsby does not deny this, it is obvious that this statement is true and that Tom may have revealed some
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