Key Images In The Great Gatsby

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How does Fitzgerald use two or three important images to convey key ideas?
Key idea: Gatsby’s Greatness
In Scott Fitzgerald intricate masterpiece The Great Gatsby, one of the most prominent key ideas is that Jay Gatsby is great. Fitzgerald creates and incorporates various images within his book to convey this idea that Jay Gatsby is great. Wealth and power, two huge images that are created within the book by Fitzgerald, and are relatable to the period. Gatsby demeanour is another factor that contributes to this idea. However often like all hero’s, they have flaws and Gatsby is no exception as seen in the book.

Gatsby is incredibly wealthy and powerful and Fitzgerald emphasis’s that period’s attitude towards money, the American dream. Gatsby …show more content…
Gatsby wealth although massive is ill-tainted, his wealth has come about due to illegal affairs. Gatsby’s business is bootlegging, the selling of liquor through back-street drug stores. The initial suspicion about Gatsby’s wealth comes about in Chapter five, during the scene where Gatsby and Nick are having lunch with a man called Meyer Wolfshiem. Woflshiem is a gambler, a Gatsby explains how “He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919”. Wolfshiem also mistakes Nick for a criminal himself, asking Nick “I understand you’re looking for a business gonnegtion”, and later in that scene Nick becomes aware that Wolfshiem cufflinks are “Finest specimens of human molars”. Gatsby demeanour also has flaws, portraying an image of a respectable old family and a decorated man but we know this façade. Gatsby claims to have gone to Oxford, “old money” and In Chapter three claims “I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West – all dead now” and then “came into a good deal of money”. This is all false, much alike Gatsby’s demeanour. Gatsby throughout the book also uses the phrase “old sport”, almost every time he references a human, demonstrating how he is trying incredibly hard to “appear” adept with the upper class
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