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Whoisthispainterwhopaintsthesea
Inallofitsbluebeauty
Withtoweringwavesthatglisteninthesun
Eachoneisforeveryone
Withmanycreaturesbelowofdifferentshapesandsizes
Eachonehavingitsownsurprises
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Whopaintsthesunandmoonabove
Madetolighttheskiessobright
Whethernightordayyoufeeltheirglow
Andseeapathwaylitforyou
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Hisgreatestcreation
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Scott1
Dylan Scott
Mrs. Tollett
Honors American Literature
25 April 2014
James Gatz: The Great Illusionist
He is Jimmy, the Mr. Nobody from nowhere (Fitzgerald 130). He is James, the boy
with not a single cent to his name but a dream as big as the stars. He is the Great Gatsby, the rich
and mysterious thrower of extravagant parties. Gatsby achieves his most well-known title as
The Great when he is at the peak of his life and as rich as he can be, yet does he deserve it?
Many great people have gone through history and literature without ever receiving such a title,
yet a bootlegger from the West achieves such an honor. Gatsbys wealth, friends, past,
personality, gestures, and even name are all fake and made up by himself. However, what
actually makes him great is how fake he really is. In history, the most people who receive the
title of great are magicians, illusionists, and street side performers. In a way, Gatsby is greater
than even the Great Houdini because he creates an illusion that fools not only everyone around
him but himself as well. Gatsby develops an illusion that has a peculiar nature and origin that
leads to his rise and fall. It is in the nature of such an elaborate illusion that an illusionist can
gain the title of great.
Gatz embraces the idea of The American Dream from the beginning of his childhood.
Living in the West, a young Gatz is influenced by romanticized western stories such as
Hopalong Cassidy and the ideas of life on the old frontier. The old western frontier instills in
people that the average man is a hero and that hard-work leads to success. Gatz takes this to heart
and begins developing his illusion around this perception of people (Lehan Fathers
Scott2
Business 44). He begins to truly believe that he can move forward in society, so he makes a
calendar with a list of things he wants to do: No more smoking or chewing, bath every other
day, read one improving book or magazine per week on the back cover of a Hopalong Cassidy
novel (Fitzgerald 173). It is here when Gatzs ideas of romanticism and realism come together to
form his illusion, for the list is a realistic view on how to achieve a goal. However, the list is
written in a romanticized novel portraying the fact that Gatz has rational steps, yet the dream is a
castle far up in the sky (Lehan Fathers Business 45). This split between his romantic and
rational side will carry through his life, and the romantic side will only grow larger as the illusion
does. Gatz soon meets Dan Cody, a rich and wild man, who introduces Gatz to the lifestyle of
the rich. It is through Cody that Gatz sees being rich as reaching the new status he wants. Gatz
learns the ways in which a man of money and higher class should present himself, yet Cody is
not the best for this. Cody is very romantic himself. With Fitzgerald deriving his name from two
cowboys, Cody can be seen as someone who is in place to envelop Gatz in his own illusion
through increasing Gatzs romantic view on life (Lehan Inventing Gatsby 65). It is Cody who
gives Gatz his new name Jay Gatsby revealing that Gatz has been escorted by Cody into a deeper
thought of romanticism. Gatsby gets to see how extravagant the high life is, and this leads into
his meeting with Daisy.
Gatsby, with his new name, is now fully enveloped in his own illusion. To the new
Gatsby, his old self never existed, and he is now the son of God (Fitzgerald 98). The new
Gatsby does not care about the past ties to the social class, especially when he meets Daisy. As
the kings daughter, the golden girl (Fitzgerald 127), Gatsby views Daisy as the epitome
of his dream. She has all the wealth and lives the life that he desires more than anything. He
wants to love her because of what she is, not who she is.Realistically he cannot have her, for he
Scott3
is part of the lower class. However, romantically she can be his. Gatsby does not care about class
distinction, for in his illusion he is part of the upper class and is able to fancy her with an upper
class attitude, courtesy of Dan Cody. The illusion drags Gatsby into believing that he can marry
Daisy, so when he has to go to war, she becomes the split between his reality and imagination
(Parkinson 102). This split is what comes to define the nature of the illusion and Gatsby as a
person. Gatsby will never be able to mend his dream to reality because he could not mend the
two when meeting Daisy. He got Daisy to love him, yet reality stepped in and stopped him in the
form of social class and war. Daisy becomes the nature of Gatsbys illusion. Gatsbys illusion is
unique in how it involves the illusionist, brought by Cody, and lies in the past (Hermanson). For
the illusion to work and take hold, Gatsby cannot move past the day he left Daisy. If he moves
past that moment, the illusion is shattered as Gatsby believes he can do anything. The son of
God will be brought back down to the reality of his true past and life. It is in this nature that
Daisy is the keystone to the illusion. She becomes the drive the dream pushes for, so Gatsby can
mend the two halves. However, this cannot happen because the image of Daisy is only as real as
his illusion is (Hermanson).
Gatsby moves past the war and devotes his life to obtaining Daisy. The illusion cannot
sustain itself without her, so every move he makes is for her. In his mind, he can only reach her
by growing the illusion. He can not only act the part, but he has to be a member of the higher
class. It is through Gatsby that readers see a dream like Gatsbys cannot remain pristine (qtd.
in Decker 295). In his blind obsession with a material object, Gatsby ignores morals and feelings
of others as shown by his involvement with criminals. He obtains wealth, yet it remains to be
part of the illusion. The wealth is fake in that he gained it illegally. Despite this, he buys a
mansion across from Daisys and throws lavish parties every weekend. This is also part of the
Scott4
illusion in an attempt to attract Daisy to his wealth and status. In this moment, the illusion is at
its peak. People come to know Gatsby due to these parties, and thus he becomes The Great
Gatsby. In his mind, this is all to win over the piece of his dream that got away, yet to others it is
a great man showing his wealth. Romanticized rumors fly around about Gatsby only pushing his
mysterious image higher in the eyes of the public (Hermanson). Gatsby has created fame for
himself, yet all he desires is Daisy on the other side of the lake. His new image has pushed the
whole town under his illusion, for people perceive him as this great image. An illusion relies on
the perception of the viewer, and the people perceive Gatsby as a man of true higher class
(Parkinson 102). He has achieved his dream, but without Daisy, Gatsbys reality is lost in the
past.
He is The Great Gatsby to all and one of the richest men alive, yet he is not content with
the way things are. The illusion is not providing the substance he wants out of life, and as more
steps are taken to acquiring Daisy, the illusion begins to reveal its weaknesses and fall apart.
Gatsby has people he hasnt even met caught under the illusion, yet that is why it works so well.
In wanting to meet Daisy, Gatsby gets close to Nick. He tells elaborate stories to Nick about how
he went to Oxford and the war. Nick believes him, but then the stories become too elaborate. In
trying to recreate his past, Gatsby creates many contradictions, for he cannot get his romanticized
persona to line up with his realistic personality and ideals (Lehan Inventing Gatsby 59). The
split left by Daisy begins to reveal itself through Gatsbys words. When Gatsby talks, he appears
to have two personalities as The Great Gatsby who gives people a romantic view on life, and
Gatz who remains under the surface uncultured in a stiffly manner (Parkinson 101). His
contradictions and faults only get more elaborate as Daisy gets closer to him. With Daisy close
by, he falls apart because his dream cannot become a reality. To turn the illusion into a reality,
Scott5
Daisy needs to be with Gatsby. However, the illusion becoming reality means that the illusion
dies, and with the illusion dead, Gatsby can never be with Daisy. In a weird circle of events,
Gatsbys illusion can only survive with Daisy as a dream. Gatsby seems to realize this when he
meets Daisy and a faint doubt [occurs] to him (Fitzgerald 95), but he cannot bring himself
to accept this fact. Instead, he pushes on with the illusion and tries to incorporate a physical
Daisy into it by erasing the past. Gatsby is faced with being pulled into reality as a result. In the
hotel room on that hot fateful day, Tom Buchannan not only destroys Gatsbys image, but the
image of Gatsby as well. Tom destroys the illusion (Lehan Inventing Gatsby 66). With his true
past brought out, Gatsbys romantic side dies, and in a poetic way, he is murdered soon after as if
his realistic side could not survive without the great romantics of the Great Gatsby. He is buried
as James Gatz with only a few at his funeral. With the illusion dead, the great in his name and
everything it represents is gone.
As James Gatz is buried, people forget who he is. His wealth, fame, and other worldly
possession are gone with his body. However, people such as Nick remember Gatsby as the great
dreamer. They remember Gatsbys wonder when he first picked up the green light at the end
of Daisys dock (Fitzgerald 180). His dream and illusion are the greatest parts about Gatsby.
The title of Great died at his funeral as well as the illusion he created, for his greatest
achievement was his illusion. However, his legacy lives on as he was able to make a dream and
achieve it. It is the attempt itself and the firm belief that he can achieve the impossible that
makes Gatsby more than the sum of his reality (Hermanson), and that is all Gatsby ever wanted.
He wanted to be something more, someone remembered. In the end, he achieved this through his
dream and illusion. He teaches that dreams can come true but maybe not in the way they are
expected. It took Gatsbys death to make him a truly great person who will be remembered.
Scott6
Works Cited
Decker, Jeffrey Louis. Gatsbys Pristine Dream: The Diminishment of the Self-Made Man in
the Tribal Twenties. Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Vol. 210, (1994): n. pag.
Web. 20 May 2009<http://go.galegroup.com>.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1925.
Hermanson, Cassie. The Great Gatsby: Major Characters, Time, Ambiguity and Tragedy.
Novels for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1998.
eNotes.com. January 2006. 4 November 2008. http://www.enotes.com/great-gatsby/>.
Lehan, Richard. His Fathers Business. Twaynes Masterwork Studies The Great Gatsby Limits
of Wonder. Boston: 1990, 42-57.
Lehan, Richard. Inventing Gatsby. Twaynes Masterwork Studies The Great Gatsby Limits
of Wonder. Boston: 1990, 58-66.
Parkinson, Kathleen. Gatsby and Nick Carraway. The Great Gatsby. New York: Penguin
Books, 1987, 94-119.
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