Who said Gatsby turned out all right at the end it is what preyed on Gatsby what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in?

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F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes

QUOTE TEXT

"You haven't lived until you've died in New York City." -Simone De Beauvoir

What preyed on Gatsby?
When he first met Daisy, he was merely a poor boy with dreams much bigger than his wallet. Daisy was everything he could have possibly dreamed of, rich, beautiful and powerful. As his love for her grew, so did his ambition to give her whatever he could. He didn't go to war to make a name for himself, nor to put food on the table for himself. No, he ventured into the battlefield for Daisy. He was willing to die for the chance to make her happy.When Gatsby acquired a lot of money by a chance encounter with a sailor, his first thought was of his heart. He had left it with Daisy.

New York is where greedy people go to spawn and create more greedy people. Jay Gatsby and Daisy Bucannon were no exception. Daisy hadn't seen Gatsby for almost 5 years, and she holds herself together until she spots the most beautiful...shirts. After having Jay practically come back from the dead, she begins to break down over the most exquisite clothing she has ever seen, no matter that the man she loves has come back for her. Daisy is a materialistic(LINK) person. She fell in love with Tom's money, not Tom himself. At the end of the book, instead of rushing to Nick's side after Gatsby's tragic death, she has nothing to do with either of them. She took the easy way out; staying with Tom. Daisy ultimately chose love over money, revealing her true colors when it mattered the most. Although Daisy loved Gatsby, she was too obsessed with the American Dream to ever truly give him her heart. What preyed on Gatsby was that, even with all his wealth, all of his fame, he couldn't keep Daisy's heart to himself. No matter how much he tried, part of her would always belong to Tom and, more importantly, to his bank account.

Jay Gatsby did not turn out all right. Nick Carroway's thesis has been absolutely rejected, and he was biased and blinded by his love for Gatsby. Jay Gatsby turned out dead. He died, still pining after Daisy, still being preyed on by "the foul dust floating in the wake of his dreams." His demise was more than pointless as well and could have been easily avoided. If Daisy had been smarter, less wound-up heading home the night Tom found out about the affair, she never would have hit Myrtle Wilson and Gatsby would have lived. Jay Gatsby threw 5 years of his life away attempting to win back the heart of a girl who is a materialistic and shallow gold digger.
Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan and Daisy Buchanan were all part of a secret society, the society of "we'll turn out all right." In the novel, on page 17, Daisy is speaking to Nick of her husband's affair. At first, she is wounded and morose. She speaks of her hopes for her daughter because "the best thing a girl can be in this world is a beautiful little fool." Yet, only minutes after speaking so candidly to Nick, she returns to her shiny shell of a privileged, wealthy girl from New York. Nick waited and "sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolutely smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged." Daisy and Tom will never admit that they are bothered by anything. Nothing will ever pull their masks off, especially not in public seeing as they have an image to uphold. Even when Daisy's husband is taking a mistress right in front of her eyes, she does not make a scene. She hides her feelings under a practiced smile and tells herself "I'll be okay." Daisy is part of the image and stereotype that is New York, where a person's reputation is more important than some family members and loved ones. Living in such an environment creates a hard outer-coating of a person.
The real question is, did anyone really turn out all right? Gatsby certainly didn't. Daisy didn't either. She ended up in between a husband and a lover, between security and a chance at the unknown. In the end, she chose the safe route, but a part of her will always wonder who she could have been with Jay Gatsby, what she could have discovered if she had gone back to him. Gatsby's death will have tormented her, along with the fact that she didn't stay behind to tell him good-bye. Tom Buchanan is the only one who turned out all right, which is ironic seeing as he is such a hateful character. He got what he wanted; his mistress conveniently removed, Daisy all to himself and Gatsby dead and rotting with the worms in the ground.

There is no doubt that while reading "The Great Gatsby", one can question how intimate the relationship between Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway really was. My hypothesis is that, if it were revealed that Carraway "played for the other team," the iconic novel may have been interpreted differently. During the book, Nick is very eloquent with his descriptions of the men and women. He throws emotion and beauty into his words, attempting to portray the characters as accurately as possible. However, every narrator is biased, and that is clear in Nick Carraway's story...

I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her gray sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, disconcerted face.

Carraway's description of Jordan Baker is one of a schoolboy who is in love with the idea of a female. He describes her with an air of attraction, yet his words can be interpreted differently. When Gatsby spoke of Daisy, he highlighted of her sensual personality, her lilting voice, and most distinctly, her sex appeal. When men look at women, they think of them as either visually appealing, or not. This traces back to the roots of human instinct; men and women wish to mate with pleasant looking people, assuming that together they will create stronger offspring. As Gatsby talks of Daisy, he reverts back to his earlier instincts. However, looking at that description of Jordan Baker from Nick Carraway's eyes, he does not reveal that passion and longing. Rather, he describes her as "polite, disconcerted and curious." One does not describe a lover with such little passion.

He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding boots could hide the enormous power of that body — he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage — a cruel body.

Now, we look at Nick's description of Tom Buchanan. It reveals a side of artistry in Carraway. You can see how beauty leaks out of his words when he talks with such passion. He romanticizes Tom, turning him into this appealing figure of a man. Women are generally attracted to men who seem dangerous. It appears that Carraway would be no different; while he speaks of Tom, he weaves a golden thrones that he will place the man upon. While highlighting the cruelty of his body, he also speaks of how built Tom is, focusing on his brawn. In just that one paragraph, he betrays a lust for a man's body.
If Fitzgerald was to have created Nick as a homosexual, "The Great Gatsby" would have been a very different book. It may have even influenced the way the story was told originally. When a human being loves another, they can't help but be biased towards that person. If Nick were in love with Jay Gatsby, or even Tom Buchanan, those feelings would explain how, Nick being "the only honest person he knows," kept going back and keeping his friendship with the two. One can wonder why Nick really did stay in New York as long as he did; the city obviously displeased him. He disgusted the politics, the fronts that men and women put up to protect themselves, how everyone wore mask. So why did Nick stay in New York City? Was it because, in a sick way, the city fascinated him? Or was it his infatuation, not with the city, but with the men who lived there?
However, Carraway was not in love with Tom Buchanan, he merely admired his physique. His heart belonged to Gatsby. During the book, he kept believing that Gatsby would turn out okay. It was painfully obvious that Gatsby did not turn out okay, and Nick's genuine love and affection for Jay Gatsby blinded him to the fact that Jay Gatsby is kind of a dick. He is a rich bastard, a cookie cutter of every other jerk in New York City, yet Nick loves him. Therefore, even to the end, he says that Gatsby will turn out okay and tries to make himself believe it. Gatsby very clearly does not turn out okay, and that destroyed Nick. Love forces you to look past the surface, and causes one to be almost blind to the faults of the person they adore. Nick looked past all of the self-obsession, the hopeless love of Daisy and never loses respect for Gatsby. Even at the end of the story, Nick's last words to Gatsby were "You're better than the whole damn bunch put together." Even after all the hideous and complicated things that Gatsby dragged him through, Nick still believed that he was a good person.

A tragic flaw is a failing that does not necessarily make itself known. When one is tragically flawed, according to "Tragedy and the Common Man", their flaw does not always affect them at all. The flaw is only active in those who refuse to have their dignity challenged. Jay Gatsby's tragic flaw was his pride, and the person challenging his dignity was himself. He would not believe that Daisy had ever loved her husband, couldn't fathom that she could ever love another other than himself. When they headed for the hotel in New York City, Tom Buchanan knew about the affair between Gatsby and Daisy, and already he was calculating how to create a chasm between them. On the other hand, Gatsby was comfortable in his position of power. He believed that nothing could dethrone him from the center of Daisy's heart. However, when all hell broke loose at the hotel, his confidence was shattered when he learned that his throne wasn't nearly as safe as he thought it was. As reality struck, Gatsby's fatal flaw took center stage, and he turned into a monster. He completely lost control, and as he lost his control, he lost Daisy as well. Tom, assuming that pride was what wounded Gatsby, added insult to injury by taking control of the situation. He asserted his dominance over the situation by declaring the affair over. In a way, he was correct, because just that week Gatsby was murdered, ending the affair as well as the story.
Jay Gatsby is tragically flawed. His flaw, pride, was what eventually killed him. He refused to believe that Daisy could ever love another man, denied what he knew in his heart. Waiting for the phone call from Daisy, which would never come, he was shot to death by his lover's husband's mistress's husband. Jay died waiting for Daisy, which was how he lived his life as well, waiting for a girl who was too shallow to ever love someone for more than their money. Gatsby was heartbroken from the beginning to the end. His pride would never have killed him if he had been able to handle Tom's insult to his dignity as well as his own uncertainty, and that proves that Jay Gatsby was, indeed, tragically flawed.

For more on "Tragedy and the Common Man" click here