Great Gatsby

4 Pages 1035 Words

In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby is portrayed as an individual who strives to achieve the American Dream through acts that would otherwise corrupt a common person in the 1920’s. F. Scott Fitzgerald, however, lived his life in the 1920s with ambition, devotion, and perseverance: the ideal formula for achieving financial success. But Fitzgerald didn’t always follow the rules to the American Dream of monetary prosperity. Likewise, Gatsby wasn’t always a lucky crook. Recognizing Gatsby’s and Fitzgerald’s distinctions, one may ask themselves: how can these two personages be likened to each other? The answer lies in the way in which each either progressed or was damned in living his life. The Great Gatsby is, to the most part, an autobiography of F. Scott Fitzgerald himself.
All humans have at least two selves: one who wants to set goals, work hard, and achieve success; and one who would rather sit around and have fun shopping or gossiping. To understand F. Scott Fitzgerald, the man and the writer, one must be familiar with the idea of doubleness. Fitzgerald was quoted in “The Crack-Up” to have said that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function” (Gottesman, 1615). Everything about Fitzgerald is touched by this idea. For example, he both loves and hated money. He was attracted to the life of the very rich as an outsider who had very little, and at the same time he hated the dishonesty, hypocrisy, and cruelty of their lives. He was disciplined, knowing that he had to have great mental and physical self-control to succeed as a writer, but he was often unable to exercise those very qualities he knew he would need in order to succeed. Part of Fitzgerald lived a dazzling life full of parties, joviality, and show; and part of him knew that this sort of life was a complete chara...