Final Gatsby Discussion

At the very end of the novel Fitzgerald states, "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled under the night." Throughout the whole novel Gatsby believed that his dream was to be with Daisy and to win her love back that he had once had before. However, Gatsby did not know that his dream was unreachable. For Daisy had already moved on from Gatsby and she would never go back to him. From the outside, Gatsby seemed to have the perfect life or the dream life. When actually he had nothing at all. Gatsby held numerous extravagant parties that many people attended. He had more money and riches than anyone could even dream about. Yet, none of Gatsby's party guests or so called friends attended his funeral. Sometimes things aren't always what they seem. It may appear that someone has everything they could ever ask for when in reality they are always striving for something they would never truly have, happiness.

As briefly previously stating, Gatsby dreamed to be with Daisy. He wanted nothing more. In fact, Gatsby became somewhat obsessed with achieving this goal. Daisy, however, was mainly after one thing in her life, money. This was so noticeable that even Gatsby once said, "Her voice is full of money." That is the whole reason Daisy was interested in Gatsby when they first reunited. Gatsby took Daisy to his mansion and showed her all of the fancies in life. But soon Daisy realized that she already had these things with Tom. On page 179 Fitzgerald writes, "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...." Daisy did not care that she somewhat used Gatsby and hurt his feelings. She only cared about herslef.

Honestly, the whole message of this book is kind of depressing. In my opinion there are two ways of looking at the message. One way of looking at it is that we most likely will not achieve our goal or dream in life unless we do things like lie and cheat. By this I mean that Gatsby did not accomplish his goal of winning over Daisy while Daisy, on the other hand, did accomplish her own goal of money by doing bad things such as cheating. However, I think another way of looking at it is that we won't reach this goal if we lie and cheat. For example, Gatsby held these huge parties with people he didn't even know. He never really took the time to get to know any of them either, unless that person had something to do with Daisy. Because Gatsby did not let many people truly see him for who he really was, there were hardly any people that showed up to his funeral. While it is good to dream big, sadly we may not always accomplish these hopes and dreams.