The Great Gatsby :: English Literature

The commodious GatsbyThe capacity to dream is a natural characteristic possessed by allmankind. Americans living in a country based on the philosophy ofpursuing great American dreams go about pursuing their own goals inmany ways. Ironically the American dream itself is the ultimateillusion that can never satisfy those who pursue it. The Americandream was only possible when it was a potential. Nick inFitzgeralds, The Great Gatsby, realized this as he imagines a pastwhen the Dutch first laid their tendernesss on the vast wilderness of theuninhabited United States. Gatsbys ideals in this novel are theideals of all Americans. Gatsby and Americans search for a dream andyet nobody truly understands what it is they are really in search of. throng go about fulfilling these dreams by using cheap reality and inthe end it does not measure up to the size of the dream itself thedreamer is bound to be disappointed with every accomplishment of thedream. At the conclusion of Fitzgeralds book, The Great Gatsby, the maincharacter Gatsby has recently died and Nick stands facing the front adit of Gatsbys mansion. From this moment, Nick looks at Gatsbyshouse for a last era. He sees a swear word on the wall, and likeHolden in the book, The catcher in the Rye, he too crosses the wordout trying to preserve the innocence. Nick wants to keep Gatsbysdream pure even though it is already lost. Later on while Nick is allalone, everything begins to melt away. He starts to picture how itlooked a hundred years ago when the Dutch sailors first reached a newworld. Nicks world becomes the world of idealism, where the physicalworld doesnt matter the great house of Gatsby begins to melt awayand finally melt down in Nicks mind for that moment. Nick sees that, for a transitory enchanted moment man must have heldhis breath in the aim of this continent, compelled into anaesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face toface for the last time in history with something commensurate to hiscapacity for wonder, (pg 189). For that one time the Dutch merchantssaw the idea of property in a different way. The Dutch saw thewilderness and trees not as wood- cutters or property owners except aspoets, like presented in Emersons, Nature. Wood- cutters own thetimber physically, but, there is a property in the horizon which noman has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, thepoet,(Nature). The Dutch saw the beauty of the land and trees and