Great_Gatsby_Mega_Essay

Love’s Past Undone The Roman poet Virgil once wrote that love conquers all. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby’s love for Daisy is accurately described by this phrase because his actions are motivated by an attempt to reclaim her love. Love has truly conquered Jay, and as a result, made him incapable of doing anything other than trying to recreate his love with Daisy. Although Jay’s outward appearance is that of someone who has been very successful in life, he is actually powerless in the only area that he cares about because he is plagued by the ironic themes of simple human loss, a retreat to a more glorious past, and hopelessness. The driving irony in The Great Gatsby is the simple human loss of Gatsby’s love for Daisy. This central driver leads to Gatsby’s powerlessness over his own life in the face of this loss. When Gatsby went off to serve in the war, he left Daisy behind to an unknown destiny. He had obligations to fulfill for the military by going to war, and his return is further delayed as some “complication or misunderstanding” forces him to attend Oxford (151). These simple yet unforeseeably agonizing events, not so different than what the average person could go through, contribute directly to his losses, with the most important and driving one being the loss of Daisy’s love. Before his departure, Jay and Daisy were in love with each other. Gatsby’s initial attempt for reuniting him and Daisy occurs because he realizes that he “wants to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.” (89). He wants to recover the lost time and feelings due to his separation from Daisy. Even though Gatsby was overseas, both lovers constantly wrote letters to each other. Gatsby felt the time away from Daisy was unbearable despite having only been gone for just over a year. At this point though, Daisy’s constant need for attention caught up with her as she desperately wants Gatsby to come back. This loss of time causes irreversible damage to their relationship. Another factor that contributes to the loss that Gatsby suffers is the extreme stratification of social class between him and Daisy. Because he was not born into wealth, Gatsby is forced to become something that he is not to fit Daisy’s desires “so he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end” (98). This transformation is necessary in order suit Daisy’s material longings. Had Gatsby been born into a higher class, he would have naturally fulfilled Daisy’s prerequisites. Gatsby is only human; he could not have avoided this predicament. If Gatsby were not affected by such problems, their relationship would have had a chance to thrive. In reality, Gatsby’s human qualities and the losses that follow make him powerless in the fight to keep Daisy with him. The pressures generated from the ironic theme of loss, the loss of love, inhibit his control of the relationship, making him powerless in the only thing that matters to him. He loves Daisy with so much passion, but yet is unable to control the outcome of this self-consuming aspiration, both in the past and the present. With such a great loss overwhelming him, Gatsby is compelled to recreate the emotions he felt with Daisy by attempting to revive the past. The degree to which he strives to do this is a crucial source of his decline. The factors that influence his decision to pursue her, even after five years of separation, are too great for him to resist. Gatsby’s first memories of Daisy resemble a perfect description of love at first sight. Consumed by romantic imagery and passion, a more intense desire than he can handle, Gatsby believed that “when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete" (111). It is clear that even at this time, Gatsby has tremendous love for Daisy. The love he feels is so strong that it forms an almost inseparable bond to her, one that he can’t escape from in the present. However, Gatsby is a mortal human who does not possess powers of time travel or enchantment. Even though he is incredibly wealthy, he still cannot sway the minds of other humans. He is powerless in persuasion, an ability so necessary for him, but at the same time, one that he is unable to have. Gatsby tries to convince himself that he will succeed when he says “Can’t repeat the past' Why of course you can.” He then “looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking in the shadow.” His determination continues when he vows to “fix everything just the way it was before” (110). Gatsby doesn’t realize that the past is not a tangible thing. It is not something like a house or car that he can own or control, thus, he lacks the power to change it. His usual means of influence are ineffective in this situation, rendering him powerless. He still finds refuge in his thoughts and desires, but Gatsby fails to bring about actual change. Another example of Gatsby’s avowal to recreate the past happens during the excursion to the hotel. He tries to make Daisy tell Tom that she “never loved [Tom]” so that it will be “all wiped out forever” (132). Gatsby is trying to persuade Daisy that she too is a soul trapped in the past, and that they both yearn for its revival. Gatsby doesn’t realize that Daisy is not like him, that she adapts instead of atrophies. Gatsby is powerless in his ability to both recreate the past and move on from it, allowing both of these desires to consume everything he does: he becomes rich to appease Daisy, he moves into his house to be close to her, and he distinctly remembers all of their times together. During their first reunion, he instantly recounts that the last time they were together was “five years last November” (86). This shows his obsession because he still hasn’t forgotten anything and the memories are still fresh in his mind. Despite his unwavering motivation to bring back lost love, he is ultimately powerless and remains mentally trapped in his more pleasant past. Gatsby is troubled by an underlying fear: he knows that the past will be near impossible to recreate but refuses to verbally acknowledge this problem. However, he is conscious of this problem, which makes him hopeless about his situation with Daisy. During their first meeting for tea, Gatsby dreads the possibility of failing to charm Daisy as shown by him being as “pale as death with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into [Nick’s] eyes” (86). He knows that not everything is guaranteed to work out and he has no power to affect the outcome. He does his best to impress Daisy with his large house and his beautiful shirts, but he does not have his usual air of self-confidence which can be attributed to his pessimism. He does not verbally expose this until his real thoughts and emotions are exposed in the hotel room. Gatsby keeps trying to make Daisy admit that she never loved Tom because in his heart, he is afraid. He needs to weed out any possible interference to his desired reality, including the possibility that Daisy once loved Tom. When Daisy replies that “[she] did love [Tom] once but [she] loved [Gatsby] too,” Gatsby’s eyes “open and close” due to his glaring disbelief of Daisy’s words (132). As Gatsby staggers to repeat these words, he only manages to say “you loved me too” because he is speechless his fragile hope about Daisy is wrong (132). At this moment, he becomes hopeless because he realizes that what Daisy says comes directly from her own feelings. Even after he recognizes defeat, Gatsby still tries to maintain his delusions of love by saying that “[Tom] is not going to take care of [Daisy] anymore,” implying that he will be with her (133). After the argument between Gatsby and Tom continues, Gatsby eventually realizes that he is wrong, making him appear “as if he had killed a man,” signifying his surrender to the harsh pains of reality (134). He knows that any chance of him and Daisy rebuilding their lives together is lost, sparking a sense of dread and hopelessness. This pain digs into Gatsby, making him even more powerless. Although he tries constantly to disregard the evidence, Gatsby succumbs to his futility and recognizes that he can truly do nothing to change Daisy. Even though Gatsby does not interact with Daisy until he forces Nick to organize a tea party, he still looks at her by the way of the green light on the dock. When Gatsby is looking at Daisy through the window after Myrtle dies, Daisy turns off the light in her room as a way of saying her relationship with Gatsby is over. Despite his thorough determination to bring Daisy back to him, Gatsby is powerless over Daisy because he is affected by simple human loss, a retreat to the past, and hopelessness. Gatsby is unable to move past Daisy, and for this, he loses control of his life.