16th May 2017

chapter 6

Gatsby quote- docs

“His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people- his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself…he must be about His Father’s business, the service of vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. 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.” – Nick

Plato was a greek philosopher who was concerned with the real world vs the ideal world. Gatz is a real person. He creates hid ‘ideal self’ and names it Gatsby.

The fact that he was 17 suggests that Gatsby was not completely sure of what he was doing, he only knew that he wanted Daisy. Therefore he created this new version of himself that he imagines Daisy wanted. It was like a fairytale, the way he re-created himself to be rich and famous, he went from nothing to something.  Not only did he ‘invent’ this new person, Gatsby never changed back to anything else. Determination, Gatsby was determined to be this person, to get Daisy to fall in love with him agian.

 

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