Assessing Gatsby’s Morality: a Broken Hearted Dreamer

Jay Gatsby’s romantics about how life should be give him a hopeful outlook, but also leads to a broken heart caused by unmet expectations. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Gatsby is a broken-hearted dreamer. This is because of his abandonment of self, his unrealistic expectations, and his finality in loneliness. Gatsby's overarching dream is to be his perfect self, and he sought to achieve this by throwing away his identity in the process.

Besides the heartbreak between Jay and Daisy, through his dreaming, Jay breaks who he is as James Gatz. In his pursuit of being his perfect self, Jay Gatsby threw away his boyhood identity in exchange for an identity he feels is deserving of his dream. Nick narrates, “He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career” (Fitzgerald 95). James Gatz would never be good enough for the dreams of Jay Gatsby, and in order to amend this, he simply broke away from who he used to be and rewrote himself. Jay’s humiliation with James and his poor life in South Dakota, is what spurs  Gatsby on to pursue his wealthy lifestyle. After experiencing wealth through the life of Dan Cody, wealth and status becomes Gatsby's true dream (Fitzgerald 95). Jay obtains his wealthy lifestyle, but only because of the intense shame he feels for the sorry boy in South Dakota. The true heartbreak is Gatsby's abandonment of Gatz because of his own insecurities. Without accepting James, Jay creates a hole within himself that leaves him in constant dissatisfaction and no material wealth fills the void.

Gatsby’s dreams ultimately set him up for failure because they are never as wonderful as he hopes they would be. His narrative leaves him disappointed as Daisy fails to live up to who Gatsby built her up to be over the years. Jay expresses this depression to Nick after his obscenely extravagant party saying “I feel far away from her” (Fitzgerald 107). He no longer knows who the real Daisy is, and is desperately trying to escape the fact that nobody will be able to be what he wants Daisy to be. Gatsby has fooled himself into thinking that if Daisy simply tells Tom that she doesn't love him, that all would be as it was five years ago. For a moment, it seems as if Gatsby will get his nostalgic dream as Daisy says with reluctance that she “never loved [Tom]” (Fitzgerald 139). But these words are shallow bargains offered up by Daisy, and Gatsby can see in full light that their love will only ever be as good as its memory. While Daisy Buchanan is the object of Jay Gatsby's rose tinted dreams, all he ever really desires is to feel loved enough by anyone to forget his inner heartbreak.

Despite all of the hopes and ambitions that Gatsby has for his life, all he ultimately wants, and fails to achieve, is to be loved. At the end of his life, it is shown that no one truly ever cares for Jay Gatsby. His father loved his son James and Nick knew who this fictional Jay was pretending to be, but that is the end. At Gatsby’s funeral; “The minister glanced several times at his watch, so [Nick] took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn't any use. Nobody came” (Fitzgerald 172). Gatsby appears like a beloved member of high society as his gilded mansion is packed with the finest people from New York every weekend. Yet, when the fun and music has ceased, the abundant time that his guests used to have for the festivities is no more, and Jay is left with nothing but the grass beside his casket. Although even if ninety-nine out of one-hundred people hate Gatsby and only one person cares for him, Jay Gatsby would be content if that 1 person could be Daisy. However; even his beautiful Daisy departs in his absence. After Gatsby’s death, Daisy fails to appear at the funeral, and Nick Carraway pities Gatsby as she “hadn't sent a message or a flower” at the news of his death (Fitzgerald 173). It is as if the tragedy of his death causes too much trouble for Daisy to bother with, further proving that her love for Gatsby was shallow and materialistic, never truly real.

Throughout Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, many argue that Jay Gatsby is an immoral criminal, however; given Gatsby's actions and past, he appears to be simply a broken hearted dreamer. The self hatred, fictional hopes, and perpetual solitude all contribute to the life of this pitiful shell of a man. While not every person will be ‘The Great Gatsby’, most of humankind will attempt to fill the boundless void within themselves with hopes placed in the material world. However; so long as one continues to deny that a divine creator is the only thing to fill this vacancy, people will continue trying to grasp what cannot be held. For James Gatz, it is the continuous reach towards the golden life of Jay Gatsby. A plausible dream, but unattainable in utter brokenness.