The Great Gatsby: Illusion vs. Reality

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, many of the characters lived in their own world of make believe. A theme that is reoccurring through out the story is, “A confusion with the real with the ideal never goes unpunished� by Goethe. This replicates how many of the characters mistake fantasy for reality. Money was the underlining cause of the illusionary world that the majority of the characters where trapped in. Though the narrator of the story was trapped in it all but saw how money had corrupted the reality of Gatsby, Daisy, Myrtle, and Tom.
Jay Gatsby is the main character that lives in his extravagant world of make believe. “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!� (pg 116) Gatsby’s main attempt was to get back everything that he had in the past and lost that he forgets that it’s entirely impossible. Gatsby, in love with Daisy places her on this high pedestal of everything that he wants her to be. He gets so wrapped up in his desires and expectations that he never stops to realize that Daisy may actually be in love with Tom, her husband. Though Daisy may have loved Gatsby once, there was no real way for Gatsby to ever get Daisy back again. Gatsby had a very platonic view of himself.

Goethe said, “…ideal never goes unpunished.” This is true in The Great Gatsby, those that lived in their idealistic world of make believe suffered a loss in the end. Gatsby never got Daisy back, and ended up being killed. No one showed to his funeral for there was no way for Nick to get a hold of Gatsby’s so called friends. Daisy ended up killing the woman that Tom was having an affair with, and Tom and her had to move to Europe with their daughter to find a new life. Myrtle was run over and killed, when she thought she was actually chasing after Tom in his car. They all suffered a loss because they filled their head with the thought that money was the only thing that really mattered in this world. They never grasped that maybe the truth to reality is something that isn’t tangible.

Tom Buccannan, Daisy’s husband, also lived in a mixed up world. He was a haughty brute of a man. Having gone to Yale for schooling and being from wealth he thought very highly of himself. He talks down to many people thinking that they are inferior to him. He also finds it ok to hurt women, breaking Myrtle’s nose and hurting Daisy’s finger. He thinks that because he is a wealthy man that he is allowed to hold an affair with another woman, and treat her as well as he treats Daisy. Tom has the conception that if something goes wrong he can blame someone else and simply pack up his things and leave.

The narrator of the story, Nick Carraway, sees the world in a different perspective than the rest of the characters in the story. He realizes how money has corrupted Daisy, Tom, Myrtle and Gatsby’s lives. “They�