That is the case with Gatsby. Gatsby is haunted by the "most grotesque and fantastic conceits"(105) every night until his drowsiness closes down. His dream is "an outlet for his imagination"(105). He sees in his dream an illusion that possesses "a colossal vitality"(101). And the vitality "goes beyond everything, even Daisy"(101), his imaginary lover. For the five years of separation from Daisy, Gatsby adds to the original dream with a "creative passion"(101). As a result of the accumulation of the passion, Gatsby is prompted into action, in an aim to realize what he has visualized in his dream. .
In order to intermix the real and the imaginary, Gatsby makes up all the dramatic elements that one can expect in a play. First of all, Gatsby patterns his role model provided by the traditional romance. Such model patterning is the common practice of the members in a society after the "loss of the transcendental models, those of religion and myth"(40, Wallace Martin). As we can see, Gatsby is a man with a romantic disposition. He changes his name from Gatz to Gatsby, in order to add some Anglo-Saxon sounding to his name. His resentment of his humble birth and the poverty-stricken family and his resolution to attain for himself wealth and refined tastes are revealed in the schedule found in the book he read when he was a boy. And he has a wild imagination about Daisy and the house she lives in. To Gatsby, Daisy's house has "a ripe mystery about it"(155). He cannot help fancying about Daisy's "more beautiful and cool bedroom "(155) where Daisy sleeps and the "gay and radiant activities taking place through the corridors and the romances"(155). In order to be his self-imaged romantic hero, Gatsby invents everything about him, including his birthplace and his education background, in an effort to render himself what a romantic hero is supposed to have and to convince others of his possession of the romantic qualities.
