Sketchy, strange, sophisticated and mannerly. These seem to be some of the characteristics that Jay Gatsby possesses in the beginning of the novel The Great Gatsby. .
The character of Gatsby is trying to manage being two people at the same time. He appears to be suave, sophisticated, and fully satisfied on the surface, but is, in reality, a man who is desperate because he doesn't have what he really wants: Daisy Buchanan. .
Being suave, sophisticated, and fully satisfied is easy for Gatsby to pull off. One of the reasons why this is is because he has money which enables him to come off as a distinguished man. "Gatsby, who makes his fortune in ways never envisioned by Benjamin Franklin, does not understand how money works in society. He innocently expects that he can buy anything especially Daisy. She is for sale, but he doesn't have the right currency" (Fitzgerald xi). This explains how he is so caught up within his money and not being able to do anything by himself he even finds it easy to get a human being meaning Daisy by using money, though later in the novel he comes to find that it isn't possible to do that without any problems. "Gatsby is the American self- made indeed, self- invented man. He believes in the American dream of success ("the orgastic future"); he fulfills it; he confuses it with Daisy; he is betrayed by it" (Fitzgerald xi). Everyone believes in success and yes everyone has different kinds of their own wants of the American dream, but Gatsby fulfills his with money and one person Daisy , though gets deceived by it also.
To want, and to need are two totally different things, and in Gatsby's place he wants something that is hard to get but doesn't really need it. "If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life , Gatsby had an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again"(Fitzgerald 8).
