Loneliness in the Great Gatsby
Throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the unfortunate reality of loneliness consumes the lives of the majority of the characters. The time period portrayed in this novel, the 1920’s, had brought about several changes for people. It was highly common for large groups of people to join together for parties with endless drinking, dancing and celebrating. However, when the night was over and the festivities finished, most people were forced right back into their regular everyday lives feeling all alone. The wealthy class in society would continue living each and every day miserably lonely as long as they still maintained their materialistic lifestyle. Fitzgerald uses the characters in this book to demonstrate the constant loom of loneliness in the air and the hollowness, purposeless lives of the idle rich during the 1920’s. Jay Gatsby is constantly surrounded by thousands of people, yet his is one of the loneliest characters in this story. The audience is aware of Gatsby’s loneliness when they are first introduced to him in the beginning of the story. When he was younger and had returned from war, he was faced with the heart wrenching reality that his lover, Daisy, had left him. He then spends the rest of his life obsessing over earning Daisy again, spending many nights alone staring at the lone green light on the end of her dock. Gatsby is not accepted due to the fact he is among the “new rich” group in society so he does not fit in with those of East Egg and he is also highly mysterious; most people are unsure of his background and the source of his wealth. Gatsby has unlimited possessions, yet no one to share them with. Therefore, with his incredible wealth, Gatsby hosts these plentiful, posh parties at his monstrous mansion. Thousands of people show up, most total strangers to Gatsby, and stay into the wee hours of the morning, drunkenly living their lives away without the slightest care in the world. Gatsby uses his elaborate parties to build up
Cited: Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925. Print.