Pursuit Of Happiness In The Great Gatsby

What is the Pursuit of Happiness? This is a question that we had been asked many times this year in CP English. We have been asked to find what the Pursuit of Happiness is and how different authors have shown this through their literature. Two novellas that we read that best described what the Pursuit of Happiness were The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Both of these novellas show what the Pursuit of Happiness is and what people will do while in pursuit of this happiness. Both of these novellas show tragedy and the struggle that people go through to try and gain their happiness, and that even though you go through the struggle sometimes major sacrifices need to be made in your Pursuit of Happiness. …show more content…
In the novella Daisy is seen as Gatsby’s happiness. We see as the novella progresses that Gatsby will do anything to get Daisy to be his. Gatsby has stated on many occasions that he had loved daisy even before he left; "It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy — it increased her value in his eyes." (Ch. 8). Gatsby viewed Daisy as , I feel, a prize of sort. He saw that he had competition and to reach his “happiness” he would have to fight through the competition to get to her. The Great Gatsby shows that throughout your Pursuit of Happiness, obstacles will get in your way and it is your duty to overcome them. One of the many obstacles that Gatsby faces in his Pursuit of Happiness was the fact that Daisy was already married to someone else. In order to try to win Daisy over, Gatsby holds many parties to try and get Daisy to come see him. Towards the end of the novella we see that Gatsby gets Daisy but then loses her to Tom, her husband. Gatsby then drives her home, on the way Gatsby runs over Myrtle and kills her. After this event Gatsby is shot by Myrtle’s husband in revenge for his wife. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther … And one fine morning - So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” ( Ch. 9) . The Great Gatsby …show more content…
George and Lennie are migrant workers that were searching for a job on a ranch or a farm. George is a short man with distinct features while Lennie is a tall man with non distinct features and he suffers from a mental disorder. Their dream is to own their own ranch and to have Lennie tend to rabbits. As the story progresses we learn that even though Lennie loves soft things, such as baby animals, he does not know his own strength and accidentally kills them. This is seen after Lennie is given a puppy. After he takes the puppy so he can care for it Lennie exclaims that it had died, but he was unaware why it did; “And Lennie said softly to the puppy, ‘Why do you got to get killed? You ain’t so little as mice. I didn’t bounce you hard.” (page 123). Wwe constantly see Lennie’s strength causing trouble for both him and George. In the end, in order to reach their goal in their Pursuit of Happiness, George ends up killing Lennie to save him from being tortured by anyone else. George told Lennie to look across the lake and to picture their happiness. As Lennie did this George shot him; “ George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head … He pulled the trigger…. Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to the sand, and he lay without quivering” (page 148). Here we see that in order for both of them to reach their goal of

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