Why Did Gatsby Lose His Future

Words: 1179
Pages: 5

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”(9.149-153)While time itself can only flow in a single direction,One force, regret, transcends this natural phenomenon. After returning from the horrors of the first world war, the titled character in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, struggles to regain his sense of purpose and belonging in the emerging new age of American culture. Misguided by past experiences and longings, Jay Gatsby attempts the impossible; rewriting time. An integral theme in Fitzgerald’s novel is living idly by the past is to squander the future. Jay Gatsby destroys his own future by seeking the past as a place of refuge, wishing to regain lost time, and creating a false future, …show more content…
NIck narrates how the dilution that Gatsby creates for Daisy ruins his attempts of true happiness. He says, “ It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”(). After half a decade of wishing and wanting love, the love struck Jay Gatsby has created shoes that it is impossible for Daisy to ever fulfill. To Gatsby, Daisy has developed into more than a woman or even a wife, she is now practically a figure of his imagination. By creating an unrealistic image of his love, Gatsby insures that he will never regain his happiness. Similarly, Gatsby’s illusion of love causes his judgement to become at fault.Gatsby boldly declares in reference to Daisy and Tom, "I don't think she ever loved him...You must remember, old sport, she was very excited this afternoon. He told her those things in a way that frightened her – that made it look as if I was some kind of cheap sharper. And the result was she hardly knew what she was saying." (8.22)The final fault that Gatsby’s obsession with the past exposes is that Gatsby is disillusioned. In trying to rewrite history, Gatsby honestly believes that Daisy never had the slightest amount of love in her heart for her husband of three years. Gatsby,so fixed on his own dreams and wants, is incapable of understanding that there is a world beyond him. Gatsby’s promising future diminishes as he becomes illusion and no longer grounded on the same earth as the rest of