Task #4: Text Connections

            In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway tells the love story between Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. Separated for five years, Daisy is now married, but they are still in love. I can make a text-to-text connection to William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in the matter of forbidden love. Daisy could not marry Gatsby five years ago because he was poor, mirroring how Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet could not be together because they were of rivaling families. The two stories are similar in that the lovers do not actually get to be together, and their stories end in tragedy; Gatsby dies and Daisy runs off with Tom, and Romeo and Juliet both die.

            This novel is unique in its portrayal of the “American Dream,” of which I can make a text-to-itself connection. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald characterizes the American Dream as corrupt and flawed from the original core of the American Dream—hard work. Gatsby was able to achieve the success and power that is characteristic of the American Dream through dishonest methods. West Egg is also the embodiment of Fitzgerald’s American Dream with its portrayals of garish and tacky parties and insincere social climbers. Gatsby also employs a new kind of American Dream in his longing for Daisy—she is his American dream. The green light that he watched everyday was a symbol of hope and his wildest dreams, and once he somewhat obtained them and reconnected with her, however, he was disappointed to find that she no longer met his idealistic expectations. Gatsby built her up to perfection, only to be disappointed. Americans are portrayed as greedy and insatiable; therefore, the so-called American Dream, in Fitzgerald’s eyes in unattainable and unsatisfactory.