Sarah Holtschneider
The Great Gatsby Essay
October 9th, 2014
What makes a person great? Is it simply his appearance, wealth, and social status? Or is it something deeper like his personality and his dreams? Gatsby is believed to be 'great' due to all of these things. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby is considered 'great' because the measurement of his wealth, his parties, his dreams, and his larger-than-life personality mark him as a very important man to other characters in the novel and to the reader as well.
Many of the people in the book believe that Gatsby is great merely because of his appearance. The hundreds of people who attend his parties every weekend have never even met him, but they automatically think he is great because he throws such fun parties due to his wealth. Many people who do not personally know him but have seen him also believe he is great because of the way he looks.
A study of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Gordon Bryant. P...
The grave of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzger...
The cover of the first edition of The Great Gatsby...He is very wealthy, so he is always dressed in expensive, fancy clothes. Even aside from his clothing, he is a very remarkable man. His features, especially his smile, are striking. "He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced-or seemed to face-the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey." (Fitzgerald 48).
Gatsby also has an incredible...