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Essay / The Great Gatsby - 1799
In famous novels in literature, characters often face conflicts not between themselves and other characters, but with time itself. In John Green's novel Looking For Alaska, the main characters grapple with the idea of "imagining the future as a kind of nostalgia." In this way, the main character Miles Halter, after the death of his friend Alaska, dreams of a future where he and Alaska would somehow be reunited. However, the Alaska of his dreams is not as it currently exists, because it no longer lives. She's not even the Alaska that once existed, she's just Miles' own fantasy based on the girl he loves who was part of his past. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby experiences the same type of desire to return to his past in the future. In pursuit of his dream, Gatsby faces reality as one that counterbalances his strong idealism as Nick Carraway observes. In the novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby's failure to achieve his dream is due to his belief in returning to his romantic past as an idealized conception of the future. Gatsby's idealism that Nick admires is both what makes Gatsby an admirable character and what allows him to pursue his dream. Nick explains, at the beginning of the novel, the reasons for his admiration for Gatsby. However, his most striking statement was that Gatsby possessed an "extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic disposition such as I have never found in any other person..." (2). This "romantic preparation" of Gatsby that Nick can see is both Gatsby's best quality and what motivates him in the pursuit of the impossible: his dream of being with Daisy. Along the same lines, Lathbury states: “Nick tells the reader that Gatsby's idealism allows him to 'do well' in the middle of the article......2009: 8+. Literary Resource Center. Web February 27, 2014. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby New York: Scribner, 2013. Print. Lathbury, Roger. Literary masterpieces. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. Print. Magill, Frank N. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Survey of Long Fiction. Flight. 3. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem, 1983. 953-67. Print.Magill, Frank N. "The Great Gatsby." Magill's Survey of American Literature. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1991. Print. O'Donnell, Patrick. “Short-Changed: Thomas Berger’s Changing the Past.” » Critical essays on Thomas Berger Ed. New York: GK Hall & Co., 1995. 148. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Flight. 259. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Web Literary Resource Center, February 7, 2014. Stallman, RW “Gatsby and the Time Gap.” Home, 1991. 55-64..