Unrequited Love

Unrequited love really fit’s the novel "The Great Gatsby" very perfectly. In the novel, Jay Gatsby is in love with Daisy and Daisy is in love with Gatsby. They both love each other very much, even though Daisy is married to Tom, she is having an affair with Gatsby. Tom is having an affair with Myrtle Wilson and though he is having an affair with Myrtle, he still loves Daisy very much. Tom also cares for Daisy.





After Daisy met Gatsby again after so many years they fell in love. Daisy doesn’t really love Tom anymore, even though Tom "claims" that he is in love with Daisy and cares for her, Daisy knows that he doesn't really mean it. Since Tom loves Daisy but Daisy doesn't love Tom, this is considered unrequited love.



Another example of unrequited love is Wilson and Myrtle. Wilson and Myrtle are married to each other, but Myrtle doesn't have any feelings toward Wilson. Even though Myrtle doesn't love Wilson, Wilson loves and cares about her and would do anything for her. He would do just about anything that would make her happy. Myrtle is Tom’s mistress and is having an affair with Tom. She is very jealous of Daisy and wants Tom to divorce Daisy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrequited_love)

The Green Light

The novel is presenting the truth behind the twenties and creating an atmosphere which has earned a permanent place in American literature. His novel works on many different levels, giving us unforgettable characters and events on one, as well as referring to the problems of American wealth and spirituality on another. And most importantly, what on earth is that mysterious green light? The first symbol in this book was the mysterious green light. When Gatsby first mentions the light, we see him reaching out for it, almost worshipping it. We find out later that this green light is at the end of Daisy's dock, is a symbol for Gatsby's dreams, and the hope for the future. Green is the color of promise, hope, and renewal, so it is fitting that Gatsby's dream of a future with Daisy be shown physically in the novel by this green light. However, Gatsby's dream is tarnished by his material possessions. This will soon corrupt him. He dream will soon die because of Daisy and Tom's carelessness and superficiality. At first we are given the green light as a symbol for the hope and promise of the future, but later it is considered the "foul wasteland" of the present. This can be interpreted as the foul, material-driven world that the main characters live in and which helps to destroy Gatsby's dream. Soon Daisy tells Gatsby that he reminds her of an advertisement. This statement shows that Daisy does not like Gatsby for himself but for the superficial illusion he represents. He also advertises eternal youth, wealth, and beauty constantly, which goes along with Gatsby's youthful dream of Daisy.(http://www.novelguide.com/thegreatgatsby/metaphoranalysis.html)

Old Money VS. New Money

New money in "The Great Gatsby" was money that people were making illegally. In the novel, Gatsby was making new money, he was selling illegal alcohol and making a tremendous amount of money because of it. Gatsby was getting money fast and it was making him rich. Because he was getting his money fast, he was able to throw extravagant parties, have a nice house, nice cars, and get anything he wanted. Money was not a problem for Gatsby, whenever he needed money; he got it.

Old money in "The Great Gatsby" was money that people were making the old fashion way. Tom was getting money the old fashioned way, he was making old money. He was a good citizen and he obeyed the law. He got his money from his job and he didn't get his money by doing anything illegal. All of his money was earned legally through hard work. Tom didn't know what Gatsby's job was, but he guessed since Gatsby got rich fast, and had everything that he wanted so he guessed that he was doing something illegal. Tom suspected that Gatsby was a bootlegger and that he was selling illegal alcohol.

So the better way to earn money would be through old money. You could learn life lessons and feel like a success and that all your hard work paid off. As opposed to pretty much just getting money handed to you. You would get cocky and think everything else is easy to do; there’d be no discipline or respect. It is easy to say yes and take the easy way out than it is to say no and take the harder way out. There should be some self-control. Then you’d feel more better about yourself because you’ve earned your money the legal and right way. (http://www.fa-mag.com/component/content/article/687.html?issue=32&magazineID=1&Itemid=73)

East Egg VS. West Egg

East Egg is the side of town were the people there have always had money is the more upper class. Tom and Daisy represent the old establishment, living in the wealthy upper class for most of their lives. Daisy is very snobby and only cares about how much money she has, she’s an example of how people in East Egg are. These people are shallow and lack values. They are careless and completely full of themselves. The social class of East Egg are inhuman; they are spoiled to such a extent that their reality has been twisted. Although these are clearly "bad" people they are envied and copied constantly by the West eggers.



West Egg is the side of town were the people have not always have money. They weren’t always rich, so they had to work for it. It’s still a rich and nice area, but not everyone is rich in that area. Their wealth is based on material possessions. Gatsby, like the West Eggers, dosent have the traditions of the East Eggers. He is considered 'new money', meaning that his wealth came to him more recently through his business that is believed to be corrupt. Despite the fact Gatsby made his fortune in a corrupt fashion he is still someone to admire because of his hopes. Although West Egg is the more moral, it is still a place of enormous spending and gaudy living. Both of the eggs are people who love money, the difference is how they obtained that money and the way they live their lives.



West Egg is a better place to be for various reasons. West Egg has more discipline than East Egg. They are more positive people and don’t have a tendency to cause problems to others. They have earned their money as opposed to the people in East Egg where they were born as spoiled rich kids. They actually care about people’s feelings and are not lazy and do things themselves. They are also very independent people and smart.

Selfish People

Selfish people are people that you do not want to be around. They usually don't like to share their things with other people and are really cheap. People who are selfish don't really have a lot of friends and if they do their friends are as selfish as they are or they probably don't care about them. Selfish people only care about themselves and no one else. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/selfish)

Tom is a good example of a selfish person. He is very selfish and he doesn't really care about his wife Daisy nor his mistress Myrtle. He also uses Myrtle only for his selfish needs. He only cares and looks out for himself. He acts very selfish towards Nick when he talks to him, he tries to always put him down. He thinks that he is better than everyone else. He is not liked by many people because of how selfish he is and the kind of person he is. Tom is very arrogant and stubborn too. Some people are afraid of him.

Jordan Baker is another character in The Great Gatsby that is selfish. She lies about pretty much everything and cheats a lot when she plays golf. She lies to get what she wants and only cares about herself and constantly leads Nick on. She is very self-centered and always bends the truth. She likes to gossip and is a people pleaser; and it's very selfish of her to gossip about other people just so people can like her and make her more popular and build up her reputation.

Nick Carraway is a young man from Minnesota who,goes to New York City to learn the bond business because his dad was in it. He is honest, tolerant, and does not judge people. Nick also is very trustworthy and gives peopl their space or privacy when they need it. Nick is Daisy's cousin, he tries to the rekindling of the romance between her and Gatsby. He is very mellow and down to earth. He has a thing for Jordan Baker. In their relationship, Jordan is like the man and Nick is like the woman. Nick is a passover and can sometimes be paranoid and very cautious.



Jay Gatsby is a very wealthy young man who lives in West Egg. He is known for his parties he throws every Saturday night, but no one knows where he comes from, what he does, or how he made his fortune. Many people spread enormous rumors about him; some people say that he's a criminal and others say that he's good looking, a ladies man, and mysterious. He cares a lot about Daisy and will do anything in his power to get a second chance to talk to her again. He and Daisy had a thing in the past. Throughout the whole years that have passed he has been keeping an eye out on Daisy and collected various amounts of newspaper articles about her.



Tom Buchanan is Daisy’s wealthy husband. He is well built and comes from a socially solid old family. Tom is an arrogant, hypocritical bully, and he likes to put people down. He's a racist and a sexist. He never considers trying to live up to the moral standard he demands from those around him. He does not care as much about his mistress Myrtle as she does about him; but he does care for her more than he does about his wife Daisy.(www.cinema.com/film/6077/great-gatsby/cast.phtml)

The Women Of Gatsby

Daisy Buchanan is a beautiful young woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nick’s cousin and the object of Gatsby’s love. She is also Tom Buchanan’s wife. Daisy was extremely popular among the military officers stationed near her home, including Jay Gatsby. She made love with Gatsby before he left to the war. To Gatsby, Daisy represents the paragon of perfection she has the aura of charm, wealth, sophistication, grace, and aristocracy and that first attracted him to her. In 1919 she married Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy lifestyle and who had the support of her parents. She is beautiful and charming, but also fickle, shallow, bored, and sardonic. Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is also a really big Drama Queen.



Jordan Baker is one of Daisy’s close friends, she’s a woman that Nick becomes romantically involved with. She’s a very competitive golfer, Jordan represents one of the “new women” of the 1920s; cynical, boyish, and self-centered. Jordan is beautiful, but also dishonest; she cheated in order to win her first golf tournament and continually bends the truth. She’s a very independent women and speaks her mind. She loves to drama and likes to gossip and that’s one reason why her and Daisy are best of friends.


Myrtle Wilson is Tom’s lover, whose lifeless husband George owns a run-down garage in the valley of ashes. Myrtle herself possesses a fierce vitality and desperately looks for a way to improve her situation. Unfortunately for her, she chooses Tom, who treats her as a mere object of his desire. Tom was her first love, so she desperately loved him. And sometimes her big mouth gets her in trouble because she doesn’t know when to be quiet. (www.novelguide.com/thegreatgatsby/characterprofiles.html)

F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born September 26 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota he was born Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald . His nationality is American but his ethnicity is Irish. Fitzgerald’s given names were from his parents’ pride in his father’s ancestry. His father’s name was Edward and he was from Maryland and his mother, Mary (Mollie) McQuillan, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul and they were both Catholics. Fitzgerald attended the St. Paul Academy the first thing he wrote was a detective story in the school newspaper when he was thirteen. (http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/fitzgeraldbio.html)

In June 1918 Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan, it was near Montgomery, Alabama. There he fell in love with an eighteen-year-old girl named Zelda Sayre; she was the youngest daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge. The war ended just before he was about to be sent overseas; after his discharge in 1919 he went to New York City to seek his fortune in order to marry. Unwilling to wait while Fitzgerald succeeded in the advertisement business and unwilling to live on his small salary, Zelda Sayre broke their engagement. He then quit his job in July 1919 and returned to St. Paul to rewrite his novel as This Side of Paradise. (http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/biography.html)

When he went to France in 1924, he wrote The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby marked a striking advance in Fitzgerald’s technique, showing a complex structure and a controlled narrative point of view. Fitzgerald’s achievement received critical praise, but sales of Gatsby were disappointing, though the stage and movie rights brought additional income. The Great Gatsby was about the 1920s and the time of flappers and successful rich people. Fitzgerald made little progress on his fourth novel, a study of American expatriates in France provisionally titled “The Boy Who Killed His Mother,” “Our Type,” and “The World’s Fair.” During those years Zelda Fitzgerald’s unconventional behavior became increasingly worse. Her condition got worse and she had to go to the hospital. In 1948 there was a horrible fire in the hospital and she died in the fire. In 1939, he had written more than half of a working draft when he died of a heart attack in Graham’s apartment on December 21, 1940. F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure. (http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/biography.html)

Jealousy

Jealousy is a universal emotion that everyone goes through. It is an emotion that can cause many people to make unwise decisions. There are chemicals that initiate this emotion there are called neuropeptides. A neuropeptide is absorbed into the cell which then gives rise to the feeling of that emotion. Jealousy is a resentful envy of someone else’s success, achievements, advantages, etc. For example a person can get jealous of someone’s relationship with their partner because it is very successful and perhaps they haven’t had a successful relationship. It can also over take a person and there are times when they are not fully conscience when it happens. (www.calmhealthworks.com/)


They can not completely control their actions. It causes them to snap and get really paranoid. Many people get very insecure and take their anger out on their friends. Also known as the “Green Monster”, everyone becomes this monster at one point in their life. When they do many people do not want to be around them and because of this it can also make them lose their closest friends and the respect from their loved ones. They feel as if other people don’t deserve to get good things that the whole world should revolve around them. (www.allaboutlifechallenges.org/what-is-jealousy-faq.htm)


But there are times when jealousy is not all bad. A healthy jealousy needs to be developed in family and love relationships. This type of jealousy is a protective fight to maintain your relationships. For example would you sit by while a person seduces your spouse or deceives your child? No, you would fight for them. This can also comfort your spouse or child to let them know that you care. But for the most part it can be bad what we need to do is balance it out to where it is at a healthy level. (www.allaboutlifechallenges.org/what-is-jealousy-faq.htm)

Prohibition began in January 16, 1920 when the 18th Amendment went into affect. The Federal Prohibition agents (police) were given the task of enforcing the law. Even though the sale of alcohol was illegal, alcoholic drinks were still widely available at "speakeasies" and other underground drinking establishments. There were over one hundred speakeasies in just one state. There were also a lot of smugglers who smuggled alcohol also known as “Bootleggers”. (http://www.1920-30.com/prohibition/)

While prohibition was in affect it limited amounts of wine and hard cider were permitted to be made at home. Many people did not care and did it anyway. There were some people who believed that Whiskey helped with health problems; so some doctors prescribed people with it for “health issues”. The labels clearly warned that it was strictly for medicinal purposes and any other uses were illegal, but even then doctors wrote prescriptions and drug-stores filled them without question. (http://history1900s.about.com/od/1920s/p/prohibition.htm)

This increased the number of "patients" dramatically. Many people were supposedly getting sick or “Whiskey Fever”. There was no attempt was made to stop this practice, so many people got their alcohol this way. Over a million gallons were consumed per year through freely given prescriptions. So eventually they put an end to the Prohibition of alcohol and people continued their ways of drinking as they wanted. (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1017&full=1)

The 1920's

The 1920s had a lot of ups and down. A good thing that happened was the creation of new technology like the radio and the first talking movie. Many families used to listen to the radio for news, music and entertainment;since there were no tv's yet.It gave families a chance to bond and spend time together. When president Roosevelt was running for president he would talk to America throught the radio and they felt that they knew him on a more personal level and that one him his presidency. The first film that had sound was in 1920.Many people would go to the movies and watch the "talkies".

Many Americans in the 1920s were very rich and successful and there was good amount of entreprenuers. It was the year of opportunties and many people owned their own businesses. Many people went to parties and danced and loved music. Along this time out came the music Jazz. It was an up-beat type of music with harmony. Most Americans thought it was an outrage and that it brought out the start of Flappers. Flappers were girls who bobbed their hair, wore a lot of makeup, and wore short dresses.They drank and smoked a lot; so to end it they banned alcohol; but this did not last long.

The happiness and success did not last long though. Mainy people bought stock on the stock market. Many people were borrowing money from the banks and heard that banks were closing and everything was going downhill so they pulled their money out of the stock market causing it to crash. After the crash of the stock market many people became unemployed and had no money left in the banks. Some even had to sell their personal belongings to make ends meet for their family. In conclusion, the roaring twenties was a desperate time for Americans.

Mafia & Gangsters of the 1920s

In the public eye, the 1920s gangster and bootlegger "above the law" lifestyle brought money, fame, nice clothes, women, cars, and homes. Along with the flashy suit, the twenties also gave us the best dressed and most famous gangster of all time: Al Capone. The 20's most famous gangsters were: "Scarface" Capone, "Lucky" Luciano, "Bugs" Moran (AKA Jack "Legs" Diamond), and "Dutch" Schultz.

The 1920s plays host to many other organized criminals with expensive suits and flashy names. And every famous gangster has a colorful name to go along with his fine suit. The Cassic Gangster fashion was as popular with men as the women who adore him. It's also been said that the gangster, as the American public sees him, is a creation of the mass media. Gangsters became feared and respected within their neighborhoods. The 1920s gangsters could earn a good living from the public like a strong-arming their neighborhoods for small but widespread price increases for groceries and services, then skimming their profits from the providers of these goods. The 1920s gangsters became the American icons of the self-made-man.

With the passage of prohibition in 1919, the twenties marked a huge shift in the way gangsters went about their everyday business. During this time the Gangsters would open up speakeasies or secret underground clubs were peolpe who drink can go to these speakeasies and drink, dance, and have a good time with their friends. Bootlegging became huge business for the most successful gangsters of the era. In conclusion, the Gangsters of the 1920s were the first ones to start the Mafia and to smuggle in illegal alcohol and drugs during the prohibition.

Promiscuous Girls

Flappers were the rebels of women in the 1920s. The term flapper originated in Great Britain were women would wear rubber galoshes (an oversize shoe worn in the rain or snow) left open to flap when they would walk.They were the counter culture of society at the time. They didnt want to be conservatives like other women. Their style was to wear shorter dresses and they would tape down their breast to get a more boyish look. They also wore an excessive amount of make up.They wore corsets when they went dancing.

They smoked, drank, danced and went to many parties. Before the 1920s long hair was the mark of a respectable lady so they cut their hair really short.They loved to dance to jazz music.They would take a lot of risks. They were more assertive than most of the other passive women they had "back bone". They tried diets to achieve a fashionable thiness, because new fashions required slim waist, figures and chests.

Some people felt threatned by flappers, so as their dresses began to get shorter several states made laws charging fines to women wearing skirts with hemlines three inches above the ankle. Many employers fired women who bobbed their hair. They treated sex in a casual matter. The flappers had their own slang which is still used in American english slang. They wore a lot of jewlery and rimmed glasses. In conclusion, these women have changed the style of ordinary American women across the nation.