Happiness in the Main Pursuit of Humans - Essay Example

The protagonists in both stories go through their life searching for their true happiness. Gatsby in Great Gatsby tries to gain happiness in searching for his lost love. Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God tries to gain happiness in searching for a true love. Gatsby’s love for Daisy is very evident in his musings about her. He says that “once in awhile I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time (Fitzgerald, 251). But he begins to get entangled in his occasional sprees leading him to find temporary happiness in wealth and fame.

When he felt that good feeling in being rich and famous, he began to veer away from his real pursuit. He begins to justify his clamor for wealth as a means to impress Daisy and to win her back. He starts to believe that his wealth is the key to get her love back and away from Tom, her husband. Yes, he succeeds in winning back the affection of Daisy, but it became a hollowed success as Daisy realizes that Gatsby became strongly attached to his wealth. The luster of money and power blinds him and he begins to lose his grip of his true goal: to win back Daisy.

Gatsby’s search for Daisy is analogous to anyone’s search for the American dream. . The American dream is set on principles of success and possession of wealth. Daisy is the American dream. Gatsby’s migration from his birthplace to the town is actually an allusion to the mass migration to the United States, the land of opportunities, or so they say. But the American dream is not an easy thing to achieve as Gatsby finds it difficult to win back Daisy. He needed to work hard to achieve material success, which he wrongly believed would be the way to win back Daisy.

Daisy was still a green light, “minute and far away…(like) the end of the dock” (Fitzgerald, 152). While Gatsby knew who his true love is, Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God searches for the one. She begins her conquest of true love when she witnessed a bee pollinating a flower in her backyard pear tree. Her three marriages signify the different life lessons that made her conclude what true love really is. Her first marriage is pre-arranged by her grandmother. Her grandmother strongly believed that the marriage will ensure the Janie’s well-being and future.

Unfortunately, Janie has a totally different perspective about love and marriage. She feels unhappy and trapped and so she breaks away from the first marriage only to find herself in yet another disappointing married life. This further proves that wealth and power can never guarantee one’s happiness. With Joe, she is the unappreciated wife, only the wife. Although she is at the peak of a great life, with great wealth, power and fame, it is only an illusion because it is not hers. It is her husband’s and she is not very keen on that.

She wants to speak up but she is silenced. She strives to become an individual apart from just being the wife of Joe to no avail. Joe is always there to limit her and her