The Great Gatsby - Essay Example

This paper intends to examine how Jay Gatsby as a figure whose "hopefulness" is in conflict with his "conditions" in terms of his personal, professional, and social life. For one, the novel presents Gatsby as a wealthy, well-renowned businessperson who has all the power that he needs. Actually, he is a successful man, but according to the analysis of the novel, one thing is for sure, he has no friends. Although the novel tends to evade shading adequate light on the issue of Gatsby’s profound lonely life, analytical response to the novel suggests that may be it is because of the things that he used to do that challenged his ability to have friends (44).

The only close people that he met are just his business associates and sometimes the throngs who came over for his Saturday parties. In this context, it is seeable that Gatsby’s personal conditions conflicted with his hope for a friendly association. He hopes to get along with friends, but as it seems, he does not have any just business associates leaving his world a place for just hope. Additionally, Gatsby’s professional conditions conflicts directly with his hope for a long, loving life with Daisy. . Therefore, he had many things to do and his profession required him to be always busy with his plans.

Hence, there was no time to associate with people so that he could make friends and probably stay with his loved one. His Saturday parties filled with throngs explains his lack of close friends whom he can just spend the evening together (56). Based on this fact, it is agreeable that Gatsby was just a figure whose sense of hopefulness conflicted with his professional and personal life as well. Gatsby social life is yet another factor that makes him a mere figure of hopefulness. The novel discusses a story of people’s lives in the Jazz era particularly conceptualized by the entrance of a new culture, the ecstasy of money and wealth, class as well as the predominant presence of the vast “wasteland” in between and among these social conditions.

Under this spectrum, the novel shows that the social conditions of Gatsby made him a hopeful man since he lived in West Egg, which is a representation of a place whose dwellers appear desolated. According to the social arrangement of the locations in Long Island where the story takes place, the West Egg, where Gatsby lives, represents homage for people with new acquired money (70). In short, it is a place for the rich while the East Egg represents homage for people whose hardworking skills remain disposable to rich people like Gatsby to exploit.

Thus, it is conclusive that his social life denied him substantial companionship since there were differences between social classes during those times. Again, Gatsby was a rich man, and as the narrator suggests social class differences created a rift between people during the postwar era, which is when Fitzgerald