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The Great Gatsby

“The Great Gatsby”, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a book of love, as well as sadness and disaster that all leads back to dreams and illusions, but never the true reality. Jay Gatsby believes he can buy happiness. This is elaborately shown by his over extravagant house, in which only he lives, his fancy cloths from overseas, and Daisy, the woman of his dreams. By proceeding to buy his happiness, he entered into an elaborate tunnel which consists of multiple twists and turns, but never seems to have an end. Illusions are very similar to dreams. In an illusion, the mind and senses are deceived by appearances, while in a dream can be thought of something desired which is pictured by the mind during a state of rest. F. Scott Fitzgerald in the “Great Gatsby” suggested that people create their own illusion, and with this illusion, you shape the person that you are.  All of the rich people in this book have some sort of illusion surrounding their persona, but Gatsby has the greatest of all illusions surrounding him. The only concept which Gatsby failed to excel at was that when the bottom of your illusion drops out on you, and you are left with nothing but a pack of lies. An illusion is no more than living your life in a dream, for in a dream, the environment is controlled by you and only you. This is the way Gatsby wanted it, however when he woke from that dream, he had no reality to live.

Louise Gluck’s “Castile” speaks of very similar issues of dreaming, and the reality. The poem “Castile” conveys to the reader that living in a dream may be pleasant and desired in the immediate future, but in the long run, the dreamer will awake to a harsh reality. This reality is usually one which is very undesirable to the dreamer, for the dreamer has been living in a world fit to suit his or her standards. Living inside of an unreal world leads to a negative future. For this reason, Louise Gluck is urging the reader to accept their reality while looking towards the...