Gatsby’s Tragic Dream Many critics of Fitzgerald’s protagonist claim that Gatsby is not a hero, undermined by his delusional dream and naivety; however Gatsby’s determined and relentless chase of his dream and heroic journey partially redeems him as a hero. In order to ascertain if Gatsby is a hero or not, we must first explore the definition of a hero and what makes someone a hero. The most popular and accepted definition of a hero in literature is someone that fits into Joseph Campbell’s hero’s
Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a bildungsroman. A bildungsroman is a novel that deals with the upcoming or coming of age of a character. This also involves “negotiating a contract with society” which is influenced by elements of fate such as gender, nationality, social status and history in their quest for success (blackboard). Scott Fitzgerald writs of the upcoming of Jay Gatsby and how Gatsby’s ambition, which can be thought of as the heart and soul of
history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (4). A critical aspect of the relationship between such classes is the way the socioeconomic elite conduct themselves and how their actions are viewed by the rest of society. William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald depict the socioeconomic elite acting with indiscretion and out of self indulgence. Both pieces