Money may be able to buy ones happiness but not necessarily satisfaction in life. Fitzgerald’s characters in Winter Dreams and Great Gatsby had money, but not satisfaction throughout their life. One can have satisfying materials, do satisfying things, and obtain satisfying qualities. Characters in Winter Dreams and Three of the most satisfying materials that a person could own is a home, money, and a car. At least one of these items is essential for a person no matter where they live. The home is the most satisfying material that a person could own.
A home is a place that one can go to rest, eat, and just live. A home provides memories and a place for a family to grow. A home satisfies people with protection, an investment, security, safety, and privacy. The home is definitely a key item of satisfying materials. Another satisfying material that a person could own is money. Money is something that is very important to possess. Owning money can satisfy a persons hunger, shelter, and just everything it takes for that person to live. A person would not be satisfied if they did not own any money.
They would be depressed and have to live on the streets. Money alone cannot satisfy a person on a whole but it brings together the whole term of satisfaction. The last item that is satisfying is a car. A car is something that can satisfy ones need to get around. It is important to use to get to work, school, and places to far to venture on foot. A car is a machine with great power and can also satisfy one with air conditioning on a hot day. It can satisfy a person with ride to ones favorite place such as the beach.
A home, money, and a car are all materials that a person can own to satisfy them. Not only can materials satisfy a person but so can activities such as sports, relaxing, and sleeping. Playing sports can satisfy a persons body and mind. Participating in sports keeps one in shape satisfying their heart and health. Also it can satisfy a persons stress level by focusing on the activity. Sometimes not playing sports but just relaxing can be satisfying. Relaxing and not working can give a person time to think, breathe, and their body to recuperate.
Relaxing is a very satisfying activity. Another activity that is satisfying is sleeping. Curling up under the covers, closing ones eyes, and just clearing the mind is something very a satisfying that a person can easily do. Sleeping is essential for a person to be satisfied. A person can posses qualities that make them feel satisfied. Honesty, loving, and an optimistic personality are qualities that can make one feel very satisfied. Being honest about oneself and about what one does can make them feel proud of what they are in the end.
Being honest can satisfy ones need to see what kind of person that you really are and shows that one is not afraid of what they are. Being loving is very satisfying. Giving off love will give love back in return. Love is an extremely satisfying quality in many ways. Giving love will satisfy a person mentally and physically. Love is just very satisfying. Having an optimistic personality can be very satisfying. If one looks on the positive side of things they wont miss out on the important things in life and dwell on the good things. Being optimistic can satisfy a person so much.
Honesty, loving, and having an optimistic personality are three qualities a person can posses that will make them very satisfied. Providing all of the things above that can be satisfying Nick, Gatsby, and Dexter are three characters from Great Gatsby and Winter Dreams, that would have an opinion on them. Nick probably wouldnt agree that being optimistic and having money is satisfy but being caring is more satisfying. A drawback to the seemingly limitless excess Nick sees in the Buchanans, for instance, is a throwaway mentality extending past material goods.
Nick, on the Buchanans: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made”. He would agree that honesty is satisfying because he is satisfied with his own honesty. Nick, on himself: “Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known”. Gatsby is a firm believer in the American Dream of self-made success.
He had, after all, not only invented and self-promoted a whole new persona for himself, but succeeded both financially and societally. Nick knows that Gatsby was a great man, “… and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor. ” Gatsby would have agreed that money, a home, and a car arent satisfying. He knows that he was all just a fake with all of these things and that he wasnt satisfied with his success. He needed the loving and the honesty.
He would agree that these qualities would have made him feel satisfied. He didnt have someone that loved him and he was never honest himself. He became obsessed with Daisy because he wanted that satisfaction of love. Gatsby realized the first time he kissed Daisy that once he “forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God”. Dexter is a character that learned from his experiences as he grew. From the beginning of his career he knew what he wanted, He wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people–he wanted the glittering things themselves.
Often he reached out for the best without knowing why he wanted it–and sometimes he ran up against the mysterious denials and prohibitions in which life indulges. He wouldnt agree that money, a home, and a car bring satisfaction. He had them all and kept them throughout his life but still didnt seem to be totally satisfied with his life. He would agree that relaxation brings satisfaction. Dexter was satisfied when he relaxed, –and because the sound of a piano over a stretch of water had always seemed beautiful to Dexter he lay perfectly quiet and listened.
The act of relaxing reminded him of what his relaxing used to be like, The tune the piano was playing at that moment had been gay and new five years before when Dexter was a sophomore at college. They had played it at a prom once when he could not afford the luxury of proms, and he had stood outside the gymnasium and listened. The sound of the tune precipitated in him a sort of ecstasy and it was with that ecstasy he viewed what happened to him now. It was a mood of intense appreciation, a sense that, for once, he was magnificently attune to life and that everything about him was radiating a brightness and a glamour he might never know again.
Dexter would agree that being loving is a quality that gives one satisfaction. He felt this satisfaction when he was with Judy on her boat. His heart turned over like the fly-wheel of the boat, and, for the second time, her casual whim gave a new direction to his life. Dexter was in love with Judy and he saw that Judy was never honest to him. He didnt mind that Judy was never honest, When she assured him that she had not kissed the other man, he knew she was lying–yet he was glad that she had taken the trouble to lie to him. Finally he wouldnt agree that honesty is satisfying because he was just satisfied with a lie.