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The Great Gatsby: Eastern Desires

The roaring twenties. Cars were the things to have and a party was the place to be. Everybody wanted something. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, The Great Gatsby, describes the events that happen to eight people during the summer of 1922. In the book, people went from west to east because something they desired was in the east; unfortunatly in the end those ‘somethings’ were unattainable. … I decided to go east and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man.

All y aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me… Nick went to the east to make money. He was from the midwest, and even though his family was doing pretty well in the money department, Nick wanted to make his own money. By going from the midwest to the east, Fitzgerald shows Nick’s desire to have more money. After spending the summer in the east and seeing how money affects people, he decides to go back west. I see now that this has been a story of the west, after all-Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and

I, were all westerners and and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to eastern life. In other words, after finding out what the east was really like, Nick lost his interest in being in the east and returned to the west. Gatsby came east looking for another type of money – Daisy. Gatsby and Daisy had last seen each other about five years before, when they were dating. Then Gatsby had to go to war. While he was away in war, Daisy met Tom and then married Tom.

Daisy had always been rich and thought that in order to get Daisy ack, he need to have money and be able to give Daisy anything she wanted. He found out that Daisy was in the east and went to go try to get her back. … I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. What was never realized by Gatsby was that he could never have Daisy again. He just couldn’t accept it. Gatsby said] “… Just tell him the truth-that you never loved him-and t’s all wiped out forever. ” … “Oh, you want too much! ” she cried to Gatsby… “I did love him once-but I loved you too. ” Gatsby’s eyes opened and closed. “You loved me? ” he repeated. Nick realized what Gatsby didn’t. Right after he spoke of Gatsby seeing the light on the dock, he said this: … He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby finally stopped trying to win Daisy because, well, he was shot and killed. Tom and Daisy came east to escape from Tom having to take responcibilty for his actions. [Tom said] “And what’s more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while 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. ” “You’re revolting. ” said Daisy. She turned to me and her voice, dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: “Do you know why we left Chicago? I’m surprized that they didn’t treat you to the story of that little spree. Daisy is referring to Tom having an affair with another woman. Something must have happened to her that involved Tom and to escape it he came east. They were looking for a refuge, someplace where they could start again, but they didn’t find it. Tom botched it up again by seeing Myrtle and now Tom and Daisy have to return to the west to escape predicament. In the end it was shown that the things that Nick, Gatsby, and the Buchanans wanted to have were out of their reach. The cars were still there, and the parties were still there, but what they had wanted was gone.

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