Jay Gatsby is a man of new money. Nobody knows his back story except for his neighbor Nick Carraway, who tells us everything we need to know about Gatsby. Gatsby was originally born as James Gatz, when he was a seventeen year old boy when he changed his name to Jay Gatsby. He wanted to reinvent himself, because he fell in love with Daisy Buchannan, and wanted her to love him back. Which brings to the question, does changing your identity change who you truly are?
Gatsby came from a poor family of farmers. “His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people--his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God... and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end” (Fitzgerald 104). Gatsby was embarrassed that he was poor and he knew that women would not want to be with him. So, he changed his name in hope of getting the girl of his dreams.
Gatsby and Daisy had a fling before he went off to war. She had gotten married, and had a daughter with Tom Buchannan. “He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete” (Fitzgerald 117). Gatsby had this feeling inside him that he never wanted to lose. We get this feeling that is all in our head when we think we are with our soul mate, we can’t put words to it because it’s that incredible and powerful. Since this is all in Gatsby’s head, he isn’t living in reality. He throws...