GG: Revised Rough

Hope drives people. It allows them to have motivation to improve and change there lives. Hope is what creates changes and keeps people going. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, hope drives the characters to change. The character Gatsby sees a green light on his loves dock and understands what hopes he has and what he can succeed in life. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby and Myrtle are motivated by hopes and aspirations to change their lives for the better.

When Gatsby is a young man he goes to war and looses Daisy, the love of his life. When the war is over he is eager to reunite but he cannot as Daisy married a wealthy football player to keep her “comfortable”. With his hope to win Daisy back Gatsby earns a fortune and soon he is living across a bay from Daisy. His hope for a long lost love encouraged him to go forward and live life lavishly. Across the bay he can see Daisy’s house were each night she has a green light burning on her dock. When Nick first meets sees Gatsby he is walking with his arms stretched out towards the sea and “a single green light, minute and far away that might have been at end of a dock”(26). This green light is what Gatsby relies on he walks towards it shakily it is hope for love with Daisy and it is what sustains him. When Daisy first comes to Gatsby’s house they look across the bay and Gatsby says: “If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay… you always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock”(92). Even when times are bleak Gatsby can look up to hope and stare through the fog of despair in order to view the green light. His hope is what turned him into the great man he became, he believed in a “orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (189). His hope in a happy future was what drove him to all of his successes.

The character of Myrtle and has a similar hope that fuels there actions and ideas. Myrtle hopes to leave her husband a lower class mechanic. She married him because she thought he was a “gentlemen” a person of high class and feels he is so inferior that he is not worthy to “lick [her] shoes”(39). She despises her husband but through Tom she can hope to live the life that she failed to make for herself to live as a wealthy socialite. She thought to herself when she first met Tom that “you can’t live forever” (40). Myrtle fails at pursuing her dream, however her hope is executed badly in her actions and fails at her ultimate plans.

Hope is the ultimate drive. With only despair there is no reason to do anything. Gatsby had hope for love, he gained money almost had love but do to circumstance he was killed before it could happen. Myrtle wanted her dreams to become real so badly she misjudged character and it ultimately lead to her death. Hope is what created Gatsby and Myrtle, and it failed for both.