The Search for Utopia in The Great Gatsby Essay -- The Great Gatsby F.

In Fitzgeralds novel The extensive Gatsby, the reader discovers multiple interpretations of utopia. Each character is longing for unmatchable particular paradise. Only one character actually reaches utopia, and the arrival is a mixed blessing at best. The concept of paradise in The Great Gatsby is a shifting, evanescent illusion of happiness, joy, love, and perfection, a mirage that leads each character to reach deeper, look harder, strive farther(Lehan, 57). All the while, time pulls each individual farther from the moment he seeks. There is myrtle Wilsons gaudy, flashy hotel paradise in which she can pretend that she is glamorous, elite, wanted and loved. She clings fiercely enough to this threadbare dream to brave the ire of Tom Buchanan by verbalise her jealous terror that he will return to his wife. There is a desperation to her full, vivacious style of living, she wants so much to escape the grey, dead work of the Valley of Ashes that she colors her life with any brightn ess she can find, be it broken glass or diamonds. Nick describes land she finds herself in as a wasteland, a desert, saying this is the Valley of Ashes -- a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a surpassing effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air (Fitzgerald, 27). It is from this that Myrtle is trying to escape, this life-in-death valley that epitomizes the underbelly of New Yorks glitter and lights and finery, and this that she is dragged back to by the dawning jealous rage of a normally unassuming husband. To run away from the grey and the death, the colo... ...any falls from grace, Nick alone resurfaces, burdened by his grounds of the entirety of the tragedy. Works Cited and Consulted Claridge, Henry, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald Critical Assessments. 4 vols. Robertsbridge, UK Helm, 1992. Donaldson, Scott, ed. Critical Essays on F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby. Boston G. K. Hall, 1984. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli. Toronto Simon & Schuster Inc, 1995. Lehan, Richard D. F. The Great Gatsby The Limits of Wonder. Boston Twayne, 1990. Rowe, Joyce A. Delusions of American Idealism. In Readings on The Great Gatsby. edited by Katie de Koster. San Diego, California Greenhaven Press. 1998. 87-95. Trilling, Lionel. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgeralds Great Gatsby. Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston Hall, 1984. 13-20.