The Great Gatsby: Chapter 5 Analysis Essay

The Great Gatsby: Chapter 5 Analysis
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Fitzgerald’s (1925) The Great Gatsby talks about a deep sense of passion inside Gatsby’s heart. Gatsby’s visions are visible even without speaking about them, and they are audible without him needing to speak about them. Gatsby dreams of climbing up the hierarchy of social classes and win Daisy’s hands to matrimony. He is motivated by his passion and the creative dream that pushes him to become more than what he is at present. In Chapter 5 of the novel, Fitzgerald (1925) characterized the attainability of Gatsby’s dreams which might be far from the reality due to various obstacles, but never impossible. Furthermore, Fitzgerald’s story determined that Gatsby had a never-ending dream, where he would continuously create a vision after attaining the other.
The first of the last three paragraphs describes a scene where the narrator, his cousin Daisy, and Gatsby met. Here, Fitzgerald described the immense power of Gatsby’s dreams that have been tainted by a slight hesitation on his part. This is manifested in the line, “…I saw the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! (Fitzgerald, 1925).” Here, it is evident that even Gatsby is baffled by his radical imagination on whether it is attainable or not. As mentioned, during this time, Gatsby’s dream was recognizable in his imagination, and possibly, everything that he has planned worked so well in his mind, but the experiences, in reality, are far from what was expected. The gravity of his imagination, as manifested by stating, “the colossal vitality of his illusions,” was also unintentionally inflicted on other characters in the story, like Daisy and her cousin. Fitzgerald (1925) used symbolism in the first paragraph in chapter 5 as he claimed that Gatsby hits the failed opportunities with another set of positive thinking. Here, the failed opportunities are the “bright feather(s)” that drifted his way, and these are challenged head-on by his “creative passion.” Additionally, the “bright feather” is also imagery that makes the reader feel that Gatsby’s struggles and life challenges should only be taken lightly, for a feather is light. At the same time, the “bright feather” is an irony because, in reality, life challenges, particul...