Unrequited Love

We've seen it before: someone falls in love with someone outside their grasp and it makes that person absolutely miserable when they aren't loved back.  From Romeo and Juliet to Gone With the Wind, there have been countless books, movies, plays, and songs dealing with this.  But now, we can relate it to Jay Gatsby's situation in The Great Gatsby.

Fitzgerald portrays Gatsby as a character who has been longing to have Daisy, the love of his life, back for years.  When Gatsby went off to the war, Daisy decided she could not wait for him to get back so she ended up dating, and eventually marrying, Tom instead.  He has longed for her, the part of the American dream that he seemed to be missing, and this longing is even represented in the book by the scene where Gatsby reaches out towards the green light.  The feeling of unrequited love wore on Gatsby for 5 years before he finally made a move to see if Daisy would take him back.  However, she said she could not leave her husband Tom, leaving Gatsby hopeless.

A lot can be taken away from what happened to Gatsby.  Although he did not end up getting Daisy, the persistence he showed by having feelings for her for so long is commendable.  It showed that he was not going to give up on his dream until he did his best to try to get her back.  Also, the fact that he did whatever he had to do in order to get her attention is laudable.  Sure, he didn't attain his wealth in an honorable way, yet that isn't the point; he still did what he had to so he could throw the extravagant parties in hopes of Daisy seeing and deciding to stop by.

While some of Gatsby's actions in the book definitely are not respectable, you have to consider that the feeling of unrequited love can change a person into something that they are not: It can annihilate any confidence you have.  It can make you bitter and cynical.  It can hurt your feelings more than almost anything. So no matter what you think about Gatsby, one thing is for sure: his commitment to trying to win Daisy back is admirable and more people in real life should be committed to love as much as Gatsby was.