All of us have ideas of what we want our lives to be. These ideas sometimes develop into dreams in our sleep or complaints against how things really are, but hardly ever do events play out exactly how we plan them. More often everything rushes in the opposite direction, disappointing us, and generally wrecking havoc on our puny little ideals. Luckily, there are some like Jay Gatsby of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who have invented new realities. They not only invent, but dwell in them so completely that their realities are the reality. These people have found a way to make all that happens to and around them fit into their fantasy worlds, not disproving but carrying along many of their disillusions. This is often accomplished by surrounding themselves with people who want to believe in their dreams, who willingly lend themselves to the tailoring of their fantasies. All of the characters in The Great Gatsby are guilty of this to some degree but none more than Gatsby himself. He is the only one with neither foot on terra firma, believing all of his own conception. Gatsby lives by looking at his life through a foggy window, through a dream that is enviable and just that Ð a dream, a personal conception of reality.
             Everyone wishes that their realities went all the way like GatsbyÕs, that they could live things out as they imagined. It is for this reason that people write and read books like Peter Pan, with all their talk of Never Neverland. We simply do not thoroughly enjoy the cards that are dealt us. Even Nick (the sometimes disputed main character of The Great Gatsby) allows himself to be a bystander, lending himself to the perpetuance of GatsbyÕs fantasy. He wishes that he could let his feet leave the ground too. Nick even describes GatsbyÕs dream as an "orgastic future" (page 189) and says of Gatsby himself that "there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the
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