The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is the story of a man named Jay Gatsby whose dream of reconciling with his first love will never be fulfilled. Although the main happenings of the novel are those of Gatsby trying to woo Daisy, there are many underlying themes such as money, deceit and reality which do not permit such a dream to be fulfilled.
             Gatsby's dream was to recreate the past with his first love, a rich girl named Daisy. He pursued this dream for five years and planned to live happily ever after with Daisy and give her the finer things in life. However, this dream could never eventuate. A major reason for the collapse of Gatsby's dream was because Gatsby could never admit to himself that his dream was going to fail. In his mind, his dream was so straightforward and achievable and he set himself up for failure by ignoring the many problems that were always going to be in his way.
             Gatsby thought that by becoming rich and part of high society, he could win back Daisy. But Gatsby attained his evident wealth by criminal means and Fitzgerald uses this to portray that as well as Gatsby's money being tainted and dishonest, so was his dream of being with Daisy. Gatsby tried to obtain his dream in a very superficial way - he thought he could buy Daisy's love with the perfect image that he had created of himself. Gatsby thought that this image would help him to win Daisy back. Tom had bought Daisy with a necklace and Gatsby tries to buy her with his image and materialistic possessions. Gatsby dream was destined for failure as Gatsby's and Daisy's love was purely based on these belongings, and was not the same to the love that they had once shared. Gatsby should have realised that true love could not be bought with such possessions and ideals.
             Gatsby, formerly known as James Gatz, deceived himself and others by pretending to be someone that he was not. James Gatz was a young, poor boy f...