The Self-Made Man of the Great Gatsby free essay sample

The ideal of a self-made man is quite American. It is the idea that someone from a humble background can become someone of great importance and wealth through sheer willpower and hard work. The self-made man’s success is not based off his background or the help of others but his own intrinsic values and qualities. It is this idea that allows James Gatz to become Jay Gatsby, and it is this idea that also ironically becomes his downfall. Gatsby is a self-made man, the embodiment of the American dream, and undergoes a reinvention of himself in order to achieve his goals. In chapter six of The Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald figuratively expresses Jay Gatsby’s transformation, ambition and ascension in social class. Gatsby is self-made in more than one sense. He represents the American ideal of a self-made man, but he also discards his old identity of James Gatz and remakes himself into Jay Gatsby. This reinvented self â€Å"sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God † (92). The phrase â€Å"platonic conception† indicates that Gatsby’s identity was the product of only himself and his imagination and involved no other person. This idea of being conceived from only one person parallels with the comparison of Gatsby to the â€Å"son of God,† who was also conceived from only one person. By posing Gatsby as a Jesus figure, Fitzgerald reveals Gatsby as a paragon with noble characteristics. This comparison emphasizes the transformation of Gatsby or in a sense, his resurrection. James Gatz’s life was leading nowhere except his unhappy death. However, Jay Gatsby has the opportunity to succeed and live happily if not for unfortunate circumstances. As a part of his transformation under Dan Cody’s guidance, â€Å"he was left with his singularly appropriate education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man† (93). Gatsby never quite finished a formal education, so working with Dan Cody gave him the â€Å"singularly appropriate education† to succeed. Part of the American Dream is to receive a quality education, and most self-made men achieve success through formal education or self-education. However, just like his new self-invented identity, Gatsby’s education from Dan Cody is at best questionable and at worst shallow and intangible. From the conception of Jay Gatsby to this moment, Jay Gatsby’s existence had only been â€Å"vague† and ethereal, without any real substance or plausibility to it. Perhaps that is because in the beginning even James Gatz doubted the existence of Gatsby. After this fully completed transformation, Gatsby is a â€Å"man† with real â€Å"substantiality,† dreams and thoughts. The education he received allowed him to believe in the plausibility of Gatsby and that the identity of Gatsby could find his fortune somewhere in America. Gatsby’s intense ambition for success characterizes him as the archetypal self-made man. Because of his desire for success, â€Å"the most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain † (92). Gatsby was sure he was bound for a successful future, so sure that â€Å"conceits† pervaded his dreams at night. The word â€Å"conceits† connotes hubris and arrogance, flaws that many self-made men perhaps are guilty of having but never showing. Additionally, â€Å"grotesque† and â€Å"haunted† have negative connotations of fear or unattractiveness, which signifies that perhaps Gatsby is overly ambitious to the point where it exposes his negative traits. The â€Å"gaudiness† of his dreams and thoughts reflect in the lifestyle that he ambitiously works towards and achieves, indicated by the extravagant parties and luxuries later in his life. Ambition generally benefited Gatsby, dissuading him from enduring â€Å"janitor’s work† (92) throughout his brief college experience. If he was unambitiously satisfied with â€Å"janitor’s work† and completed college, he would’ve never been bestowed the opportunity of meeting Dan Cody or his business connections. Gatsby embodies the traditional rising in social class from â€Å"rags to riches† archetype among stories of self-made men. Coming from humble beginnings, â€Å"his parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people† (91). Whereas they were â€Å"shiftless† and lacked ambition, Gatsby did not, so he wished to stray as far from their path as possible. He wanted to be anything but a part of the â€Å"unsuccessful farm people,† who are representative of lower class laborers. His background accounted largely for his failure in securing Daisy. For a year after the war, Gatsby was stuck with the situation the world provided him and had to work â€Å"as a clam digger and a salmon fisher or in any other capacity that brought him food and bed† (92). â€Å"Clam digger† and â€Å"salmon fisher† are presumably low-paying jobs, as he only took the jobs out of necessity to provide himself â€Å"food and bed. † As a result of meeting Dan Cody, Gatsby was able to apply his ambition rather than squander it on menial jobs. Although he received no large sum of money in the end of his tutelage, Gatsby was armed with knowledge that would provide him his fortune. Gatsby is in many ways the archetypal self-made man, and he works his way up society through hard work and an education. However, like the American Dream and society in the 1920s, the ideal of the self-made man is corrupted in Gatsby. His education was from a debauchee and gave him the means to a fortune through crime rather than honest ingenuity. His ambition provided him success but also developed inside him a hubris and arrogance that is generally not associated with self-made men. However, due to his incorruptible and noble goal of Daisy’s love, perhaps Gatsby turned out alright in the end.