They'Re A Rotten Crowd...You'Re Worth The Whole Damn Bunch Put Together

There is no doubt that Gatsby is "worth the whole damn bunch put together." Although he is naпve and obsessed, he also has a dream that he prepared to fight for, integrity to his friends and it is these qualities together with Gatsby's inherent concern for others that make him morally superior to the "rotten crowd" - particularly the Buchanans, Jordan Baker and Myrtle. To decide whether Gatsby is better than the other characters it will be necessary to analyse the characters and to compare and contrast them to Gatsby.

It is important, when analysing the characters of The Great Gatsby to realise that it is a novel written through Nick's eyes. We must realise that we get much of nick's hypotheses, speculation, imagination and he can suppress, recast, and fantasise. We are responding to what Nick has made of the events.

Daisy and Tom Buchanan embody a morally duplicitous, aimless, dreamless and drifting existence. Nick writes of them that "they had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together." They represent all that is wrong with the American Dream; they are rich, but they have no true friends, they are unhappy, restless. Whenever they are in trouble, they have the money and the lack of morality to just move on: "they were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or vast carelessness."

The Buchanans can also be interpreted as a general archetype of the East Coast American upper class, like when Daisy cries "What will we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years?" There are many things to do with their money, influence and experience; however they just choose to take the 'easier' way out and seek constant, instant pleasure.

Gatsby is a direct contrast to The Buchanans. He has a dream, a purpose that he will fight fiercely for. A perfect example of Gatsby's determination comes towards the end of the book when Mr. Gatz finds Gatsby's notebook from when he was a young man, 'Schedule and General Resolves'. His father tells Nick, "Jimmy (Gatsby) was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he's got about improving his mind? He was always great for that."

Gatsby's big dream changed from material success when he was young to 'getting' Daisy. "He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: 'I never loved you.'" All of the parties that Gatsby has every Saturday were there to attract Daisy to his extravagant mansion, but when he realises that she is degusted and repelled by it, all of the "caravansary had fallen in like a card at the disapproval in her eyes." At the climactic scenes, Nick notes that "she realized at last what she was doing - and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all." Representing the old, traditional money, she could not possibly move away from the safe and stable but boring environment provided by Tom and instead lead Gatsby's volatile but exciting lifestyle.

If The Buchanans represent the aimless, dreamless side of the 'old', East Egg money, Jordan Baker represents the amoral, dishonest, ensnaring side. Like Daisy, she is cynical and self-centred, a "new woman" of the 1920s. She is the only woman in the novel who works, however we must note both that she does not need to work for she comes from a wealthy, and 'old money' family and also that she works dishonestly. Nick remembers that he has heard a "critical unpleasant story" about Jordan and later recalls that for all of her boyish beauty, she is also dishonest. She cheated in order to win her first golf tournament and continually bends the truth.

In contrast to Jordan Baker, Gatsby has an inherent concern for others which is often dismissed and used. Admittedly he holds his parties to attract

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