QuinnKerno

Fitzgerald's portrayal of the often disasterous quest for the american dream was masterfully represented within The Great Gatsby with his description of a diaspora of nou-veaux riches from the american mid-west to the ritz and glamour of New York and its surrounding coastal area.
Fitzgerald's characters are often misguided by and shrouded in the mystery of wealth. The most tragic of Fitzgerald's characters is Jay Gatsby who exemplifies the dangerous consequences of pursuing love while blurring the lines between money and morality. I had the feeling that Fitzgerald created Gatsby as something of a Byronic Hero. A Byronic Hero is often a character who carries some past secret that they refrain from sharing with other characters or even the reader, however they are consumately responsible for this secret and readers are usually very aware of its impact on the hero throughout the work.