Here is the raw text of the first Q 3 essay I wrote. There may be minor typos or impurities as this is just the first draft!
Sometimes being the talk of the neighborhood is not all it is built up to be. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby features Jay Gatsby's Mansion, a large house he lives in alone. The house is filled with loud and popular parties Nightly, and various characters frequent it as a destination of fun and enjoyment, well not really getting to know the owner, Gatsby. Jay puts on the parties in hopes of attracting his long-lost love, Daisy, but struggles once he realizes the house he owns can't be the home they share together. Building a home as a facade of a person's true character can often lead to revealing the emotional shallowness that can lie just beneath the foundation.
Jay Gatsby's elaborate and expensive parties encapsulate one feature of his passionate personality because he is willing to go to Great distances to change how other people think of him. His parties are full of high-ranking officials in New York City, West Egg, dancers, musicians, and people ready for a party. With the book being written in the 1920's, the era of the flapper girl fashion and exuberance is showcased through descriptions of the mansion as cavernous, large, lush, fancy, immaculate, and even perfect. The people who attended Gatsby’s parties may not have known Gatsby or anything about his true character, but the house he created had fueled a reputation of his own that could only be connected to Gatsby himself through vague rumors. Additionally, Gatsby’s large house provided many escapes for party goers to fall in love with while attending the party. The library, for instance, was filled with big and real books that Gatsby had not even ready. Yet. he included the books in his house to further prove how solid his facade was, even in his own house that he lived in. The location of his house in New York City, one of the most bustling and robust cities in the US and around the world also adds to the heightened sense of movement and passion that made the always-exciting parties even more en vogue for the time.
Jay Gatsby may have had the ability to throw elaborate parties for an entire simmer for the sake of fun. But he also used his house as a stepping point on the way to the real house that he had always wanted: the total love and affection of his ex-girlfriend, Daisy Baker, was the reason he threw the parties at his house in the first place. When Jay met Daisy, he was a penniless WWI soldier with a dream. He promised a life with Daisy full of love and wanted to make a home with Daisy wherever she was. Once Hay completed his service, he continued to spend the next years building a life of elaborate schemes to build his credibility of stature to build a reputation he thought would make him seem worthy of winning the love of his beloved prize, Daisy. His home was directly across the bay from Daisy, and every night Jy would go to the end of his dock and watch for the green light on the end of hers. Symbolizing just how far Gatsby had come, he used his parties as a way to create a bright enough light to cast a shadow on the life Daisy had built with her husband, Tom, and her daughter. While Jay’s home could have been anywhere with Daisy, he needed to have his house in the exact location it was so he could attract Daisy's eye. When she finally did visit Gatsby’s house, she was moved to tears over the amount of thought and effort Jay had put into creating a home that he wished they could share together for the rest of their lives. No matter how complex the present situation between Daisy and Jay was, he was determined to try to create a house that would be able to make room for the beginning of a new chapter with her.
Unfortunately, all of Jay’s attempts to build the perfect house were all in vain. Hay ends up dying at the bullet of Daisy’s husband in his own swimming pool, a pool that he had not used once in the entire summer of partying around it. When it came time for Gatsby to have a funeral, none of the light party goers of his festivities all summer even bothered showing up to the house. This was disturbing, especially because it proved that the house of Gatsby and the elaborate parties thrown by him were truly just a symbol of fun and carefree enjoyment instead of a chance to have a proper get-together of any people Jay knee personally fun. The narrator of the novel, Nick, is Gatsby’s next-door-neighbor. His modest cottage heard the loud parties and ruckus of the summer season nightly and the sharp sounds of silence following when Jay had finally won the heart of Daisy. While the house had changed when Gatsby went from a place to attract attention and hope to meet a lost love t a place to try to catch the love, even thought he relationship could have never worked because Jay was too focused on catching Daisy to enjoy her presence after the years she’d spent away from him. The house, after Gatsby’s death, had become as dead as he was; no longer allowing the intention that Jay had to attract Daisy served as a catalyst for entertainment, the house grew dormant and alone.
While houses may only be the setting for characters to meet, some take on a personality of their own. Gatsby’s house certainly proves that there is no life in a house unless there is a passion and drive to use the house as a vessel and chamber to both find and create love.
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