Jay Gatsby Chapter 6 Character Analysis

Jay Gatsby Chapter 6 Character Analysis

JAY GATSBY ANALYSIS – CHAPTER VI

In chapter six of The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby's "notoriety" is made clear through the revealing of his misconstrued and self-made past (97). Nick Carraway describes the background of the novel's mysterious protagonist, primitively James Gatz, as originating from "shiftless and unsuccessful farm people" which is contradictory to his previous assertion that his family was extremely wealthy but unfortunately dead, forcing the reader to acknowledge his never ending battle with complacency that is prevalent throughout the course of the story (98). Gatsby never accepted the place from which he was brought up, but instead "sprang from his Platonic conception of himself" which led to the inventions of "just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year–old boy would be likely to invent," an ideal of a man who was wakeless, prestigious and notable (98). Gatsby exhibits a man full of emptiness. His short trip to the top was