How does the relationship between past and present shape characters’

identity in The Great Gatsby?

or alternatively

How does The Great Gatsby portray the characters’ desires and wants as
a way to explore the connection between past and present?

(please excuse my indecisiveness in this matter. As I write this essay, I slowly

realized that the outcome of the essay might be better suited to a question
constructed in another way so here we are. But I will fix this issue in the next
revision of the essay. I would really appreciate some criticism or advice about the
line of inquiry :)

The Great Gatsby opens with a gaze to the past - the narrator, Nick Carraway, looks
back at an ancient advice passed down from his father. His personal history is then
laid bare in front of the readers to observe, before the spotlight is given to Gatsby,
who, from that point onward, triggers the happening of a series of events in the
summer of 1922 - the present set of the story. Thus began the unorthodox saga of our
hero. A tale that, in so many different ways, explores the connection between the past
and the present through one of the novel’s most highly crafted aspects : the
characters.

It is impossible to miss the significance of the past’s influence on the characters of

The Great Gatsby. The way F. Scott Fitzgerald chooses to tell his characters’ story in
gradually unfolding relationships made in the past is a statement on its own : The
past matters, at least to where we are heading in the present. This essay will examine
how the identity of the characters in The Great Gatsby are shaped by the relationship
between past and present. For practical purposes, this essay will only deeply examine
some major characters whose layers unfold as the story goes and whose motivations
and drives are important to the story, such as Gatsby, Daisy and Tom, and Myrtle
Wilson.

For Gatsby, the past is an object of contradiction : who Gatsby is in the present is
shaped by two different premises : the departure from certain aspects of his past and
desire to reignite what once happened in the past. In this way, there exists a kind of
selective attitude towards Gatsby’s personal history : he seeks to escape certain parts
of the past to appease the other side. His transformation from James Gatz to Jay
Gatsby symbolizes this attitude : he is a new man with old desire, or rather, made
and driven by old desire. It is the undying determination to chase a possibility of
romance with Daisy that motivates Gatsby to achieve nearly everything we know he
achieved in the present - a condition that was once impossible due to who he was.
Gatsby’s entire present existence - his wealth and the persona he created to be
worthy of that wealth, was an offering to relive a fond idea from the past.

Daisy, on the other hand, clings hopelessly to her past of wealth and richness and
seeks to retain it. Coming from the old rich background,this desire is mirrored in her
general attitudes in life. For example, her stubbornness to overlook her husband’s
infidelities and merely disregard it as a side effect for all the materialistic wealth and
luxury she got to enjoy. A more extreme example of this is the wishes she expressed
for her daughter, how she championed being ‘a beautiful little fool’ as a girl’s ultimate
achievement in life.

Similar is the case with Tom. Tom seems to be carelessly living his life, seeking for
some ‘irrecoverable football game’, a relic of his pastime glory. His college football
success was a field to assert power, control, and dominance - some things that the
present Tom seeks to reobtain. This desire manifests itself in much more different,
more ruthless ways. No longer presented with an audience cheering for the virtue of
formidable physical skills, the desire manifests in spaces where he can have control
due who he is : romantic relationships. He asserts dominance over Daisy by taking
advantage of Daisy’s incurable tendency to completely depend on a financially and
socially powerful male figure. Yet, some aspects that he can’t control, like how he
can’t assert physical dominance due to Daisy’s equal social standing, resulted in his
affair with Myrtle. Much as Gatsby looks back to the past to reach the things he once
lost, so does Tom in his dissatisfaction.

These characters seek something from the past - albeit in different ways. How, then,
did they react when the present bestowed them with their desire of the past?

Nick makes an interesting observation of Gatsby’s reaction when he finally sees Daisy
in physical form, as opposed to all the time Daisy manifests in Gatsby’s world of
ideas.

“He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third. After his
embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her
presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end,
waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in
the reaction, he was running down like an over-wound clock.” (5.111-114)

The actual wish fulfillment is never quite as good as the past self might imagine it
would be. Such is the case here. (​needs more elaboration)

How the characters see their past and present too mirror the national history of
America. The old America desires stability, the newer generation desires change and
liberty. However, this is not to say that the characters are merely instruments to say
something about America. Nevertheless, their personal values and desires are so
much influenced by the social and cultural background they came from. Because
social class is one of the major ideas in the novel, it would be a missed point to not
consider it as one of the factors influencing a character’s desire. (​this part will be
elaborated further)

Conclusion

The characters’ desire and wants - and what they do to achieve those things - can be
seen as means to ​do ​something about the past - either it be reliving what once has
happened, retaining what once existed, or reobtaining what was once lost.