great gatsby essay about love

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I Love The Great Gatsby , Even if it Doesn’t Love Me Back

On difficult characters and the unbearable whiteness of classic literature.

The books we love don’t always love us back. Like so many of us, I first read The Great Gatsby when I was a 16-year-old high school kid and Gatsby’s narrator Nick Carraway was the ripe old age of 29-about-to-turn-30 (of course, he still is). Nick was living in the most exciting city in the world, working at a job where in a few short years he might be making a fortune, and spending his evenings hobnobbing with his rich and connected relatives. I, on the other hand, lived in lower working-class, rural North Carolina and was one of the first generation of post-integrationist southern black kids. Starting from the actual day I turned 16, I worked at a fast food restaurant making less than five dollars an hour, and if I was lucky I spent my free time in front of a television or in the middle of a book. Let’s just say Nick’s life was very different from mine.

Still, I loved Nick. I was consumed by the glamour of his story and his telling of it: the lingering descriptions of glittering parties and decorated women. The romance! I loved the thrill of love, requited or not, and the enigmatic portentous green light, a symbol of the safe harbor that love should be but often isn’t. Reading Gatsby felt like an initiation into a rich, romantic, sophisticated, adult world that I, a poor, small town, black girl, desperately wanted to know. And the voice of Nick Carraway, his unfussy intelligence, his elegiac musings, his surprising turns of phrases (“secret griefs of wild, unknown men,” he says on the first page!) hooked me early and completely. The writing is not showy or precious but clear, with simple, lyrical declarations like the hardest easy sentences we write or say: Nothing more can be done. I love you. I want you back .

Gatsby drew me in like that. Maybe some of you have fallen hard and fast in love, and you know it is a heady and wonderful feeling, vertigo, breathlessness. You lose weight. Your skin becomes effervescent, as if parts of you could twinkle off. You feel dangerous and endangered. At first that danger is part of the giddy wonder of it, but soon you find yourself on your guard. You wonder what you have missed mid-swoon. What surprise lurks for you (disgusting personal habit, unforgivable character flaw) that you could not predict and have had no time to discover for yourself? Falling into the world of a classic book (or even a contemporary one) gives me that loving feeling, both exhilarated and immediately wary.

However swept up and away I may be, I can’t help but fear that the door of the book will suddenly close in my face by excluding or demeaning people of color, women, the poor; that it will announce directly or indirectly that I am not the target, not even a member of the desired audience, that the story was not written for me.

I know that the job of literature is to showcase the lives of characters, with all their perplexing perversities, petty shortsightednesses, and bad judgements. I don’t expect or even want to be preached to by characters that know all, do and think all the right things, and never make crucial mistakes. People have limitations that are difficult to stomach sometimes. Good characters are similarly flawed. But still it hurts to find yourself set outside, the butt of the joke. And it is especially painful when the joker is a character you admire. So when the cruel, violent bully Tom Buchanan declares The Rise of the Coloured Empires a prophetic book that admonishes whites to “watch out or these other races will have control of things,” or when Daisy Buchanan refers to her “white girlhood,” or when Nick’s almost-girlfriend, the lying tennis player Jordan Baker, announces that “we are all white here” during one of the most intense scenes of the novel, I smart from these comments, feel pushed away. But Nick Carraway, good-hearted, thoughtful Nick, who starts the book with his father’s generous admonishment—“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone . . . just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had”—felt like the book’s exception.

F. Scott Fitzgerald no doubt saw a great deal of himself in Nick. In Fitzgerald’s essay series “The Crack Up,” he speaks of his own egalitarian impulses. “Like most midwesterners, I have never had any but the vaguest race prejudices” he writes. However when he felt he was cracking up, he hated most everyone in equal measure: “In these latter days I couldn’t stand the sight of Celts, English, Politicians, Strangers, Virginians, Negroes (light or dark), Hunting People, or retail clerks, and middlemen in general, all writers (I avoided writers carefully because they can perpetuate trouble as no one else can.”

I laugh every time I read Virginians and Negroes (light or dark) . Clearly Fitzgerald is being flippant here, but it is easy to see Nick in this sentence. Nick, the generous cipher, the character who stands in for us (the readers), the decent outsider, a character who can be equally non-judgmental at an assignation with Tom Buchanan’s mistress and her strange group of reveling friends, or with a known gangster, or with the haughty beauty Jordan Baker. But then that same Nick sees a limousine “driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl.” And he announces that “ Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge.” It hurts worse when Nick seems to share some of the thinking of Tom Buchanan, to see a world changing too quickly and unpredictably, becoming an unrecognizable and suspicious place.

Great books are great because they allow characters to be their difficult selves, to work through those difficulties (or not) and change (or not). These books require us to use our heads, to look at the totality of the story and the mission of the work. The reason Gatsby is successful, the reason I am a great fan, and why I can be a fan without an asterisk or footnote, is Nick. He has a front row seat to this moneyed world and the cruel indifference those privileged few have for the striving and struggling masses. Harm comes to everyone who is not buffered by the power of wealth and class. Nick can be a part of that moneyed class, in ways that Gatsby or the Jewish gangster cannot, and certainly in ways that the rich black limousine riders cannot—but Nick rejects that life.

Ultimately, The Great Gatsby is also about the Great Nick, who in order to remain the uncompromised egalitarian he aspires to be has to leave the scene, though his exit is much less dramatic than Gatsby’s. This leaving, like all disavowals, is not without pain. Nick does not pretend that he has not been affected by the pull of the glimmering world he leaves behind, and he doesn’t pretend that a part of him is not grieving because he can never nest on the right egg. In the “Crack Up,” Fitzgerald says the measure of a first rate intelligence is to hold two opposing ideas in one’s head at the same time and still function. Because of his general decency, Nick can function. He can even thrive. But not in East or West Egg. Like most of us, Nick is not a revolutionary or a prophet. He cannot convert the blue bloods. He can only leave them.

If Gatsby is better than the whole lot of them, as Nick tells us, then perhaps Nick is as well. But he realizes more than Gatsby ever could (or would get a chance to know) that what he saw on the horizon was just a green light—not love at all and not even a signifier of it. However beautiful, however much we admire the glow, it is but a shimmering reflection, no more substantial than light on water. The way that we beat on, boats against that current, so to speak, is by continuing to make the best lives we can, knocking on doors, even the ones we believe will never completely open. The book so admired as synonymous with the gilded Jazz Age is a book for our own time too, a time that is also characterized by economic and racial fear, a time of great wealth for a few and great uncertainty for many. The world is defined by change. We cannot change the world. We must change the world. Can we hold these ideas in our heads at the same time? The fact that we can and we must try for better for everyone is a bold and uncommon message for our times from a slim little book written nearly a century ago.

The books we love don’t always love us back. But how amazing when they do.

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Stephanie Powell Watts

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, best analysis: the american dream in the great gatsby.

Book Guides

The Great Gatsby is a tragic love story on the surface, but it's most commonly understood as a pessimistic critique of the American Dream. In the novel, Jay Gatsby overcomes his poor past to gain an incredible amount of money and a limited amount of social cache in 1920s NYC, only to be rejected by the "old money" crowd. He then gets killed after being tangled up with them.

Through Gatsby's life, as well as that of the Wilsons', Fitzgerald critiques the idea that America is a meritocracy where anyone can rise to the top with enough hard work. We will explore how this theme plays out in the plot, briefly analyze some key quotes about it, as well as do some character analysis and broader analysis of topics surrounding the American Dream in The Great Gatsby .

What is the American Dream? The American Dream in the Great Gatsby plot Key American Dream quotes Analyzing characters via the American Dream Common discussion and essay topics

Quick Note on Our Citations

Our citation format in this guide is (chapter.paragraph). We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, so using page numbers would only work for students with our copy of the book.

To find a quotation we cite via chapter and paragraph in your book, you can either eyeball it (Paragraph 1-50: beginning of chapter; 50-100: middle of chapter; 100-on: end of chapter), or use the search function if you're using an online or eReader version of the text.

What Exactly Is "The American Dream"?

The American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of race, class, gender, or nationality, can be successful in America (read: rich) if they just work hard enough. The American Dream thus presents a pretty rosy view of American society that ignores problems like systemic racism and misogyny, xenophobia, tax evasion or state tax avoidance, and income inequality. It also presumes a myth of class equality, when the reality is America has a pretty well-developed class hierarchy.

The 1920s in particular was a pretty tumultuous time due to increased immigration (and the accompanying xenophobia), changing women's roles (spurred by the right to vote, which was won in 1919), and extraordinary income inequality.

The country was also in the midst of an economic boom, which fueled the belief that anyone could "strike it rich" on Wall Street. However, this rapid economic growth was built on a bubble which popped in 1929. The Great Gatsby was published in 1925, well before the crash, but through its wry descriptions of the ultra-wealthy, it seems to somehow predict that the fantastic wealth on display in 1920s New York was just as ephemeral as one of Gatsby's parties.

In any case, the novel, just by being set in the 1920s, is unlikely to present an optimistic view of the American Dream, or at least a version of the dream that's inclusive to all genders, ethnicities, and incomes. With that background in mind, let's jump into the plot!

The American Dream in The Great Gatsby

Chapter 1 places us in a particular year—1922—and gives us some background about WWI.  This is relevant, since the 1920s is presented as a time of hollow decadence among the wealthy, as evidenced especially by the parties in Chapters 2 and 3. And as we mentioned above, the 1920s were a particularly tense time in America.

We also meet George and Myrtle Wilson in Chapter 2 , both working class people who are working to improve their lot in life, George through his work, and Myrtle through her affair with Tom Buchanan.

We learn about Gatsby's goal in Chapter 4 : to win Daisy back. Despite everything he owns, including fantastic amounts of money and an over-the-top mansion, for Gatsby, Daisy is the ultimate status symbol. So in Chapter 5 , when Daisy and Gatsby reunite and begin an affair, it seems like Gatsby could, in fact, achieve his goal.

In Chapter 6 , we learn about Gatsby's less-than-wealthy past, which not only makes him look like the star of a rags-to-riches story, it makes Gatsby himself seem like someone in pursuit of the American Dream, and for him the personification of that dream is Daisy.

However, in Chapters 7 and 8 , everything comes crashing down: Daisy refuses to leave Tom, Myrtle is killed, and George breaks down and kills Gatsby and then himself, leaving all of the "strivers" dead and the old money crowd safe. Furthermore, we learn in those last chapters that Gatsby didn't even achieve all his wealth through hard work, like the American Dream would stipulate—instead, he earned his money through crime. (He did work hard and honestly under Dan Cody, but lost Dan Cody's inheritance to his ex-wife.)

In short, things do not turn out well for our dreamers in the novel! Thus, the novel ends with Nick's sad meditation on the lost promise of the American Dream. You can read a detailed analysis of these last lines in our summary of the novel's ending .

Key American Dream Quotes

In this section we analyze some of the most important quotes that relate to the American Dream in the book.

But I didn't call to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone--he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward--and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. (1.152)

In our first glimpse of Jay Gatsby, we see him reaching towards something far off, something in sight but definitely out of reach. This famous image of the green light is often understood as part of The Great Gatsby 's meditation on The American Dream—the idea that people are always reaching towards something greater than themselves that is just out of reach . You can read more about this in our post all about the green light .

The fact that this yearning image is our introduction to Gatsby foreshadows his unhappy end and also marks him as a dreamer, rather than people like Tom or Daisy who were born with money and don't need to strive for anything so far off.

Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.

A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds and by more cheerful carriages for friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short upper lips of south-eastern Europe, and I was glad that the sight of Gatsby's splendid car was included in their somber holiday. As we crossed Blackwell's Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish Negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry.

"Anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge," I thought; "anything at all. . . ."

Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder. (4.55-8)

Early in the novel, we get this mostly optimistic illustration of the American Dream—we see people of different races and nationalities racing towards NYC, a city of unfathomable possibility. This moment has all the classic elements of the American Dream—economic possibility, racial and religious diversity, a carefree attitude. At this moment, it does feel like "anything can happen," even a happy ending.

However, this rosy view eventually gets undermined by the tragic events later in the novel. And even at this point, Nick's condescension towards the people in the other cars reinforces America's racial hierarchy that disrupts the idea of the American Dream. There is even a little competition at play, a "haughty rivalry" at play between Gatsby's car and the one bearing the "modish Negroes."

Nick "laughs aloud" at this moment, suggesting he thinks it's amusing that the passengers in this other car see them as equals, or even rivals to be bested. In other words, he seems to firmly believe in the racial hierarchy Tom defends in Chapter 1, even if it doesn't admit it honestly.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete. (6.134)

This moment explicitly ties Daisy to all of Gatsby's larger dreams for a better life —to his American Dream. This sets the stage for the novel's tragic ending, since Daisy cannot hold up under the weight of the dream Gatsby projects onto her. Instead, she stays with Tom Buchanan, despite her feelings for Gatsby. Thus when Gatsby fails to win over Daisy, he also fails to achieve his version of the American Dream. This is why so many people read the novel as a somber or pessimistic take on the American Dream, rather than an optimistic one.  

...as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night." (9.151-152)

The closing pages of the novel reflect at length on the American Dream, in an attitude that seems simultaneously mournful, appreciative, and pessimistic. It also ties back to our first glimpse of Gatsby, reaching out over the water towards the Buchanan's green light. Nick notes that Gatsby's dream was "already behind him" then (or in other words, it was impossible to attain). But still, he finds something to admire in how Gatsby still hoped for a better life, and constantly reached out toward that brighter future.

For a full consideration of these last lines and what they could mean, see our analysis of the novel's ending .

Analyzing Characters Through the American Dream

An analysis of the characters in terms of the American Dream usually leads to a pretty cynical take on the American Dream.

Most character analysis centered on the American Dream will necessarily focus on Gatsby, George, or Myrtle (the true strivers in the novel), though as we'll discuss below, the Buchanans can also provide some interesting layers of discussion. For character analysis that incorporates the American Dream, carefully consider your chosen character's motivations and desires, and how the novel does (or doesn't!) provide glimpses of the dream's fulfillment for them.

Gatsby himself is obviously the best candidate for writing about the American Dream—he comes from humble roots (he's the son of poor farmers from North Dakota) and rises to be notoriously wealthy, only for everything to slip away from him in the end. Many people also incorporate Daisy into their analyses as the physical representation of Gatsby's dream.

However, definitely consider the fact that in the traditional American Dream, people achieve their goals through honest hard work, but in Gatsby's case, he very quickly acquires a large amount of money through crime . Gatsby does attempt the hard work approach, through his years of service to Dan Cody, but that doesn't work out since Cody's ex-wife ends up with the entire inheritance. So instead he turns to crime, and only then does he manage to achieve his desired wealth.

So while Gatsby's story arc resembles a traditional rags-to-riches tale, the fact that he gained his money immorally complicates the idea that he is a perfect avatar for the American Dream . Furthermore, his success obviously doesn't last—he still pines for Daisy and loses everything in his attempt to get her back. In other words, Gatsby's huge dreams, all precariously wedded to Daisy  ("He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God" (6.134)) are as flimsy and flight as Daisy herself.

George and Myrtle Wilson

This couple also represents people aiming at the dream— George owns his own shop and is doing his best to get business, though is increasingly worn down by the harsh demands of his life, while Myrtle chases after wealth and status through an affair with Tom.

Both are disempowered due to the lack of money at their own disposal —Myrtle certainly has access to some of the "finer things" through Tom but has to deal with his abuse, while George is unable to leave his current life and move West since he doesn't have the funds available. He even has to make himself servile to Tom in an attempt to get Tom to sell his car, a fact that could even cause him to overlook the evidence of his wife's affair. So neither character is on the upward trajectory that the American Dream promises, at least during the novel.

In the end, everything goes horribly wrong for both George and Myrtle, suggesting that in this world, it's dangerous to strive for more than you're given.

George and Myrtle's deadly fates, along with Gatsby's, help illustrate the novel's pessimistic attitude toward the American Dream. After all, how unfair is it that the couple working to improve their position in society (George and Myrtle) both end up dead, while Tom, who dragged Myrtle into an increasingly dangerous situation, and Daisy, who killed her, don't face any consequences? And on top of that they are fabulously wealthy? The American Dream certainly is not alive and well for the poor Wilsons.

Tom and Daisy as Antagonists to the American Dream

We've talked quite a bit already about Gatsby, George, and Myrtle—the three characters who come from humble roots and try to climb the ranks in 1920s New York. But what about the other major characters, especially the ones born with money? What is their relationship to the American Dream?

Specifically, Tom and Daisy have old money, and thus they don't need the American Dream, since they were born with America already at their feet.

Perhaps because of this, they seem to directly antagonize the dream—Daisy by refusing Gatsby, and Tom by helping to drag the Wilsons into tragedy .

This is especially interesting because unlike Gatsby, Myrtle, and George, who actively hope and dream of a better life, Daisy and Tom are described as bored and "careless," and end up instigating a large amount of tragedy through their own recklessness.

In other words, income inequality and the vastly different starts in life the characters have strongly affected their outcomes. The way they choose to live their lives, their morality (or lack thereof), and how much they dream doesn't seem to matter. This, of course, is tragic and antithetical to the idea of the American Dream, which claims that class should be irrelevant and anyone can rise to the top.

Daisy as a Personification of the American Dream

As we discuss in our post on money and materialism in The Great Gatsby , Daisy's voice is explicitly tied to money by Gatsby:

"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.

That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money--that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. . . . High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl. . . . (7.105-6)

If Daisy's voice promises money, and the American Dream is explicitly linked to wealth, it's not hard to argue that Daisy herself—along with the green light at the end of her dock —stands in for the American Dream. In fact, as Nick goes on to describe Daisy as "High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl," he also seems to literally describe Daisy as a prize, much like the princess at the end of a fairy tale (or even Princess Peach at the end of a Mario game!).

But Daisy, of course, is only human—flawed, flighty, and ultimately unable to embody the huge fantasy Gatsby projects onto her. So this, in turn, means that the American Dream itself is just a fantasy, a concept too flimsy to actually hold weight, especially in the fast-paced, dog-eat-dog world of 1920s America.

Furthermore, you should definitely consider the tension between the fact that Daisy represents Gatsby's ultimate goal, but at the same time (as we discussed above), her actual life is the opposite of the American Dream : she is born with money and privilege, likely dies with it all intact, and there are no consequences to how she chooses to live her life in between.

Can Female Characters Achieve the American Dream?

Finally, it's interesting to compare and contrast some of the female characters using the lens of the American Dream.

Let's start with Daisy, who is unhappy in her marriage and, despite a brief attempt to leave it, remains with Tom, unwilling to give up the status and security their marriage provides. At first, it may seem like Daisy doesn't dream at all, so of course she ends up unhappy. But consider the fact that Daisy was already born into the highest level of American society. The expectation placed on her, as a wealthy woman, was never to pursue something greater, but simply to maintain her status. She did that by marrying Tom, and it's understandable why she wouldn't risk the uncertainty and loss of status that would come through divorce and marriage to a bootlegger. Again, Daisy seems to typify the "anti-American" dream, in that she was born into a kind of aristocracy and simply has to maintain her position, not fight for something better.

In contrast, Myrtle, aside from Gatsby, seems to be the most ambitiously in pursuit of getting more than she was given in life. She parlays her affair with Tom into an apartment, nice clothes, and parties, and seems to revel in her newfound status. But of course, she is knocked down the hardest, killed for her involvement with the Buchanans, and specifically for wrongfully assuming she had value to them. Considering that Gatsby did have a chance to leave New York and distance himself from the unfolding tragedy, but Myrtle was the first to be killed, you could argue the novel presents an even bleaker view of the American Dream where women are concerned.

Even Jordan Baker , who seems to be living out a kind of dream by playing golf and being relatively independent, is tied to her family's money and insulated from consequences by it , making her a pretty poor representation of the dream. And of course, since her end game also seems to be marriage, she doesn't push the boundaries of women's roles as far as she might wish.

So while the women all push the boundaries of society's expectations of them in certain ways, they either fall in line or are killed, which definitely undermines the rosy of idea that anyone, regardless of gender, can make it in America. The American Dream as shown in Gatsby becomes even more pessimistic through the lens of the female characters.  

Common Essay Questions/Discussion Topics

Now let's work through some of the more frequently brought up subjects for discussion.

#1: Was Gatsby's dream worth it? Was all the work, time, and patience worth it for him?

Like me, you might immediately think "of course it wasn't worth it! Gatsby lost everything, not to mention the Wilsons got caught up in the tragedy and ended up dead!" So if you want to make the more obvious "the dream wasn't worth it" argument, you could point to the unraveling that happens at the end of the novel (including the deaths of Myrtle, Gatsby and George) and how all Gatsby's achievements are for nothing, as evidenced by the sparse attendance of his funeral.

However, you could definitely take the less obvious route and argue that Gatsby's dream was worth it, despite the tragic end . First of all, consider Jay's unique characterization in the story: "He was a son of God--a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that--and he must be about His Father's Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty" (6.7). In other words, Gatsby has a larger-than-life persona and he never would have been content to remain in North Dakota to be poor farmers like his parents.

Even if he ends up living a shorter life, he certainly lived a full one full of adventure. His dreams of wealth and status took him all over the world on Dan Cody's yacht, to Louisville where he met and fell in love with Daisy, to the battlefields of WWI, to the halls of Oxford University, and then to the fast-paced world of Manhattan in the early 1920s, when he earned a fortune as a bootlegger. In fact, it seems Jay lived several lives in the space of just half a normal lifespan. In short, to argue that Gatsby's dream was worth it, you should point to his larger-than-life conception of himself and the fact that he could have only sought happiness through striving for something greater than himself, even if that ended up being deadly in the end.

#2: In the Langston Hughes poem "A Dream Deferred," Hughes asks questions about what happens to postponed dreams. How does Fitzgerald examine this issue of deferred dreams? What do you think are the effects of postponing our dreams? How can you apply this lesson to your own life?

If you're thinking about "deferred dreams" in The Great Gatsby , the big one is obviously Gatsby's deferred dream for Daisy—nearly five years pass between his initial infatuation and his attempt in the novel to win her back, an attempt that obviously backfires. You can examine various aspects of Gatsby's dream—the flashbacks to his first memories of Daisy in Chapter 8 , the moment when they reunite in Chapter 5 , or the disastrous consequences of the confrontation of Chapter 7 —to illustrate Gatsby's deferred dream.

You could also look at George Wilson's postponed dream of going West, or Myrtle's dream of marrying a wealthy man of "breeding"—George never gets the funds to go West, and is instead mired in the Valley of Ashes, while Myrtle's attempt to achieve her dream after 12 years of marriage through an affair ends in tragedy. Apparently, dreams deferred are dreams doomed to fail.

As Nick Carraway says, "you can't repeat the past"—the novel seems to imply there is a small window for certain dreams, and when the window closes, they can no longer be attained. This is pretty pessimistic, and for the prompt's personal reflection aspect, I wouldn't say you should necessarily "apply this lesson to your own life" straightforwardly. But it is worth noting that certain opportunities are fleeting, and perhaps it's wiser to seek out newer and/or more attainable ones, rather than pining over a lost chance.

Any prompt like this one which has a section of more personal reflection gives you freedom to tie in your own experiences and point of view, so be thoughtful and think of good examples from your own life!

#3: Explain how the novel does or does not demonstrate the death of the American Dream. Is the main theme of Gatsby indeed "the withering American Dream"? What does the novel offer about American identity?

In this prompt, another one that zeroes in on the dead or dying American Dream, you could discuss how the destruction of three lives (Gatsby, George, Myrtle) and the cynical portrayal of the old money crowd illustrates a dead, or dying American Dream . After all, if the characters who dream end up dead, and the ones who were born into life with money and privilege get to keep it without consequence, is there any room at all for the idea that less-privileged people can work their way up?

In terms of what the novel says about American identity, there are a few threads you could pick up—one is Nick's comment in Chapter 9 about the novel really being a story about (mid)westerners trying (and failing) to go East : "I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life" (9.125). This observation suggests an American identity that is determined by birthplace, and that within the American identity there are smaller, inescapable points of identification.

Furthermore, for those in the novel not born into money, the American identity seems to be about striving to end up with more wealth and status. But in terms of the portrayal of the old money set, particularly Daisy, Tom, and Jordan, the novel presents a segment of American society that is essentially aristocratic—you have to be born into it. In that regard, too, the novel presents a fractured American identity, with different lives possible based on how much money you are born with.

In short, I think the novel disrupts the idea of a unified American identity or American dream, by instead presenting a tragic, fractured, and rigid American society, one that is divided based on both geographic location and social class.

#4: Most would consider dreams to be positive motivators to achieve success, but the characters in the novel often take their dreams of ideal lives too far. Explain how characters' American Dreams cause them to have pain when they could have been content with more modest ambitions.

Gatsby is an obvious choice here—his pursuit of money and status, particularly through Daisy, leads him to ruin. There were many points when perhaps Gatsby ;could have been happy with what he achieved (especially after his apparently successful endeavors in the war, if he had remained at Oxford, or even after amassing a great amount of wealth as a bootlegger) but instead he kept striving upward, which ultimately lead to his downfall. You can flesh this argument out with the quotations in Chapters 6 and 8 about Gatsby's past, along with his tragic death.

Myrtle would be another good choice for this type of prompt. In a sense, she seems to be living her ideal life in her affair with Tom—she has a fancy NYC apartment, hosts parties, and gets to act sophisticated—but these pleasures end up gravely hurting George, and of course her association with Tom Buchanan gets her killed.

Nick, too, if he had been happy with his family's respectable fortune and his girlfriend out west, might have avoided the pain of knowing Gatsby and the general sense of despair he was left with.

You might be wondering about George—after all, isn't he someone also dreaming of a better life? However, there aren't many instances of George taking his dreams of an ideal life "too far." In fact, he struggles just to make one car sale so that he can finally move out West with Myrtle. Also, given that his current situation in the Valley of Ashes is quite bleak, it's hard to say that striving upward gave him pain.

#5: The Great Gatsby is, among other things, a sobering and even ominous commentary on the dark side of the American dream. Discuss this theme, incorporating the conflicts of East Egg vs. West Egg and old money vs. new money. What does the American dream mean to Gatsby? What did the American Dream mean to Fitzgerald? How does morality fit into achieving the American dream?

This prompt allows you to consider pretty broadly the novel's attitude toward the American Dream, with emphasis on "sobering and even ominous" commentary. Note that Fitzgerald seems to be specifically mocking the stereotypical rags to riches story here—;especially since he draws the Dan Cody narrative almost note for note from the work of someone like Horatio Alger, whose books were almost universally about rich men schooling young, entrepreneurial boys in the ways of the world. In other words, you should discuss how the Great Gatsby seems to turn the idea of the American Dream as described in the quote on its head: Gatsby does achieve a rags-to-riches rise, but it doesn't last.

All of Gatsby's hard work for Dan Cody, after all, didn't pay off since he lost the inheritance. So instead, Gatsby turned to crime after the war to quickly gain a ton of money. Especially since Gatsby finally achieves his great wealth through dubious means, the novel further undermines the classic image of someone working hard and honestly to go from rags to riches.

If you're addressing this prompt or a similar one, make sure to focus on the darker aspects of the American Dream, including the dark conclusion to the novel and Daisy and Tom's protection from any real consequences . (This would also allow you to considering morality, and how morally bankrupt the characters are.)

#6: What is the current state of the American Dream?

This is a more outward-looking prompt, that allows you to consider current events today to either be generally optimistic (the American dream is alive and well) or pessimistic (it's as dead as it is in The Great Gatsby).

You have dozens of potential current events to use as evidence for either argument, but consider especially immigration and immigration reform, mass incarceration, income inequality, education, and health care in America as good potential examples to use as you argue about the current state of the American Dream. Your writing will be especially powerful if you can point to some specific current events to support your argument.

What's Next?

In this post, we discussed how important money is to the novel's version of the American Dream. You can read even more about money and materialism in The Great Gatsby right here .

Want to indulge in a little materialism of your own? Take a look through these 15 must-have items for any Great Gatsby fan .

Get complete guides to Jay Gatsby , George Wilson and Myrtle Wilson to get even more background on the "dreamers" in the novel.

Like we discussed above, the green light is often seen as a stand-in for the idea of the American Dream. Read more about this crucial symbol here .

Need help getting to grips with other literary works? Take a spin through our analyses of The Crucible , The Cask of Amontillado , and " Do not go gentle into this good night " to see analysis in action. You might also find our explanations of point of view , rhetorical devices , imagery , and literary elements and devices helpful.

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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• The Great Gatsby Essays

Love and Romance in The Great Gatsby Essay

“The Great Gatsby” is one of the most outstanding works written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The main character of the story is a prosperous man, Jay Gatsby, whose ambitions and romance with an aristocratic young woman, Daisy, led to a tragic end. Nevertheless, it is possible to say that Gatsby becomes a victim of the customs and traditions of society.

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Jay Gatsby idealizes romance because it reminds his youth, his true feelings free from cupidity and greediness. Love to Daisy helps him to recreate his past and symbolizes the realization of his secret dreams. The love of Daisy is the only thing he cannot possess, for this reason, it becomes so desirable and attractive.  

It is possible to single out two different worlds: the world of reality represented by wealth and money, and the world of dreams, which embodies love. Gatsby idealizes romance because only dreams have value for him. The theme of love plays an important role in the lives of both characters, Gatsby and Daisy. The story is unique because the author depicts events, experiences, time, memories through different people. Wealth and money symbolize stability and social recognition, while romance and love are desirable but unachievable. “ Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion” (Gatsby, Ch. 5). Quite early Jay Gatsby explores the meaning and significance of money in life. The theme of romance is closely connected with the absence of wealth and money. Jay was not rich enough to marry Daisy, now he has a chance, as he thinks, to restore their love, because “she was the first “nice” girl he had ever known” (Gatsby, Ch.8).

On the other hand, Gatsby has to idealize romance because love for Daisy is the only thing he values. For this reason, dreams rule his world. Romance reminds Gatsby of his youth when he met Daisy and fell in love. Those times, he felt a lack of money but he was much happier than now to be in love with Daisy. Gatsby describes his past: “He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a “nice” girl could be. … her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing. He felt married to her, that was all” (Gatsby, Ch.8). Now, he is a rich man socially “equal” to Daisy.

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For Gatsby, ideal romance means pure relations free from cupidity and social statuses. All his “friends’ can be characterized as greedy and spoilt people who do not know what friendship is, rating only money and social status. Gatsby is unsatisfied with life and with reality. In his work, Fitzgerald depicts confrontations between wealth and honesty. “Sometimes they [guests] came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission.” (Gatsby, Ch. 3). As though to emphasize his vision of the life-denying nature of most modern existence, Fitzgerald does not use the imitative method to portray characters through motivation and conditionality. Gatsby tries to build pure relations with Daisy based on faith and eternal love.

On the other hand, “Jay Gatsby” is an ideal person who wants to marry “an ideal Daisy”. Gatsby was lucky enough to realize his dream and became a millionaire; nevertheless, he does not belong to the aristocracy who possess both money and a high level of education. In this case, Daisy is an “ideal” for Gatsby, who possesses wealth, good breeding, and education. “Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly. That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it. . . . high in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl. . . . (Gatsby, Ch.7). His hopes and dreams almost inevitably resulted in disappointments because lack of education was “Achilles’ heel” for him.  

Everything in Gatsby’s life is real: “I ascertained. They’re real.” “The books?”   “Absolutely real—have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages and—Here!.” (Gatsby, Ch.3). For this reason, Gatsby wants to feel “true” love which means much more for him than cars, books, and the house with a swimming pool. The author states that ideal romance represents wealth and success, and future hopes for the ideal life.  

For Gatsby, love means an unachievable dream which does not come true. In this sense, he is a victim because he needs to escape from the realities of life that he cannot change. He is a victim of social prejudices which destroy human relations and hopes. To some extent, ideal romance implies eternal love: He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: “I never loved you.” (Gatsby, Ch.6). He accesses wealth and property, but the only thing he cannot possess is Daisy.  

It is possible to say that “love and romance” represent losing hopes for Gatsby. He is happy about the way his life turned out to be, but life struggle makes him unsympathetic and callous towards others. When he was young, he loved and he was loved. Gatsby’s desire to possess a love of Daisy is closely connected with the dissatisfaction with his past. “I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.” “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!” Usually, love represents happiness and hope, but for Gatsby, it means losses and hopelessness.  

On the other hand, love symbolizes “light” in his life. The symbolic interpretation of the events, comparison, and contrast between the meanings helps Fitzgerald to hold readers’ attention. Gatsby lives in the “dark” all the time and does not know the beauty of the surroundings. Past and present mean good and evil, hopes and disappointment, and more important life and death.   In a capitalist society, there have to be both winners and losers, and Gatsby wants to be a winner not only in material gain but in love also.

Gatsby can be seen as a person who does not use the warmth of his heart as his emotional guide. But love symbolizes the psychological state of Gatsby who becomes more passionate and sympathetic. Like a young fellow, he spent a night near the window of his lady to be aware that she was safe: “Nothing happened,” he said wanly. “I waited, and about four o’clock she came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned out the light.” After this scene, Gatsby feels hopeless and depressed, which forces him to confess to Nick and tell the story of his love: “Well, there I was, ‘way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I didn’t care. What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?” (Gatsby, Ch.8).  

It is possible to say that love for Daisy forced Gatsby to become rich and prosperous. If we assume that Daisy was from a middle-class family Gatsby would marry her and would not become wealthy. Fitzgerald rings up questions concerning the moral health of people, and in spite of all the negative life lessons, Gatsby understands what it is to be an individual.

As the most important, love and romance resulted in the death of Gatsby. Fitzgerald portrays the union of money and love as an inevitable evil people face, which destroyed their lives: ”So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (Gatsby, Ch. 9). Fitzgerald shows how ridiculous, stifling, and potentially harmful the attitudes and trappings of society can be. Fitzgerald ridicules the class’s pretensions to knowledge and values and its faith in the power of money.  

To conclude, Gatsby’s dream represents ideal love which greatly affects him. He has everything except beloved Daisy . When wealth starts to dominate, people usually act in their own interests, they degrade as the keepers of love and morality as Daisy did. It remains disappointing that the social issues that are generally identified as pertaining to deal with questions of individual choice. The dream was once equated with certain principles of love and honesty, it is now equated with money and prosperity. Fitzgerald portrays ideal romance in a specific manner which helps him to convey the main message of the story and express his own attitude towards interdependence of wealth, love, and personal values.    

• Fitzgerald, F.S. The Great Gatsby.   Available at: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/f/fitzgerald/f_scott/gatsby/index.html

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Great Gatsby — Daisys Love in The Great Gatsby

Daisys Love in The Great Gatsby

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Daisy's Relationship with Jay Gatsby

Daisy's marriage to tom buchanan.

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Eva Noblezada and Jeremy Jordan arriving at "The Great Gatsby."

Broadway just got busy. Really busy.

Seven musicals and five plays opened in just nine days, scrambling to beat an April 25 deadline to qualify for this year’s Tony Awards.

We sent a reporter and a photographer to chronicle the crush of openings.

Even at a challenging time for a pandemic-weakened industry, they found razzle-dazzle.

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Broadway Opened 12 Shows in 9 Days. Here’s What That Looked Like.

It’s a challenging time for the theater industry, but as the Tonys deadline approached each new show had reason to pause for a moment and celebrate.

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By Michael Paulson

Photographs by Landon Nordeman

Reporting from dressing rooms, red carpets, after-parties, a backstage ball-toss and a cherished robing ritual, all over Broadway.

Broadway is in the midst of a rolling celebration — of artistic expression, of audience enthusiasm, of song and dance and storytelling itself.

The overlapping runs constitute a risky bet by producers and investors, who have staked tens of millions of dollars on their ability to sell seats. Even in the best of times, most Broadway shows fail, and these are not the best of times: Production costs have soared, and season-to-date attendance is 18 percent below prepandemic levels.

But the shakeout comes later. First: fanfare and flowers, ovations and optimism.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17

Easing on down the road … to Broadway

A revival of a 1975 musical that reimagines “The Wizard of Oz” for an all-Black cast.

Of course “The Wiz” was going to have a yellow carpet. The show’s recurring song is “Ease on Down the Road,” and that road is the yellow brick one — the path to Oz, but also, to self-discovery.

So there, on a rainy Wednesday evening, was a 100-foot stretch of yellowness in a breezeway outside the Marquis Theater.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and the rapper Common smiled for the cameras, as did the original Wiz, André De Shields ; Dee Dee Bridgewater, who won a 1975 Tony as the good witch Glinda; and Stephanie Mills, who played Dorothy.

“I was a young girl — I was 17 — and I could have never thought that the show would last this long,” said Mills, now 67. And why does she think the story endures ? “Everyone needs courage, everyone needs a heart, and everyone needs brains to get through this world.”

Thursday, April 18

A treasured tradition to celebrate ensemble members

A musical about the fight for women’s right to vote in early 20th-century America.

One of the quirkiest traditions on Broadway is the Legacy Robe , an opening-night, musicals-only ceremony in which the chorus member who has worked in the most Broadway choruses dons a patchwork robe with appliqués from other musicals, circles the stage counterclockwise three times, and then visits dressing rooms to bestow a blessing. It’s one of the rare Broadway ceremonies that celebrates ensemble members, and it’s treasured.

So two hours before curtain, the “Suffs” cast and crew gathered onstage at the Music Box Theater to holler as Kirsten Scott, a swing in the company, received the robe in recognition of her five ensemble roles on Broadway.

Scott, teary and giddy, accepted the robe from Judith Franklin of “The Wiz,” who had received it just the night before (the garment passes from show to show as each new one opens). Scott raced around the stage as the cast, crew and the show’s creators (including its writer and star, Shaina Taub ) touched the robe seeking good luck. Then, Scott rounded the dressing rooms, returned to the stage, and stretched out her arms as she gazed across the empty theater and offered a prayer.

“Let us be here for a very long time,” she said. “Theater gods, smile upon us.”

Friday, April 19

‘The Heart of Rock and Roll’

Stepping out to an ’80s beat (Walkman not included)

A musical comedy, set in 1987, about love, family and cardboard manufacturing, powered by the songs of Huey Lewis and the News.

Pity the red carpet. Once the ubiquitous sign of an opening, now timeworn and ready for a refresh.

After “The Wiz” went with yellow and “Suffs” with purple ( for suffrage ), “The Heart of Rock and Roll” went with hot pink, a homage to fashion of the 1980s, when Huey Lewis and the News had its run of hits. The show leans hard into ’80s-core, with neon colors and aerobics and the Walkman.

The pink carpet, along with the celebrity guests (Cyndi Lauper, Ben Vereen), the curtain speeches and the after-party (at the Hard Rock Cafe, natch), was held three days before the show’s official opening (April 22) to avoid conflicting with the first night of Passover (also April 22).

Lewis, whose songs make up the score of the musical, arrived at the James Earl Jones Theater well before showtime, rocking a burgundy suit, hanging with his friend Jimmy Kimmel and signing autographs for fans.

“It feels great to have the songs have this other life that I never considered,” Lewis said, “and to see them all reimagined — I learn things about myself I didn’t even know.”

FRIDAY, APRIL 19

‘Stereophonic’

‘I don’t know how this happened’

A behind-the-music play, set in California in the 1970s, about a fictional band making an album.

“Stereophonic” isn’t a musical. It’s a play. With music.

But music is the play’s subject, and it features original songs, performed by the cast , and written by Will Butler, formerly of Arcade Fire.

So on opening night, the invited audience was treated to an encore of sorts — an original song played by the cast, joined by Butler, on the stage of the John Golden Theater, which now features a remarkable facsimile of a recording studio.

The playwright, David Adjmi , who has long labored in the nonprofit theater world, found himself a bit overwhelmed at having arrived on Broadway with a play he had been developing for about a decade .

“Hello?” Adjmi said as he haltingly accepted the microphone at the opening night curtain call. “Oh boy. I’m a playwright, and we don’t like getting on stages, but I’m going to do this, because this is such a profound moment for me.”

He noted that, for a time, he had considered giving up on playwriting, and he marveled at the moment — his play, with no major stars, minimal action, and a single set, is now a leading contender for the best play Tony Award. “I was so scared to do a commercial production,” he said as the crowd cheered encouragement, “because I am not a commercial guy, and I don’t know how this happened.”

SATURDAY, APRIL 20

‘Hell’s Kitchen’

‘Finally here’

A musical from Alicia Keys — it uses her songs and is loosely based on her life — about a 17-year-old girl growing up in Manhattan, finding her voice as an artist.

Alicia Keys has been developing “Hell’s Kitchen” for 13 years, so when she finally got her Broadway opening, she pulled out all the stops. Guests included Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey. A prop piano sat on the carpet (this one was blue) and bucket drummers performed at the Pier 60 after-party where Keys’s husband, Swizz Beatz, D.J.ed and their youngest son, Genesis, danced.

“We’re finally here!” Keys said outside the Shubert Theater, feeling all the feels.

“I feel grateful. I feel blessed. I feel excited. I feel triumphant. I feel like dreams are possible. Man, what-what! I feel enchanted disbelief. That’s how I feel.”

Among those posing for pictures with Keys was Linda Aziza Miller, who was one of Keys’s early piano teachers, and who is now making her Broadway debut playing in the “Hell’s Kitchen” band. “I came out of retirement when Alicia called me,” Miller said. “I said, ‘Alicia, I’m retired!’ She said, ‘You need to come and do this.’ So here I am.”

At its core, “Hell’s Kitchen” is a mother-daughter story — filled with tension, but redeemed by love — and Keys closed by addressing her own mother, who was in the audience. “Every sacrifice that she ever made, and every dream she ever had is here tonight,” Keys said. “I love you, Mommy.”

Sunday, April 21

Willkommen!

A revival of the 1966 musical, set in Berlin in 1929 and 1930, about the community in and around a seedy nightclub as the Nazi party accumulated power.

“Cabaret” is one of the season’s biggest productions — costly, because the producers remade the August Wilson Theater into the Kit Kat Club where the show is set, and starry, with Eddie Redmayne as that club’s impresario. The opening was so big it was spread across two nights — with two red carpets, two groups of celebrity attendees, and two after-parties.

Both Redmayne and his co-star Gayle Rankin, who is playing the nightclub performer Sally Bowles, have histories with the musical — he had performed the same role as a student, and she played smaller roles in a revival a decade ago.

“Who gets this chance, 10 years apart, to mark your own growth as an artist and as a person?” she asked while walking the show’s second carpet. “It’s going to take me a long time to process. But it’s the biggest privilege of my life.”

And why do theater makers keep returning to this musical? “It’s deeply entertaining,” she said, “and it shakes us awake.”

‘Mary Jane’

Party first, then the (actual) opening night

A play about a single mother caring for a small child disabled by cerebral palsy and other disorders.

This year’s string of opening nights was shaped not only by congestion — there were three days featuring two scheduled openings, which is not ideal, because each show wants its own moment in the sun — but also by another complication: Passover came unusually late, during the Broadway season’s closing days. So some shows moved their start times or their party dates to minimize overlap and to avoid the first two nights of Passover, which is when Seders are held.

That’s how “Mary Jane,” which stars Rachel McAdams , wound up having its party and celebratory performance on a Sunday night, even though it was opening on a Tuesday night.

And what is a non-celebratory opening night? It’s a regular performance, with a paying audience (attendees at celebratory opening nights are often invited guests); the only distinguishing feature is it’s the night that press embargoes lift and reviews are published. At the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, where “Mary Jane” is running, the official opening was just like any other performance, but for one unsettling moment, when a woman in the audience shouted at the stage, “I love you, Rachel McAdams.” Unsettling, because unruly audience members can get out of hand — earlier this month, a woman was ejected after grabbing Eddie Redmayne’s skirt at “Cabaret.”

Happily, the disruption was fleeting, and McAdams, who an hour later would get positive reviews for her performance , stayed in character and kept going.

MONDAY, April 22

Before curtain time, it’s game time

A play about an oligarch’s role in the rise of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the businessman’s mysterious death after falling out with the autocratic leader.

“Patriots” is a high-octane ride through a portentous historical episode, and to get ready for that journey, the play’s company has developed an unusual warm-up: Before each show, they play a backstage game with a Koosh ball.

The play, a late addition to the season, opted for a rare Monday matinee as its opening performance. So after the unorthodox warm-up at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, the cast walked a red carpet (on-brand, given the color’s prominence in Russian culture), followed by a number of actors from the casts of Broadway shows (here’s looking at you, Sarah Paulson) who were able to see a play without missing their own.

Also on the red carpet: Ted Sarandos, the co-chief executive of Netflix, which is making its Broadway debut as a producing entity with “Patriots.” “One of the things I learned from Norman Lear early, early on: I said, ‘What was your secret sauce back then, when you dominated television?’ and he goes, ‘I knew Broadway. I knew Broadway actors. I knew Broadway writers. And no one else did.’ That always rang in my head.”

Netflix has another reason for supporting “Patriots” — the playwright, Peter Morgan , created “The Crown,” one of the streamer’s biggest successes. Netflix is already seeking to develop “Patriots” for the screen.

Morgan noted ruefully “a sad currency to this play,” which he had written several years ago, but which is being staged in New York following the death in February of Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny. “It’s just become more urgent and more timely,” Morgan said.

But Morgan, who also wrote “The Audience” and “Frost/Nixon,” said he worries about the economic viability of plays on Broadway. “I just hope plays like this can survive,” he said.

WEDNESDAY, April 24

‘Uncle Vanya’

‘You can’t hide anything’

A revival of the 19th-century Russian play about a family whose equanimity is upset when an elderly professor and his young wife come to visit their farm.

Chekhov’s classic drama first arrived on Broadway in 1923, and has been revived 10 times since, including this current production, with a new, idiomatically contemporary translation by Heidi Schreck .

The “Uncle Vanya” opening, at Lincoln Center Theater, was low-key, with a small step-and-repeat beforehand, and then post-show cast interviews before a private party.

The show’s star, Steve Carell, is making his Broadway debut, and drawing crowds thanks to fame earned from years on “The Office.”

“What am I going to say? It’s incredibly exciting,” he said. “It’s what everybody says when they appear on Broadway. It’s exhilarating.”

Carell added that he has been wanting to work in theater, but waited until his children were grown. “I waited to go back and do anything onstage until we were empty nesters,” he said. “I just didn’t want to skip out on any moments with my children.”

He said he thinks theater will benefit at a time when artificial intelligence is causing people to doubt what they see on screens. “Live performance is indisputable. You can’t hide anything. And I think people are going to seek it out even more than they have in the past, because it’s pure.”

‘Illinoise’

Taking the fast lane to Broadway

A dialogue-free musical that uses dance and song to tell a coming-of-age story inspired by a Sufjan Stevens album.

“Back. Front. Back. Front. Other leg! We slide to the side! Yes! Hit It!”

In a basement below the St. James Theater, Craig Salstein, a dance captain, was leading the cast of “Illinoise” through an exuberant preshow warm-up. The production had installed a bright yellow sprung dance floor, coated with slip-resistant vinyl, and the performers, some wearing socks and some barefoot, were dancing in circles, jumping up and down, stretching on the floor, and beaming. (“Smile,” Salstein reminded them. “Show me attitude!”)

“Illinoise,” a narrative dance show from the choreographer Justin Peck and the playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury, took the fast lane to Broadway. It was playing Off Broadway at the Park Avenue Armory until March 26, and, after getting strong reviews, opted for a transfer so speedy that there was no time for previews.

That meant the first performance — a Wednesday matinee — would also be the official opening, and partying would wait until May. But the company gave Peck and Drury framed miniatures of the theater facade, and Peck gave the company a short hosanna, ending with “Let’s do this thing!”

The cast is filled with performers making their Broadway debuts. Among them is Gaby Diaz , a winner of “So You Think You Can Dance,” who said she didn’t think she’d make it to Broadway because she’s not a singer. “I’m very overwhelmed. I’m very emotional. But there’s a real sense of safety and community in getting to do this with so many people for the first time — it feels much bigger than me.”

Diaz said she had begun the day by taking time to thank an early mentor. “I called my dance teacher from growing up, who flew in to come see me,” she said. “I just said, ‘Thank you for watering this seed inside me for so many years.’ It’s led me to here.”

THURSDAY, April 25

‘Mother Play’

A playwright’s turn to speak at the Seder

A play about a family in which a gin-swilling mother struggles to accept the homosexuality of her two children.

Paula Vogel, the playwright whose own life story informs “Mother Play, ” has been on Broadway twice before — with “Indecent” and “How I Learned to Drive” — but this is the first time she has written a play to be staged on Broadway without a previous production, and on opening day she was riding high.

“It’s pretty exciting to open cold on Broadway,” she said, “and I feel good.”

She also feels a sort of catharsis, seeing some of her own experiences exorcised on the stage of the Helen Hayes Theater.

“I’ve tried to craft a funny, secular, ritual of forgiveness, and I’m really feeling released,” she said. She added that she took particular joy seeing a version of her mother played by an accomplished actress. “There is a matter of turning over what was weight to other people. I couldn’t pay for all the therapy in the world to equal one night of watching Jessica Lange.”

Vogel was more sanguine than some about this jam-packed season. “I keep thinking back to a time when this is the way it was — we’ve atrophied in terms of the number of openings in the commercial market, and I think the good thing about having this density of imagination and creativity is that we all have to concentrate on our own work ahead,” she said. “I know every writer of a new play on Broadway, and I respect them and love them. This feels like getting your turn to speak at the Seder dinner, and that’s really nice.”

‘Great Gatsby’

Green light

A musical based on the classic novel about a millionaire’s tragic determination to rekindle a lost love.

Cars play a notable role in “The Great Gatsby.” They are displays of affluence, objects of desire, and, in the end, an instrument of death.

So it made sense for the producers of “The Great Gatsby” musical to lean into the car motif for their opening night celebration. The show rented two antiques, a Hudson Greater Eight and a Chevrolet Superior K, and used them to ferry the principal actors on a one-block journey so they could arrive in style.

The theme almost backfired, because as the stars posed for pictures on a red carpet outside the Broadway Theater, a Tesla slammed into a pedestrian just a few feet away, at the intersection of Broadway and 53rd Street. Police officers staffing the opening responded, and the pedestrian was able to walk and talk; many of the celebrants, surrounded by well-wishers and besieged by cameras, didn’t even notice.

The show’s stars, Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada, worked the crowd — patiently posing for pictures and pausing for interviews.

“It’s weird being in a season with so many shows — I think it’s unprecedented, especially the tide of them that has come in this past week,” said Jordan, a fan favorite thanks to “Newsies” and “Smash.” “It just feels like this weird alignment. And it’s scary — I can’t lie and say that it’s not nerve-racking to know that all of these shows are coming at once, and probably not all of them are going to make it.”

Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times. More about Michael Paulson

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THE GREAT GATSBY

Two hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission. At the Broadway Theatre, 53rd Street and Broadway.

Forget East Egg and West Egg. The creators of the new musical “The Great Gatsby,” which opened Thursday night on Broadway, have laid an egg.

This song-and-dance version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s enduring 1925 novel about, among other things, American excess in the aftermath of World War I is excessive all right. 

The gaudy barrage of clone ballads by composer Jason Howland and lyricist Nathan Tysen (“Paradise Square”), indiscriminately handed out to any character who wants one, blare like a foghorn on the Long Island Sound.

And the attractive art deco sets by Paul Tate dePoo III are so opulent and oversize that I had a flashback to watching “King Kong” in the very same theater six years ago.

But now, a monkey isn’t captive — your favorite novel is.

Inferior “Gatsby,” directed bigly by Marc Bruni, is a hodgepodge of many other shows that came before it.

During an impressive all-company tap number called “La Dee Dah With You,” the show briefly ventures into “Anything Goes” Land. Many other bombastic songs have the volume, if not the tunefulness, of gothic musicals like “The Secret Garden” or “Jekyll & Hyde.”

What “The Great Gatsby” almost never brings to mind, though, is “The Great Gatsby.” 

The musical, a patchwork quilt of discordant styles that belongs in a box, becomes the latest in a long line of adaptations of this beloved novel to mess up a story that’s far more satisfying to read and imagine. It completely misses its intoxicating atmosphere, meaning and layered characters.

One of the rare smart decisions of the night is the casting of Noah J. Ricketts as our man Nick Carraway, a modest Midwesterner who moves to a Long Island cottage in “new money” West Egg. 

The actor has a pretty voice and a naturally easygoing persona that contrasts with the cartoonish East Coast impressions on display that are akin to what Katharine Hepburn might have behaved like as a chauffeur.

Nick’s cousin Daisy (power-singer Eva Noblezada) is married to Tom Buchanan (John Zdrojeski), and they live, in artificial bliss, across the water in upper-crust East Egg. 

Awful Tom is having an indiscreet affair with Myrtle (Sara Chase), the wife of garage owner George Wilson (Paul Whitty). A knowing Daisy sings a lilting number in the garden about her rocky marriage called “For Better or Worse.” 

“Worse?!” I thought.

Nick’s greatest object of fascination is the mysterious, loud-party-throwing inhabitant of the mansion next door to his house. That’s Jay Gatsby, who just so happens to be Daisy’s old flame that still longs for her.

As the enigmatic title character, Jeremy Jordan, when in song, sounds like a million bucks, even in walloping numbers such as “For Her” and “Past Is Catching Up to Me.” 

When he speaks, however, one must adjust for inflation. The actor cakes on an ill-advised mid-Atlantic accent that boggles the ears. Rather than contribute magnetism and mystique, the shaky brogue turns a literary icon into a weirdo.

During a scene in which he reunites with Daisy, a dumb ditty called “Only Tea,” the musical suddenly about-faces into a cheesy farce. 

An army of servants arrive with trays and floral arrangements as though they’re about to start singing “Be Our Guest.” Nick and Daisy’s acidic pal Jordan Baker (a detached Samantha Pauly) do cute bits in unison. Gatsby attempts to hide from Daisy behind a small tree branch to get a laugh.

The multiple personalties pile on a song later when we’re suddenly tossed into an absurdly passionate love story as the pair sings a drippy duet called, oy, “My Green Light.”

The second act, thankfully, finds a more consistent and appropriate tone. One would hope so, as there are several deaths in quick succession.

Early on, that aforementioned tap dancing, choreographed by Dominique Kelley, is thrilling, even if it’s a short-lived distraction from the many, many head-scratchers.

For instance, an inordinate amount of time and music are given to Myrtle and George, who are turned into a much sadder Adelaide and Nathan Detroit. Expensively staged, Myrtle’s fate is unintentionally funny.

There’s also too much of sleazy criminal Meyer Wolfsheim (Eric Anderson), who gets a jazzy back-from-intermission song called “Shady” that could have been cut. Why not focus on enriching the main characters before giving everybody else their five throwaway minutes?

Theater and film rarely know what to do with “Gatsby.” They often decide, as this musical sometimes does, to focus on the escape to sexy speakeasies with flappers.

But the best version I’ve seen was Elevator Repair Service’s “Gatz” downtown. Every single word of the novel was read out loud over several breezy hours by actors wearing nothing more than office garb. Audiences were entranced, not by schlocky love songs but the unadorned words of a great American novel.

Last year, New York got an immersive “Gatsby” experience that quickly closed. This summer, another musical take by Florence Welch will premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Massachusetts. 

The quality of the Florence & the Machine singer’s adaptation remains to be seen. But, even though Fitzgerald’s book is in the public domain, let’s cool it on giving so many “Gatsby’s” the green light.

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Can You Teach an Old Sport New Tricks? The Great Gatsby on Broadway.

Here’s a low-level cosmic injustice: Fifteen years ago, Elevator Repair Service had to pay royalties to create its unforgettable opus Gatz out of (every word of) F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby , but thanks to the novel’s entry into the public domain in 2021, the two Broadway Gatsby s that we’ll see this year got it for free. I’m all for the commons, but the point — as Fitzgerald knew and his narrator Nick Carraway learns to his cost — is that the high rollers never have to pay. Nick says as much to his cousin, the languid, sparkling, willingly caged bird Daisy Buchanan, as 2024’s first new musical of The Great Gatsby (with music by Jason Howland, lyrics by Nathan Tysen, and book by Kait Kerrigan) draws to a close. “​​You and Tom smash up things and creatures,” he tells her, angry tears in his eyes, “and then — you retreat back into your money or carelessness or whatever it is that keeps you two together.” Here and throughout, Kerrigan’s book sticks close to Fitzgerald’s — but sentences are one thing. Spirit is another.

Under Marc Bruni’s jazz-hands-happy direction, this Gatsby feels like it belongs on a cruise or in a theme park. It would make a good fit if Epcot’s pavilions expanded to include time periods as well as countries. Poor James Gatz, victim of his own disguise. A century on, retellers of his story, like his hordes of party guests, remain distracted by the spectacle. Here, Bruni and his designers lean into the roaring garishness almost to the point of cartoon. Linda Cho’s costumes for the ensemble — all Technicolor sequins and swishy, modern prom-dress fabrics — look like what would happen if you took the prepackaged flapper getups at Party City and injected lots of money. And Paul Tate dePoo III’s set and projections are a Deco-meets-digital monstrosity. Heavy gilded panels never stop sliding back and forth and up and down (pieces were still clunking into place as the show’s leads, Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada as Gatsby and Daisy, started into the delicate opening of their big first-act closer), and the glut of overwrought background video quickly becomes absurd. Broadway producers, please, this video thing is out of control. It’s the theatrical equivalent of motion smoothing — a novelty and a technological deadener. Yes, you can , but should you? As Nick (Noah J. Ricketts) sat center stage in one of the production’s two huge cars, driving from Long Island into the city with the Ivy League “brute” Tom Buchanan (John Zdrojeski, absolutely walking away with the show) and his peroxide-blonde mistress, Myrtle Wilson (Sara Chase), I watched dePoo’s enormous screensaver roll by in the background, and I suffered for the actors. So much bling to disguise the fundamentally static, silly picture in which they were trapped.

It’s wild to think which stories we keep telling purely because they are — or have become, via however circuitous a path — famous. This Gatsby got started at Paper Mill Playhouse and made more money there than any show in the venue’s history — but if, in a parallel Fitzgerald-less universe, a young, unknown writer pitched a story with a similar arc for a new musical today, how far would it get? “Multiple people die, including the hero, the heroine flees back to her horrible husband, the narrator stumbles away to nurse his rude awakening. It’s about America.” It’s that last bit that too often gets lost. Ricketts (who’s game throughout the show) does a solid enough job of winding things up here — as a narrator with some of the world’s most well-known closing lines, he’s got to. But the tragedy that Bruni and his writing team focus on is personal and romantic, not national and allegorical. The lush, doomed love of it all is the selling point. In that vein, Noblezada genuinely sounds like a Disney princess, and Jordan does his best to plant his feet, face us, and nobly empty his heart from moment one. His voice is 100 percent golden leading man — from soap-bubble-light upper register to clamorous belt — but there’s something strange about meeting the enigmatic Gatsby and immediately listening to him launch into a lilting, swelling confession: “I’ve done it all for her / Put up each wall for her / All the plans I laid / All the options weighed / Every price I paid for her … / Daisy. ” Fitzgerald’s novel is immaculately concise, and part of the terrible pathos of its title character is just how long he remains a mysterious, smooth surface. Eventually, of course, all surfaces are cracked and eviscerated, but some essential part of Gatsby is lost in the character’s collision with musical theater’s tradition of earnestly laying out what you feel in song from the jump.

Perhaps that’s part of why Zdrojeski’s Tom Buchanan stands out in this production like, to quote Daisy, “an absolute rose” among plastic flowers. He does very little of the show’s demonstrative singing, and when he does break out in a withering dismissal of Gatsby in the shared having-it-all-out number “Made to Last,” he sings as an extension of his acting. The performance remains specific and fierce, sent toward a living target and not toward some fuzzy space above the balcony. The character might be despicable (“If I wondered whether Tom’s an asshole,” Nick sings to us in a wide detour from Fitzgerald, “Tom’s an asshole”), but Zdrojeski is turning in a mesmerizing performance — menacing, vain, subtle when it needs to be, its contours defined by precisely the right kind of insidious class snobbery. For a tall, distinctive actor, he transforms remarkably: In Heroes of the Fourth Turning , he was a cringing disaster, eaten from the inside out with doubt and lust. In this season’s Jonah , he was sweet and self-effacing, a nerdy type who ended up having real compassion and integrity. Here, he’s a kind of cruel Jimmy Stewart — lanky and unconventionally charismatic, with vowels that belong to another time and a core of childish selfishness beneath all that alpha disdain.

It’s not that the rest of the cast isn’t showing up. They’re just all in a vapid musical-shaped-musical while Zdrojeski is in The Great Gatsby. As the fixer Meyer Wolfsheim, Eric Anderson has to open Act Two with “Shady,” a song that winks at Wolfsheim and Gatsby’s illegal business dealings, and the various affairs going on in the plot, by having the chorus join him in a kickline of black trench coats and fedoras. It’s the silhouette you’d get if you were to search for clip art for “spy.” Meanwhile, Nick’s fling with the aloof golfer Jordan Baker (Samantha Pauly) feels like the cute, straightforward romance of two smart outsider types — complete with playful duets and kisses that get applause. When it falls apart, it does so because of Nick’s clear moral repulsion. He’s been a good guy throughout, lacking the novel’s feeling of spellbound irresolution (Fitzgerald’s Nick is morally repulsed but rarely clear about it), and the dense, cool complexity of currents that run between him and Jordan is here streamlined into something simple and singable. Somewhere, Scott must be cackling. How fitting that we should remain obsessed with the glamour of his great book; how perfect that we should still avoid encountering its grieving, ambivalent soul.

The Great Gatsby is at the Broadway Theatre.

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10 Romantic Movies Where True Love Doesn’t Conquer All

Romance has been and always will be a genre that draws people in, as we either want to vicariously live through characters, be reminded that relationships can be quirky and fun, or just enjoy the warm and happy feeling that comes with watching two people fall in love . Think about how many romantic comedies have been made or the dramas that bring two people together after they face heartache. While it is heartfelt to see two people come together, there are plenty of passionate and perfect relationships that simply don't last.

Timing is a significant factor when it comes to two people meeting, falling in love, and receiving their "happily ever after." Unfortunately, as many know, timing is not always perfect, and two people who are meant to be together may never get the chance. A connection can feel so right as passion and love are clearly present, but sometimes, it is just not enough.

Here are 10 movies where true love does not conquer all.

Me Before You (2016)

Me before you.

Release Date 2016-06-01

Director Thea Sharrock

Cast Jenna Coleman, Matthew Lewis, Sam Claflin, Joanna Lumley, Emilia Clarke, Charles Dance

Rating PG-13

Genres Drama, Romance, Documentary

Game of Thrones ' very own Khaleesi (Emilia Clarke) put away the long white wig and power-hungry attitude and adopted a more vivacious and bubbly personality in Me Before You as she was cast as Lou, a young and energetic caregiver. Clarke stars alongside Sam Claflin (better known as Finnick from The Hunger Games series), who plays Will, a cynical tetraplegic who has just months to live before he goes through with assisted suicide. Lou makes it her mission to make Will see that his life is still worth living. However, despite her efforts and their blossoming love, Will goes through with his fatal decision.

The ending is bittersweet as fans wanted to see Will change his mind and live out his days with Lou, but we must respect his decision for his own life. The letter that he left Lou after his death was the icing on the cake for this film, and like Lou, viewers cannot help but smile with tears in their eyes.

Rent on Apple TV

La La Land (2016)

Release Date 2016-11-29

Director Damien Chazelle

Cast Cinda Adams, Thom Shelton, Terry Walters, Amiée Conn, Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling

Genres Drama, Romance, Comedy, Musical, Documentary

The chemistry and heat between Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling is unmatched in this romantic musical; unfortunately, a fiery passion seems to always find a way to fizzle out. Stone plays Mia, an aspiring actress, while Gosling portrays a jazz musician named Seb, who just can't seem to find a place that respects his taste. While the two are clearly great for one another when it comes to encouraging the other to pursue their dreams and push themselves, their careers take them in different directions.

La La Land is beautiful and wonderful, but it also shows what it is like for two incredible people to be together at the wrong time. The film went on to win a record of seven Golden Globes, six Academy Awards, and many other accolades. At this time, a Broadway stage production is in development.

Stream on Netflix

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Moulin rouge.

Release Date 2001-05-24

Director Baz Luhrmann

Cast Garry McDonald, Jim Broadbent, John Leguizamo, Nicole Kidman, Richard Roxburgh, Ewan McGregor

Genres Drama, Romance, Musical, Documentary

If there is one thing to know about Moulin Rouge! 's co-writer and director Baz Luhrmann, it is that he loves a dramatic style and tortured characters. Moulin Rouge! features a love triangle between a performer named Satine (Nicole Kidman), a writer named Christian (Ewan McGregor), and a possessive duke (Richard Roxburgh). Satine and Christian immediately fall in love, but that is only after Satine has been promised to the Duke. The two then try to hide their affair through Christian's play, but the big secret is eventually revealed. Christian's life is then at stake when the Duke swears he will get what he believes is owed to him.

Love triangles are not a new concept, but incorporating this specific one into the play (inside a film) is genius. Layers of deception stack on top of one another, and truths as well as secrets are revealed through differing personas. In the end, Christian and Satine have sacrificed so much to be together only for the latter to fall ill and ask her lover that he tell their tragic love story to everyone.

Related: Moulin Rouge!: 8 Reasons Why It's Baz Luhrmann's Best Musical

Titanic (1997)

Release Date 1997-11-18

Director James Cameron

Cast Kathy Bates, Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gloria Stuart, Frances Fisher, Billy Zane

Genres Drama, Romance, Thriller, Documentary

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio's characters in Titanic , Rose and Jack, came from two different worlds and seemingly had nothing in common. Then, one night, Jack took a chance and challenged Rose to live a little. Rose never realized life could be so much fun once she was away from her mother's expectations and her fiancé's pretentious rules and attitude. Naturally, the two fall in love due to their shared passion, but as history goes, there is not a happy ending for many people aboard Titanic.

While the characters of Jack and Rose were fictional in a very real tragic event, fans cannot help but wonder if a story like theirs exists in the world. Two people who bring out the best in one another and deserve happiness end up in a tragic event, resulting in them never getting to see where their love would have taken them.

Stream on Paramount+

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Brokeback mountain.

Release Date 2005-09-10

Director Ang Lee

Cast Valerie Planche, Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid, Michelle Williams

Brokeback Mountain is the movie that should be studied by all in the entertainment industry as it perfectly portrays the concept of "show don't tell." Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal star as Ennis and Jack, two cowboys who struggle to commit to their true feelings. Given that the film premiered in 2005 and was set in the 60s, the two men being able to openly portray any sort of "non-traditional" relationship was risky.

Viewers and critics have argued for years about the sexuality of the characters, but true fans feel those people are missing a larger part of the movie. Two characters, who feel as if they have been misunderstood all their lives, find comfort and companionship in one another. It is a beautifully tragic story ; unfortunately, the two cowboys were just together at the wrong time.

Rent on AppleTV

Casablanca (1942)

Release Date 1942-11-26

Director Michael Curtiz

Cast Sydney Greenstreet, Conrad Veidt, Claude Rains, Paul Henreid, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart

Genres Drama, Romance, Documentary, War

Yet another love triangle appears in Casablanca , but this time, there are no ill intentions once all truths are revealed. Humphrey Bogart played Rick, a smooth-talking club owner who happens to be in the right place at the right time when it comes to helping out the love of his life, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman). Years ago, after falling in love, Ilsa left Rick without so much as a "goodbye," and he has been bitter ever since. When she is in desperate need of his help to escape the country with her husband, Rick learns she never meant him harm when she learned her husband was alive but wounded. Instead of playing cat-and-mouse, Rick helps Ilsa escape, promising it is for the best.

Watching Rick let go of Ilsa, knowing she was going to a safe place with another man, brought about a mixture of emotions. On the surface, fans wanted Rick and Ilsa to reconcile, but true love does not always mean staying together.

Stream on Max

(500) Days of Summer (2009)

Many people will agree that love can be so blinding at times that one or both parties cannot see that their relationship is doing more harm than good. For Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character, Tom, that is exactly the predicament in which he finds himself. Tom loves love, and after breaking things off with a very let's-keep-things-casual type of girl named Summer (Zooey Deschanel), he goes into a fit of depression. Months later, Summer is engaged, and eventually married. When Tom brings this up, she tells him that true love does exist, but she was not it for him.

Perhaps one of the most relatable romantic films ever made, (500) Days of Summer reminds all audiences that people can love one another on many different levels, but that does not mean they are meant to be together forever.

Related: 10 Best Rom-Coms Where the Guy Falls in Love First

Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Edward scissorhands.

Release Date 1990-12-05

Director Tim Burton

Cast Robert Oliveri, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest, Anthony Michael Hall, Johnny Depp, Kathy Baker

Genres Drama, Romance, Documentary, Fantasy

Leave it to Tim Burton to come up with some of the most imaginative characters that people cannot help but love. Edward Scissorhands features Johnny Depp as an ageless humanoid whose master died before being able to give him hands, resulting in his having blades for hands. Naturally, Edward falls in love with his new adoptive parents' teenage daughter, Kim (Winona Ryder), and when she loves him back, there is too much controversy for their relationship to work.

Based on Burton's feelings of growing up in a state of isolation while living in a suburban area, audiences have been fascinated with Depp's character for years. He looks rough on the outside, and he makes mistakes that hurt people. However, in the end, all he wants is to be loved. Burton truly captured a need all teenagers feel at one point or another; he just did it with a gothic flair.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

The great gatsby.

Release Date 2013-05-10

Cast Frank Aldridge, Lisa Adam, Richard Carter, Steve Bisley, Jason Clarke, Amitabh Bachchan

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is the epitome of the phrase "absence makes the heart grow fonder." The classic novel was adapted into a film in 2013 with Baz Luhrmann behind the camera and Leonardo DiCaprio as the titular character. While Gatsby's parties are elaborate and stunning, all he wants is for the love of his life, Daisy (Carey Mulligan), to take notice and fall in love with him. Daisy and Gatsby were together before the war, but instead of waiting for Gatsby to return to her, she jumped into a loveless marriage.

Fans of the novel and film have gone back and forth on whether Gatsby is truly in love with Daisy or if he is just fixated on her since she is "the one that got away." Regardless of what outsiders think, Gatsby believes they are meant to be together. Sadly, his love is not enough to win Daisy over.

Rent on Prime Video

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

The curious case of benjamin button.

Release Date 2008-12-25

Director David Fincher

Cast Jacob Tolano, Donna DuPlantier, Faune A. Chambers, Cate Blanchett, Elias Koteas, Julia Ormond

Genres Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, Documentary, Fantasy

Some people fall in love in the right place, but at the wrong time. For Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button , there never really is a right time — at least not for a long-term relationship. Benjamin suffers from a strange situation where he ages backwards, so when he begins to fall in love with a young girl, he, at heart, is also a young man, but his appearance makes others believe he is an elder. There is a brief period of time when Benjamin and the love of his life, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), are of similar ages, and they share their passion for one another.

Knowing that Benjamin will never get to grow old with the love of his life and raise his daughter is the most heartbreaking realization of this period romance film . Fans and critics alike were surprised by Pitt's performance as he was not just another chiseled star to look at; he expressed as well as brought out emotions in the story no one expected.