Gatsby and the Wells of Wealth

Ken Hamada

Mr. Pangier

American Literature

April 26, 2017

Wealthy Life

         Success is money. Success is happiness. Success is family. Success is . There are many things that can be said to be successful, and to an extent everything is true. If that was true, why do some people who have those characters, not successful sometimes? This is due to what we call balance. The thing is, we need some of this and that in our life. Some people have a hard time achieving one or the other, finding hard to balance it out. One thing that people struggle a lot within those, is happiness. This characteristic is often referred that ‘one thing’ that you need, but are often left undefined over how to essentially achieve it. I believe that success and a wealthy life is achieved through having a well-balanced life, so I will talk about how to effectively obtain one of the essential components within those - happiness.

         In the book, Great Gatsby, the main character Gatsby had a fair amount of money to make up for most people’s standard of success over wealth. But when we look at his life, we often define it as not successful. Why? This is due to his lack of love from the ‘One Person’ who he loved from one point of life to the rest, who is Daisy. "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?"(Fitzgerald 115) Gatsby could not be happy without her, and that led to his downfall. For Gatsby, he thought his true happiness lied in Daisy. She ended up betraying him and indirectly killing him. This happened because he tried to achieve happiness from something he didn’t have, which he believed to be the only thing that could satisfy him. He could have been happy without Daisy, but he was basically blinded by his love, leading him to think what he had was never enough, never complete without that one thing. So what else could he have done to achieve happiness if it was not for Daisy?

         There is a quote that fits this context really well. “I don't have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness - it's right in front of me if I'm paying attention and practicing gratitude.” (Brene Brown) This shows how Gatsby’s life could have been successful if only he would have been satisfied with what he already had. Happiness is not what we achieve by getting something we want, but instead is something that comes out from within, when we notice the value of things around us. Often we go by an idea of taking it for granted, and that makes us blinded from what we could be happy for. Think about it - to a small thing like having a comfortable bed to sleep on, to a big thing like having no war in your country. There are more things you can be thankful for and be happy about, than things we can complain about. It is our nature that complaints come before a word of gratitude, but having thankfulness for simple things could literally change our lives 180 degrees.

        I believe that in order for people to be successful, they must have a well-balanced life. Within that balance, some people struggle to achieve happiness, since they do not know what they have to look into. But think about it, when we look at poor people, they tend to have more happiness than most people who have more money and well-rounded life. This is because they have thankfulness for what they have, not complaints about what they don’t have. So, to achieve a wealthy life, thankfulness is a very essential component of life that each and every one of us needs to have.

 

Bibliography

 

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1995. Print.

Brown, Brene. Happiness Interview. July 10, 2011.