The Quest for Success

Paper Summary:

The paper outlines how the novels "The Great Gatsby" "My Antonia" "Slaughterhouse Five" and "The Optimist's Daughter" all portray the quest for success by changing one's location. The paper shows how all the central characters attempt to remedy their sense of personal emptiness by changing their location and adopting a new place. The paper highlights the way the novels illustrate the futility of merely changing one's location.

From the Paper:

"In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's protagonist Jay Gatsby hopes that by moving away from his Midwestern home and gaining wealth, he can become a new person, a person worthy of his first love Daisy Buchanan, who is currently married to Tom Buchanan, a wealthy but boorish member of a 'fine family' in Long Island. Gatsby aspires to material success, but only to win enough status to impress Daisy. He buys a fancy home in the fashionable section of West Egg, Long Island. Yet Gatsby cannot escape his past and his birth. Everyone eventually comes to know, in the small world of high society, that Gatsby does not come from a fine family but won his wealth through bootlegging."

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