The "Great" Gatsby receives his title from Nick who is characterized throughout the book as an impartial observer. In many ways though, Gatsby is only a great dreamer. Staking everything on the dream that he could have Daisy if he made himself wealthy enough, Gatsby proceeded to destroy his life.
"So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight - watching over nothing," (Fitzgerald, 145). That is truly what Daisy had become for her old love Gatsby: nothing. She was not his and could never be his because she had already given herself to someone else. This made Gatsby go mad with desire and underlying grief. He lost his grip of reality as most of us would having our entire life's work torn to bits by a blubbering ex without a backbone. In the last chapters, Gatsby dies protecting the memory of what he and Daisy once were and still are in his fantasies. His incapability to refocus and live in the present led him to Daisy's side where his loyalty and honor led him to die for her. In the bigger picture, Gatsby is a symbol for his entire 20s society and the conspicuous consumption that led to their demise in the 30s.
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