The Great Gatsby and the destruction of a romantic idealIn The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story of a romantic ideal and its ultimate destruction due to inexorable rot and decay of modern life. The story is told by Nick Carraway, who rented a modest rental house next door to Jay Gatsby's mansion. Jay Gatsby is a young millionaire who obtains fabulous riches with the sole purpose of winning back the love of his ex-girlfriend, Daisy Fay Buchanan. Five years before the main events of the story, Daisy broke up with Gatsby and married the vulgar and arrogant Tom Buchanan because he was rich and came from a respectable family. In the following years, Gatsby transforms Daisy's memory into an almost religious cult. He puts her on a pedestal and turns her into his romantic ideal. In the process, he also transforms himself. He changes his name from Gatz to Gatsby; he invents a backstory, saying he came from a wealthy family and studied at Oxford; influences the speech patterns of an English aristocrat ("old sport") and stages parties that resemble theatrical productions. The irony is that Gatsby's extreme pursuit of materialism is merely an elaborate façade that allows him to pursue his enchanted spiritual vision. All the trappings of his wealth have a sense of the unreal, as if they had no weight or substance. The first impression of this comes in chapter 3, when Gatsby invites Nick to one of his parties. In Gatsby's library Nick meets a drunken guest who announces that Gatsby's books are really authentic: "What do you think?" "About what?" boats against the current, carried back incessantly into the past." Works cited and consulted: Bruccoli, Matthew J. Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Carrol and Graf, 1993. Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of extremes. New York: Pantheon, 1994. Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963. Posnock, Ross real': Fitzgerald's critique of capitalism in The Great Gatsby." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 201-13.Raleigh, John Henry. "The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald." Mizener 99-103. Trillo, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical essays on the "Great Gatsby" by Scott Fitzgerald. Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.