The primary theme of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby is the hypocrisy and superficiality that are behind the façade of appearances in society. Appearances are maintained in the novel in order to provide an illusion based on what individuals believe should be their reality, whether it is their reality or not. Perhaps Jay Gatsby best exemplifies this, for the values and ideals that will result in Gatsby's death are romantic and more those of an adolescent boy's idea of a man than those of a fully mature adult.
On the surface, Jay Gatsby represents the perfect embodiment of the American Dream, a self-made millionaire who appears God-like in all aspects of his being. As we are told of Gatsby's aura by Nick, the narrator, "Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens" (Fitzgerald 21). However, Gatsby's superficial and materialistic world are far from a reflection of his security. Instead they represent the fact that he is trying to hide his insecurities that he does not measure up to his ideals.
Gatsby will never live up to his ideals and sticking to them results in his murder, primarily because his ideals are not those of a fully grown adult but rather the romantic illusions of an adolescent boy. Nick will ultimately recognize this fact, even though he continues to empathize with Gatsby. As Nick tells us, "The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself...So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful" (Fitzgerald 82). It is this self-created conception that will force Gatsby to live up to his adolescent ideal of chivalry and protect Daisy from exposure. It is also this conception that will lead to...