Dissatisfaction In The Great Gatsby

Look around you, are you one hundred percent happy with everything things in your life or are unhappy with the way your hair looks or the way your day has gone? It is normal to be dissatisfied with your life and the things inside it including you. In “ The Great Gatsby” dissatisfaction shows more of an impact on the characters.

In today's society people are always wanting the latest new phones or latest fashion trend in their closest but, none of them stop and think, why are they wanting this, the answer, their dissatisfied with the materialistic things they have and they believe deep down that if they got new material it will fill the void that that struggle with. If people would stop and take the time to appreciate what they have instead of trying to have the " Bigger, better, stronger, faster" things in life they would not fall into the "trap" of their " own dissatisfaction" ( Source 1). In the Great Gatsby, Myrtle had a husband, a house, and a good job, not the best but a good one, and if she would have just stuck with that she had and figured out a better way to fill the void of dissatisfaction instead of trying to go after Tom's money for an easy way out, she wasn't looking for wealth, she would be living a happier life. What she did not know, money wasn't the problem nor was any of the materialistic things in her life that were causing this void,  it was herself. You see ever since America started in the 1800's, Americans have always strived for "bigger, better, stronger, faster" and without that strive Americans would not live the way they did or the world at that would not live the way they do. On the other hand without that strive Americans and people all over the world would not have that void of dissatisfaction because there would not be anything to be dissatisfied about, it would be easy going, everything is the same kind of world.

Some people do not want the big things they want the things they have to go in a different direction or wished they would have gone in a different direction. In the great gatsby, Daisy wakes up after having her baby and turns to a nurse right away asking if its a boy or a girl, the nurse tells her its a girl. Daisy turns her head away and weeps and she says,” I'm glad its a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool  - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool  source 2).”  Daisy pretends that she's happy she has had a girl, but she is not. Girls of any class seem to be the losers in this world, and Daisy, as you could imagine, isn't psyched about her daughter to come into a world where everyone already labeled her as a loser. Dissatisfaction, in this case, is the dissatisfaction of her daughter not being the right gender and it has nothing to do with daisy is has to do with her daughter's life and how it's going to unfold with the world labeling her as a fool. Like Gatsby, he is not satisfied with how his life has unfolded, but instead of wanting to change it going forward, he wants to head back to the past.  GAtsby talked a lot about the past, and Nick “gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was… (source 2).”

You see dissatisfaction comes with different layers some lay deep down some or materialistic and sometimes it's as small or big if you think about it as a baby's gender. Dissatisfaction is the most major impact on everybody every day whether that's in a book or in real life it is everywhere.

Source (1) - The Trap of Our Dissatisfaction and How to Fix It

Source (2) - The Great Gatsby