The Great Gatsby is the story of one man's journey in an attempt to achieve what is commonly referred to as the American dream. Fitzgerald makes the reader grow fond of Gatsby by giving them some elements of Gatsby's backstory to hold on to. He achieves this by using the love that caresses Gatsby's heart to capture the imagination of the hopeless romantic, and then uses Gatsby's deeply held ambition to become better to capture the ambitious reader. Throughout the story Fitzgerald makes Gatsby the hero, and he succeeds by making Gatsby's goals in life become recognizable to the common reader, because everyone wants to be able to change their life, everyone wants to one day to fall so madly in love with someone else that they would follow him to the ends of the earth, no matter the obstacles, and Gatsby is the perfect embodiment of these hopes and dreams. What is most profoundly affecting is that the reader can tell that Fitzgerald truly loved his creation and this can be seen in the way he describes it. Unfortunately, as many other great writers do, Fitzgerald realized that this life-like world he created would require malevolent forces always conspiring against the main character, in this case Gatsby behind the scenes. Fitzgerald does this by incorporating these forces into the society that surrounded Gatsby. Fitzgerald often depicts many of the characters as arrogant people. One of these characters is Tom Buchanan, in many cases he showed his arrogance and sometimes ignorance. One such instance is when Nick goes to Tom and Daisy's house in West Egg for the first time. While they have dinner, Tom asks Nick if he has read a certain... half of paper... trays in which you touch a spring, and a wreath with a black silk bow for his mother's grave that... will last all day 'summer."(36) You can agree that some of the things she listed are useless, you can agree that she doesn't really need "one of those cute ashtrays where you touch a spring" Myrtle really does need, no, he doesn't have it, but he will get it he will get it because he is with Tom and because of that he can get anything. In short, by having Gatsby killed, Fitzgerald is showing the reader what society is really like, he shows its clear superficiality, he shows the The materialistic behavior of many citizens even shows how some believe themselves to be more intelligent than others for some reason or reason. other. And by removing this veil of false hopes and pretensions Fitzgerald presents the reader with a world in its purest form; an impure one.