Money, love, and aspiration in The Great GatsbyHow do members of such an uprooted, mobile, and indifferent society acquire a sense of who they are? Most of them don't. The Great Gatsby features many of them in the form of comically disembodied names of dinner party guests: the Chromes, the Backhyssons, and the Dennickers. Some, of course, have some fame, but even Jordan Baker's reputation doesn't do much for him other than getting him into more parties. Some, like Gatsby, are distinguished by their wealth; his hospitality ensures him a hold on the memories of many people, but Fitzgerald is quick to point out the emptiness, [...] In this regard, Fitzgerald's insistence on Gatsby as a man "of his own conception "Conception of oneself seems to be the ultimate expression of uprootedness. And this also has other consequences for love, money and aspirations. When the sense of self is self-created, when one is present to one's own creation, so to speak, one finds oneself in a paradoxical position. One knows everything that can be known about oneself, and yet the meaning of such knowledge is unclear. , because no external context exists to create meaning The result is that a self-created man looks to the past, because he can know it. For Gatsby and for the novel, the. past is crucial. His sense of the past as something he knows but also thinks he can control distinguishes Gatsby from Nick and gives him mythic, larger-than-life dimensions. When he tells Nick that "of course" the past can repeat itself or that Tom's love for Daisy was "just personal", he may be compensating for his inability to find Daisy; but he must believe these things because the post-war world in which he, Gatsby, lives makes no sense and is almost completely devoid of love. A look at the relationships in The Great Gatsby proves the latter point. Daisy and Tom's marriage is dead; they must cover their discontents with the distractions of the idle rich. Myrtle and Tom use each other; Myrtle hates George, who is too boring to understand her; the McKees exist in frivolous and empty triviality. Even Nick doesn't seem sure about his feelings for the Midwestern tennis player.. [...]