Reality and illusion in The Great GatsbyThe disparity between illusion and reality plays a very big role in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and one scene in particular, the one in which the narrator Nick Carraway leaves a party thrown by two acquaintances, Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson (Fitzgerald 41-42), serves primarily to explore this question. Offering a vivid view of this disparity, the scene embodies Fitzgerald's constant struggle to discern between the gaudy, glittering image of American society in the 1920s and the reality of emptiness and insincerity that that image strives to portray. hide. Perhaps one of America's best-known illusionists. , alcohol plays a large role in this scene, blurring the lines between illusion and reality for both the reader and the characters involved. Carraway in particular was clearly past the point of sobriety, admitting only a few pages earlier that he had "only been drunk twice in [his] life and [that] the second time was that afternoon"(33 ). The fact that this is probably the first time during his narration that Carraw...