The Great Gatsby: Gatsby's Illusion of Himself F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is considered a novel that embodies America in the 1920s. In it, the narrator, Nick Carroway, helps his neighbor Jay Gatsby reunite with Daisy Buchanan, with whom he has been in love with since 5 years before, during World War I. The affair between the two fails, however, and ends in Gatsby being shot and killed. The reason that this was inevitable is that Gatsby created a fantasy so thoroughly that he became part of it, and he fell with it when reality came crashing down. The basis of all of this is Gatsby's