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What is the significance of Gatsby's obsession with Daisy and living in the past?

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, "There are no second acts." It is helpful to analyze Gatsby's obsession with Daisy, and his insistence on "living in the past," in light of this statement.


What Fitzgerald meant was that one cannot be transformed into someone else in a single lifetime. Gatsby believes that, because he is now wealthy and fashionable, he can win Daisy's love and claim her. However, she knew him when he had little and cannot forget his past self. 


I would not say that Gatsby "lives in the past," but instead that he believes that the past can be revised. He wants to start over from the time at which he met Daisy, while a lieutenant stationed in Louisville. 


He is "obsessed" with her because she is the one thing he cannot have. One wonders at times, while reading the novel, if Gatsby really loves Daisy or if she is the ultimate class marker. Perhaps he thinks that, if only he can win her, he can prove to himself that he has finally joined the class of people that once shunned him. 

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