Significant Connections

The illusion of love is what drives men to desperation in the unending attempt to make love a reality. An illusion occurs when the brain misinterprets what the eyes are truly seeing. Fitzgerald conveys this well-known idea throughout his four famously known texts: The Great Gatsby, Winter Dreams, Babes in the Woods, and the film inspired by his short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. With the use of these texts similarities, the readers are able to portray the universal idea of the illusion of love. We achieve this by perceiving Fitzgerald’s constant critiques on the type of society we live in today, it shows us how we can never truly be happy, no matter how in love we may think we are. In each one of these texts, a golden girl is presented to the readers. This golden girl is unattainable. Daisy, the golden girl in The Great Gatsby and Benjamin Button, is created from wealth, and social status, although they both do not actually exist. Judy, from Winter Dreams, and Isabelle, from Babes in the Woods, are perceived to be yet another object for the male protagonist to obtain. Society has conveyed the idea that the only way to be happy is to have our missing puzzle piece. This leaves us always wanting more. No one will ever truly be satisfied with their lives due to the society we grow up in, no matter the year. F. Scott Fitzgerald has a common theme throughout his texts of basing his writing on the hypothetical expectation of life. Fitzgerald’s readers are exposed to the fine line between illusion and reality with the use of the golden girls in each text.

Throughout The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald tells the story of a whimsical billionaire, Jay Gatsby. The famous Gatsby’s life revolves around one long wanting desire, to be reunited with Daisy Buchanan. His obsession for her is abnormal, everything he does revolves around this one girl “and to this conception, he was faithful to the end”. Gatsby’s dream of being with Daisy is seen as a “golden ticket” to the elite side of the bay. No matter what Gatsby does, he can never be a part of the desired lifestyle like Daisy is. Gatsby sees Daisy as a source of hope. This is because she is the social status that everyone craves, she symbolises complete perfection and has everyone falling at her feet. She is known to have it all. She lives “high in a white palace” being “the king’s daughter, the golden girl” and a voice “full of money”. However, people only like her for what she portrays on the surface. No one knows what she’s like under her layers of camouflage, because they see what she has for offer on the outside, and think that’s good enough. In addition to being every man’s obsession, she attracts money-hungry people. Gatsby is one of them. It is a commonly known perception that to achieve a happy and content life, you need money, fame, and love, otherwise recognised as “The American Dream”. Despite the fact that Gatsby has the fame, the enormous wealth, and magnificent parties, he is left wanting more. He wants the only thing that he is yet to attain, the golden girl. Every male protagonist thinks that becoming wealthy is the key to the golden girl’s heart. They eventually learn that no matter what tangible things you obtain, the love of your life will never truly stay with you as they don’t actually exist. The golden girl is just an illusion, the illusion that hard work pays off, the illusion that it is all worth it in the end, the illusion that you can in fact find love if you become rich. This text shows Fitzgerald’s readers how hard it is to perceive what reality actually is. It is the illusion of love, the illusion that there is always something more out there waiting for you to acquire it. Daisy is admired and becomes an object to obsess over, due to her beauty. She is loved for her appearance rather than what’s beneath the surface. She represents the ultimate golden girl, however, the golden girl does not even exist. So instead, Daisy, the so-called golden girl, truly represents the unattainable side of life.

Dexter Green, the protagonist of Winter Dreams, shows startling resemblance to Jay Gatsby. Dexter, like Gatsby, interprets money as the key to everything. He falls in love with a woman, Judy Jones, and becomes attached to every little thing she does. She represents the “dream” for him, just like Daisy did for Gatsby. At the start of “Winter Dreams”, Dexter Green is just a fourteen-year-old boy, living in Minnesota. From a young age, he has already a pure obsession with the world of wealth. When Dexter first laid eyes on the love of his life, Judy Jones, he could see the pure signs of beauty just by looking at her. Eleven years old Judy was as “beautifully ugly as little girls are apt to be who are destined after a few years to be inexpressibly lovely and bring no end of misery to a great number of men”. Soon enough, Dexter learns that he has been loving Judy all wrong. He can’t win her over by earning pocket money at the golf course, he has to create a new image of himself, an image that is good enough for Judy. So, young Judy Jones provokes Dexter Green’s aspirations of achieving his very own “Winter Dreams”, and ultimately changes his life forever. This massive impact that Judy has on Dexter shows how reliant people are on their golden girl and how they truly end up shaping their lives. Nineteen years later, she continues to spark his hopes and dreams. By this time, Dexter has already grown in the business world, conquering the stairs to success and building up his reputation day by day. He was sure that this was the time he could finally call Judy his very own. However, despite the fact that “he loved her, and he would love her until the day he was too old for loving”, “he could not have her.” He could not have her as she was just an illusion. She is not real, never was and never will be. The illusion she holds, the illusion of love, becomes camouflaged by her money and beauty. Her very own beauty and money represent all her desires in life, “she was entertained only by the gratification of her desires and by the direct exercise of her own charm”. Eventually Dexter learns that he and Judy can never be together because Dexter is just another one of Judy’s lovers. Later on in the novel, Judy is spotted back in Dexter’s life, but this time she is unhappy. Judy Jones, the golden girl, the girl that has everything, is unhappy. She sobs to him saying “I’m more beautiful than anybody else, why can’t I be happy?”. Her belief that outstanding beauty alone should bring her happiness correlate with Dexter’s belief that being wealthy will lead to ultimate success and satisfaction. Judy, just like Daisy, represents the illusion of love and how they are just pretty faces, and Dexter, just like Gatsby, is another one of the golden girl’s lovers, that has fallen for the unrealistic perception of love.

Fitzgerald’s short story, Babes in the Woods, is told from the golden girls’ perspective, Isabelle. Isabelle is illustrated as “a pretty kid” one that was “worth keeping an eye on”. Kenneth Powers plays the male protagonist, the lover that is so close to getting Isabelle the golden girl, but as always, misses out. Kenneth is described by Isabelle as having outstanding hair and eyes, them being “his most noticeable possessions, they were black and they fairly glittered”. “He had rather dark skin with a faint flush, and a straight romantic profile”, the natural attraction for Isabelle was instantly there when they first met, just like the attraction that sparked straight away between Dexter Green and Judy Jones at the start of the novel. Isabelle represents an uncompleted goal for Kenneth. A goal that Kenneth is imprisoned in through chasing. The single flaw in this goal of attaining the golden girl is that he is chasing an illusion. Kenneth gets so close to obtaining his golden girl, but despite him being within reach of clasping her, he and Isabelle are still left apart from one another. Isabelle, the so-called golden girl, does not actually exist. The golden girl is not real but everyone still obsesses over her and continues to chase this desired dream. No matter what time period you are living in, there will always be a golden girl. This is the problem with society today. A girl is shaped and portrayed as something that the lover’s eyes want to see, but what he sees is not actually who the golden girl is. Rather, It is an illusion, an illusion blocking the true girl and instead portrays an unattainable image. Kenneth and Isabelle eventually realise that they can’t be together, just like Dexter who finally came to sense that the golden girl can never be captured. The golden girl can never be someone else’s as she is not someone in the first place.

Being born into the body of an old man and aging backward, going in the complete opposite direction to everyone else, is how Benjamin Button lived his life. He took his first few steps as an old man, while taking his last steps as a baby. The movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, is the final text that shows the readers the illusion of love. It is a movie inspired by the short story of the same title, written by Fitzgerald. Benjamin is stuck living and experiencing everything in complete opposite to everyone around him. Despite him being aware of his unlikeliness to everyone else, he seeks normality because “for what it’s worth: it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be”. Having the blessing of being able to live a perfect life and falling in love with a girl who loves you back, is all that Benjamin wants and more. Daisy is his golden girl. They first met when Benjamin was just starting his life, just like Dexter Green meeting Judy at a young age. Benjamin holds on to the moment that he and Daisy are finally the same age, in the middle of both of their lives, allowing Benjamin to get a taste of what his future could have been. Near the end of the film, Benjamin and Daisy’s lives finally sync up with each other, granting them their wish of happiness. This particular scene shows everything falling into place, displaying how Benjamin feels that it is “one of the happiest times of my life”. Soon enough, Benjamin and Daisy learn that they really can never be together because “nothing lasts” and “what a shame that is”. He, just like Gatsby, Dexter, and Kenneth all followed a dream by setting an unreachable goal. The window of utter perfection between Daisy and Benjamin turns into nothing but a distant memory. As Benjamin returns to reality, all hope of Daisy being his instantly vanishes as he knows that he is chasing the impossible dream. He backs away from the dream, leaving all hope to be destroyed. Benjamin’s decision to let his dream go shows striking resemblance to Dexter Green backing away from his “winter dreams” of being with his golden girl. Both of these male protagonists come to the realisation that they were only chasing the illusion of love. The short period of time that Benjamin got with Daisy, was not true love. It can never be love because love is just an illusion. Benjamin Button and Dexter Green both watching their dreams become failures teaches today’s society to focus on what is real by realising what is right in front of us. It teaches us to not get caught up in the dream of having the golden girl as Gatsby, Dexter, Kenneth, and Benjamin all did, because the golden girl is simply an illusion.

Fitzgerald is obsessed with the golden girl. This is because his wife, Zelda, was the golden girl. Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia, driving Fitzgerald to become an alcoholic. He is limited by his experiences of the world, therefore his writing doesn’t change as it is based on himself and ultimately, his love story. Fitzgerlad and Zelda’s relationship represent the illusion of love. The male protagonist in Fitzgerald’s texts, Gatsby, Dexter, Kenneth, and Benjamin are all obsessed with their golden girls. In today’s society, the expectation for girls has majorly increased since the 1920s due to social media and the unexpected reality society places on girls. Girls have always been overlooked for important subjects such as politics, but when it comes to beauty standards, we are judged for everything we do. The golden girls, Daisy, Judy, Isabelle, and Daisy all strive to reach the beauty standard. They are thirsty for attention and love and they seek to get this from their looks as society values this above all else. This is how the illusion of love was created. Society alters individuals’ personalities as people are taught that their natural self isn’t good enough, resulting in men falling in love with the illusion that society created. The four male protagonists in Fiztegralds text are all said to be in love with their girls, but they, in fact, are not at all. In the end, Jay Gatsby does not end up with Daisy Buchanan, Dexter Green does not end up with Judy Jones, Kenneth does not end up with Isabelle and Benjamin Button does not end up with Daisy. Their eyes may be in love, due to the beauty standing in front of them, but ultimately, no matter how in love you think you are, there will always be one more obstacle to conquer. The obstacle that everything you thought was real, is a lie. This is why love is just an illusion, a game that everyone plays and gets caught up in. We are all so obsessed with the idea of love and the thrill of the chase, but at the end of the day, we are left hurt and heartbroken if we continue to fall into society’s trap of loving external appearance.