James Gatz was already "about his Father's business" when he carefully sketched out a schedule for self improvement on the back of his "Hopalong Cassidy" book. He had already realized what his dream was and had created his own personal religion, which was one of romantic ideals: wealth, youth, and beauty. Gatsby, "a son of God," strived to obtain the "vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty," and to incarnate these ideals with reality. Like Jesus Christ came here as an incarnation of man and the divine, "the perfect word entering the imperfect world-- and yet remaining perfect"

(Christensen, 154-155), Gatsby is referred to as "a son of God" because through his invention of Jay Gatsby, James Gatz tried to incarnate his ideal dream with reality. Daisy becomes the embo

One night in 1921, a friend of Fitzgerald's heard him mutter a strange comment. "God damn the Catholic Church; God damn the Church; God damn God!" he said (Allen, 92). It was three years before he would write The Great Gatsby. In the years preceding this incident, he would often visit with a priest by the name of John Barron to talk about "Fitzgerald's writing as well as other literary and religious matters" (Allen, 91). Barron noticed his "spiritual instability," and "his natural response to Fitzgerald's iconoclasms was a quiet "Scott, quit being a damn fool'" (Allen, 92). Fitzgerald left the Catholic Church and became skeptical as to whether or not Jesus was the Son of God.

Gindin, James. "Gods and Fathers in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Novels." Modern Critical Views: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1985.

"He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete" (112).

Clark, Larry. "*******your essay ideas*******." E-Mail message. 10 March 1996.

"I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass" (162).

Allen, Joan M. Candles and Carnival Lights: The Catholic Sensibility of F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York University Press: New York, 1978.

Both Renan and Fitzgerald "allow their respective heroes to pursue their dreams, but remain themselves sufficiently outside of the dream to remind the reader that those dreams cannot be reconciled with hard fact" (Christensen, 157). Nick's comparison of Jay Gatsby to Jesus "implies a trenchant criticism of the American culture which shaped Gatsby's dream and thus put him in 'the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty' so different from the gracious Father whom Jesus served; however, it also suggests sympathy and admiration for Gatsby rivaling that for Jesus Himself" (Christensen, 155).

Some common words found in the essay are:
Hotel Daisy, Jesus Cristensen, Fay Allen, Christ Fitzgerald, Montenegro Oxford, Church Church, Peale Bishop, Jesus Christ, Paradise Renan, James Gatz, jay gatsby, jesus christ, vast vulgar, catholic church, son god, god damn, vast vulgar meretricious, gatsby realizes, vulgar meretricious, vulgar meretricious beauty, chelsea house, york chelsea, brief period success, chelsea house publishers, church god damn,
Approximate Word count = 1760
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)