8217;s name was legally James Batz (Fitzgerald 104). This name change occurs at age seventeen when, “ Jay is taken under the tutelage of Dan Cody, a millionaire yachtsman and miner” (Gallo 37). Gatsby spends five years with Dan Cody, and upon Cody’s death was deprived of his $25,000 legacy, forcing him into the army (Gallo 37). Gatsby, in a sense, was “modeling himself after Dan Cody” (Lehan, “Inventing Gatsby” 58). Just as Cody had built an empire, Gatsby was building an illusion, a dream. The illusion began with Cody, but continues as he invents a fictitious background: his aristocratic background and ancestors, and his Oxford education (Kuehl 15). “The more Gatsby talks the more absurd his story becomes” (Lehan, “Inventing Gatsby” 60). Nick declares, “He hurried the phrase “educated at Oxford, “ … And with this doubt his whole statement fell to pieces and I wondered if there wasn’t something a little sinister about him” Fitzgerald 69). Despite the contradictions in his story, Gatsby never emerges clearly and forcefully enough “to be considered sinister; he is created more as a mythical person than as a real one (Eble 95). It is this “blurring of Gatsby” that makes his “fantastic illusion more believable” (Lehan, “Inventing Gatsby” 60). He is the “embodiment of every man’s unfulfilled aspirations” (Gallo 38). Gatsby’s personality is composed of “gestures” as Nick calls them. They include the pink suits, the silver shirts, the “old sports”, and many other mannerisms (Lehan “Inventing Gatsby” 58). As Nick tell the reader, “If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life…” (Fitzgerald 6). It is thi...
