Gatsby, the title character of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a man to whom time and space are unimportant. When Gatsby was young and later, when Nick knows him, he is driven by his dreams; Gatsby has discovered the limitless joy that imagination can bring. With his fantasies, he does not even need the tangible presence of the girl he believes he loved so much. Gatsby, from this one experience of Daisy, lives the rest of his life in search of the wonder that captivated him, and therefore is doomed to live forever in an impossible search for a reality to fit his fantasies. Nick, in his own creation of Gatsby's encounter with Daisy, projects Gatsby's incredible creative mind and foreshadows the impossible dream that it imagines.

Nick, in his recreation of a scene that Gatsby told to him about his love affair with Daisy...