In chapter 6 we finally learn about Gatsby’s past and how he decided to completely reinvent himself. He was born Jay Gatz on a farm in North Dakota. He was not born into wealth and had to pay his way through college by working as a janitor which he found so embarrassing that the quit and dropped out of school. He began working on Lake Superior and one day decided to go warn a yacht of an incoming thunder storm. The yacht owner turned out to be Dan Cody, an extremely wealthy copper baron. Cody is so grateful of the pre-Gatsby’s warning that he invites him to be his personal assistant. From that moment on Gatz transformed into Gatsby, leaving behind his life of farming and janitorial work and entering the world of luxury.

“The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.”

With Cody he travelled all around the world and fell in love with material items and wealth. When Cody died he was supposed to leave some $25,000 to Gatsby but was prevented from receiving the money by Cody’s horrid mistress. After he became so used to luxury with Dan Cody when he died Gatsby decided that he would dedicate his life to becoming wealthy.This concept relates back to the American Character because many people today try to dedicate their lives to money. It seems how ever that once most people acheive this they find that (excuse the cliche,) “money can’t buy happiness.”