Gatsby had built up this incredible illusion of what Daisy really was, and had gone off the deep end in throwing himself after her. Weinstein (p. 25) quotes from pages 102-103 of the novel:

"There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion." It is typical of Fitzgerald to use a phrase like "…the colossal vitality of his illusion," a very skillful way of saying the character Gatsby was stuck in a fantasy world, a naive place, and he believed that Daisy was something more than she really was. Weinstein believes that Fitzgerald is "committed to the project of making things from nothing" and in this case he made Daisy up to be more than she really was. Some writers would call that infatuation, or idealizing someone beyond their...
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