Jay Gatsby — The Great Gatsby

Jay Gatsby is the definitive American archetype—a self-made millionaire whose dream is simultaneously beautiful and corrosive—making his destruction the most searching study of the American Dream. His reinvention from James Gatz of North Dakota to a mysterious bootlegger exposes a darker ambition than Don Quixote’s idealism, as both pursue illusions but Gatsby’s ends in a poolside death at age 32. This concrete data point—his age at demise—underscores the tragedy of a man outperformed by the careless rich who use and discard him, cementing his role as a cautionary benchmark for the 1920s.