In a story, a romantic hero is a literary archetype referring to a character that rejects established norms and conventions, has been rejected by society, and has him or herself as the center of his or her own existence. Jay Gatsby, a character from the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is not considered a romantic hero in the 1920s. Clearly Gatsby is not a romantic hero because he makes Daisy, the so called love of his life, the center of his existence rather than himself. Yes, while he is an outcast and does reject what is conceived to be normal in society, he doesn’t love himself as much as he loves Daisy, everything he does is for Daisy. While he is a tragic hero being that his flaws are the reason that he was killed, he is definitely not a romantic hero.

In the Novel, Jay Gatsby makes Daisy the center of his existence. He didn’t think about anything unless Daisy was able to fit into the situation somehow. Whenever he wasn’t with her, he was thinking about her, and whenever he was with her talked and looked and nobody but her, even if there were other people around them. In the book, the character that plays Gatsby’s friend and Daisy’s cousin, Nick Carraway, states that “He[Gatsby] hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs.”(Fitzgerald). He doesn’t even realize how extreme he is because he doesn’t care to notice anything but her. He also can’t stand to be away from her. He literally spent three years illegally acquiring money and “bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay”