The shameful part about Gatsby is that he is a boy from a small town in North Dakota. Halfway through the novel we learn that Gatsby is ashamed of his lower-class upbringing. His parents were a kind of inept and unsuccessful farm laborers. 1 "Heaven knows that we must never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain on the blinding dust of the earth, which covers our hard hearts." (Charles Dickens) And Gatsby is described as a self made man. From this shame, Jay Gatsby begins to create a character. He changes his name, leaves his home for the army, and creates a persona molded against his tragic character of shame. However, it is also important to see the emotions between shame and guilt. Because of this, his heart never fully heals from the past. Guilt is a feeling people feel when they think they have done something wrong. They believe that it is some sort of action, that they have broken some sort of moral rule or law that could get them into trouble. Shame, however, is more fundamental. It's a feeling about yourself that something is wrong. And to understand Gatsby you...