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In the Scarlet Letter and the Great Gatsby the two main male characters commit adultery, in some ways Jay Gatsby and Reverend Dimesdale are very similar and in many ways there are different.
Both Jay Gatsby and Reverend Dimesdale suffer for the woman they love. In the Great Gatsby, Gatsby spends the first half of the book pining away for his lover. He is obsessed with winning her back. Gatsby knows the only way he can seduce her is with his money and materialistic things. He builds himself up, by buying a mansion in the East and has parties just to reunite wither her,
Both Characters are almost about to get the girl. Hester Prynne almost convinced the Reverend to go to Europe with her, and Gatsby almost convinces Daisy to leave her husband. One big difference is the Reverend dies in the hands of the woman he loves, Hester (and is even buried with her a year later.) And Gatsby unfortunatly dies alone in the middle of his pool as an empty man. Very few people even attend his funeral. Though both have has affairs the reverend was a pure lover, and Gatsby picked a girl because she was "full of money."
The qualities that made each one a leading character in novel is that they appear as successful men filled with frustration in there personnel lives. In Great Gatsby