His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all.
Chapter 6 · Narrator
Context
As part of the flashback to Gatsby's origins, Nick reveals that Gatsby's actual parents were poor North Dakota farmers. Even before changing his name, the young James Gatz psychologically rejected his biological family as incompatible with his self-image.
Analysis
The phrase 'his imagination had never really accepted them' locates Gatsby's self-invention not in external action but in an internal psychological break—he orphans himself through sheer force of fantasy before he materially transforms his circumstances. This rejection of family origin positions Gatsby as a specifically American archetype: the self-made man whose first creative act is the destruction of his own past, revealing how the American Dream demands the erasure of class origins rather than their transcendence.
How to Use in Essay
Strong for essays on how the American Dream requires the repudiation of one's actual origins, or for comparing Gatsby's self-orphaning to the novel's broader treatment of family, inheritance, and social legitimacy.