As such, preparation creates an enabling environment that makes courage to produce success when it is matched with action. Jay Gatsby did not become successful without preparation. Evidently, James Gatz had a more down-to-earth list, a tightly organized schedule to project him to the road to success. After the death of Jay Gatsby, his father who attends his funeral from North Dakota brought the truth about Gatsby’s early life to people’s knowledge. The old man shows Nick Carraway a tattered copy of Hopalong Cassidy that Gatsby owned as a child in which he wrote his daily schedule, as well as a list of General Resolves (300). Per the schedule, James Gatz would rise early (6:00 am) and spend most of his day working. He scheduled the remaining of his time with activities to educate and improve himself. He daily practiced "elocution, poise and how to attain it" for one hour each day. Additionally, he spent two hours in studying "needed inventions." Out of his whole day, he only spent thirty minutes for "Baseball and sports” as fun (301). Similarly, The Things They Carried shows that O’Brien and other infantrymen prepared for war by making available their personal effects and the weapons of war. Through strategic planning, which is a systematic process of visualizing the desired future, and transforming the visualization …show more content…
According to O’Brien, some soldiers “were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it” (22) because they “wear the mask of bravery” (Horner). So, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear” (Kololak). Fear often exists at the very moment when people are called upon to have courage; but believably, a real courage is not only a gut reaction but also a conscious choice that evinces courage. Per O’Brien, “If the stakes ever became high enough—if the evil were evil enough, if the good were good enough—I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage that had been accumulating” (33). People who are courageous are always persistent and unwilling to give up in their pursuits. For example, Jay Gatsby knew that Daisy is a symbol of charm, grace, and wealth, and he lied to her about himself and his background as to convince her to believe he was her ideal man. Consequently, Daisy vowed to wait for him during the time he left for war. Though when Daisy could no longer wait for him, she got married to Tom Buchanan. The time Gatsby came back from Oxford after the war, he determined and dedicated himself to repossess Daisy with wealth. Therefore, he gets himself involved in shady dealings with bootleggers and “manufactures an entirely new life so that when he approaches Daisy a second time, she will leave Tom and accept his offer