...Love and the ensuing commitment has been a timeless and recurrent theme in literature. And yet, throughout history, commitment has been portrayed in a variety of lights, relative to context. Two distinct portrayals of commitment can be seen in Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby,s and Barret Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, where love, and commitment take two very unique forms. Fitzgerald’s 1920’s America craved opulence and material possessions. This can be seen in Gatsby’s obsessive commitment of Daisy, based in his idealised dream. As Nick poetically describes, Gatsby “believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.” The green light represents the life Gatsby craves for himself, one where Daisy lives with him in his mansion, creating the ideal 1920’s couple. And yet despite Gatsby’s apparent love and commitment to Daisy, he appears more committed to this “green light” and the image he has created for his future. Daisy admits that Gatsby “wants too much” begging that it be enough that she loves him now, admitting she can’t escape her past. But Gatsby reveals himself to be more...
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...As Scott F. Fitzgerald invites the reader to see the perspective of the 1920’s from an “honest” and “nonjudgmental” man named Nick Carraway, the views of the rich and ugly collide together, making The Great Gatsby a novel with a twisted and complicated plot. The main character Nick Carraway, is from the west and moves to the overpopulated city of New York. He settles in the “West Egg” of Long Island and meets his mysterious neighbor who goes by the name of Jay Gatsby. Nick visits his cousin Daisy, who lives in the “East Egg” and soon becomes somewhat engaged within the fast, upbeat, party life. (Fitzgerald) Although he is not fully involved, he disentangles himself from the whole scene near the ending due to his observant behavior and disgusted attitude towards the whole outlook. However, his attraction towards Gatsby is a main focus. Readers are captivated by Gatsby’s admirable perseverance and determination in working towards achieving his goal of winning Daisy’s heart and beyond that, the American dream, yet his greatness predicts his downfall. Gatsby’s desire of becoming wealthy and dedication to this goal reflects how admirable he is because created himself out of nothing; he “sprang from his Platonic conception of himself; he was a son of God-.” (Fitzgerald, 104) He “reinvented” himself, using his imagination and being “faithful to the end” until he was the prosperous man he wanted to become. But this accomplished goal of becoming wealthy was only a small step...
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...are all kinds of love in this world, but never the same love twice. In, “The Great Gatsby”, Jay Gatsby the main character has this false hope of trying to relive his past again with his one true love, Daisy. F. Scott Fitzgerald shows the heroic elements of him being the tragic hero because he goes through this continuous cycle of false hope of getting the love of his life. Jay Gatsby came from a necessitous family and in rural North Dakota and wanted something much bigger from life. Gatsby absolutely despised the idea of him being in poverty, he had even worked a janitorial job to pay for his tuition but had to give it up because he was so embarrassed by it. As his dream was always to be rich, the only thing that really helped...
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...The Narrative Art of The Great Gatsby Introduction The Great Gatsby was written in 1925. The author, Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) is one of the most outstanding writers in America. As a member of the “lost generation”, Fitzgerald made the short life of Gatsby epitome of the rise, boom and decline of the “American Dream” in “Jazz Age”. This novel shows us unusually rich literary and aesthetic connotation is has by its unique narrative perspective, the ups and downs of plot, superb accurate language, various rhetorical devices and vivid character images. To some extent, the reason why The Great Gatsby can become a famous classic work is that the author uses extraordinary narrative techniques in it. All the techniques are employed skillfully by Fitzgerald. The study of narrative art in this work has been highlighted in the research area in these years. Zhang Jinfeng(2001) analyzes the role of Nick in the novel from the its structure, themes and other aspects. Cheng Xilin(2009) uses the spatial narrative theory to discussed the space narrative art in The Great Gatsby from three aspects: the geography space, social space and the text space. Xiao Dongbo(2009) starts with the analysis on author and characters and expound the connotation of "American dream" and profoundly reveals the historical process of the formation, development and burst of the "American dream". Shang Guanghui(2011) analyzes The Great Gatsby from the narrators of the role and argues that the communication...
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...How does Fitzgerald tell the story in Chapter Four of The Great Gatsby? Chapter 4 of The Great Gatsby is one in which Nick continues to gradually piece together information about Gatsby, hearing about his romance with Daisy through the voice of Jordan Baker. Several settings are presented, conveying significant messages about the characters and the ‘roaring twenties’. Chapter Four is one where Nick travels with Gatsby to New York and spends time with him in several different places. New York is presented as being both magical and somewhat repulsive, similar to how Nick feels ‘within and without’ the strange world of the ultra-rich. Viewing the city from the bridge, Nick describes it as promising ‘all the mystery and beauty of the world’, however, immediately after, ‘a dead man’ is described. This could be implying that the ‘jazz age’ is not all that it seems to be, with Fitzgerald revealing that the ‘mystery and beauty’ is only a façade hiding a much darker truth. In addition, the way that the ‘valley of ashes’ is described as opening ‘out on both sides’ could convey the poignant message that death is inescapable in this seemingly wondrous environment. Alternatively, Fitzgerald could be comparing the setting of New York with Gatsby. Before we are introduced to Gatsby, he is presented as almost mythical, magical, but mysterious, just as the city appears from a distance. However, meeting Gatsby could be seen as disappointing, as he is simply an ordinary, wealthy man with a...
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...The Great Gatsby ; Gatsby definition of love In The Great Gatsby by Scott F.Fitzgerald(1925) the novel displays the relationships Jay Gatsby conveys to Daisy Buchanan.In the novel the author shows Jay Gatsby love obsession through Daisy's materialistic status with the new wealth he has brought to the West Egg.He changes his old ways to become a high social class man to gain Daisy love back.In the tea scene we see Gatsby keeps pictures from Daisy to show them off to her .Then we have Nicks home where Gatsby spends money on Daisy by arranging Nicks home. Next Gatsby home is across Daisy but he never is notice by her so he uses his parties to bring up her attention. Ms.Wilson tragic death becomes a reason for Gtasby in protecting Daisy from...
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...In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, there is a distinct development of emotions and symbols, and one of the key vehicles for illustrating this change is the final line of each chapter. Hidden within each final sentence lies an inner message that either pulls together a major theme in the chapter leading up to the sentence, or is a harbinger of the coming chapters. Beginning with the final word in chapter one, “darkness” (21), and concluding with the novel’s final word, “past” (180), Fitzgerald uses simple closing words to represent a deeper, continuous meaning that pervades the book. By doing this, Fitzgerald is able to outline major themes in the novel, including facial expressions, honesty, and balance. Most clearly and powerfully, however, the outline of lightness through positive imagery and darkness through negative imagery is presented in the final lines of each chapter. By grouping the chapters by hopefulness shown in their respective final lines, a trend is apparent. In chapters one through three, the final lines provide a dark, sullen preview for the chapters to come, while chapter four provides a transition into the final lines of chapters five and six, which signify a brief sense of giddiness that begins to darken. Finally, the last lines of chapters seven through nine mark the development and completion of the violent “holocaust” (162). Supplying a preview at the end of chapter one as to the violence to occur later in the novel, Nick says he is “alone...
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...In the controversial book “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald one can see that the idea of the American dream is expressed through the simplicity of color. Many have argued that The Great Gatsby is a book of sexual immorality and critically acclaimed thoughts as well as a magnificent book that secretly has deeper meaning than the simply words it offers in its sentences. Such a person is Daniel J. Schneider who is an advocate of the glory behind the cover, he wrote “Color Symbolism in The Great Gatsby” where he puts forward his own point of view on the meaning of the use of Fitzgerald’s color symbolism in each sentence were he expressed an elusive idea hard for the common reader to find. In this mysterious book the color blue is very much present, from describing attire to showing the mode of the characters, blue goes beyond this and elusively states that it is the dream...
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...F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1924) and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese (1846) display and examine the differing powers of hope depicted through the theme of love. The Sonnets are rich in passion, individuality and sincerity, while the novel is uncertain, bleak and corrupted. By deconstructing the texts, one can examine the influence context has in demonstrating their values and opinions on these issues. In the Sonnets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning considers the perfectionism that her patriarchal Victorian society expected from places on women and in doing so she examines the limitations that transpire within. EBB’s passionate representation of love is somewhat paradoxical as she rejects the inherent Petrarchan sonnet structure and challenges many of the values connected to these forms. Her series of sonnets are social and political arguments that reflect themes of personal experiences as a woman, rejection of idealised platonic love and her desire to represent transcendental love. Nonetheless her inspiration arises from her context and the Romantics as she draws upon the impulse to alter the attitudes towards women and to validate human love. She connects lifeless desired objects into subjects “dauntless, voiceless fortitude” (Sonnet 13) which make her feebleness as a sonneteer, but concurrently indicating her strength as a woman and as a lover. In her struggle to maintain female subjectivity and feminine desire she refuses to be passive and...
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...The Great Gatsby Oct 26, 2012 “Dishonesty” Dishonesty in a relationship exists when one person withholds or manipulates information about themselves or others and presents the facts as a truth. Being dishonest or bending the truth may seem favorable initially, but when the truth is finally revealed, you will have to spill back on more lies which will eventually push the relationship further apart. The Great Gatsby is a novel that shows the reader slyness and fraud around every corner. All of the main characters are dishonest people who portray their lives as nothing more than living in a self obsessed world while making adolescent decisions about love; all these people care about is living in the now. They lie, cheat, and deceive. This was a time when the economy was booming, spreading prosperous jobs in big town cities. This era saw the large-scale diffusion and use of automobiles, telephones, motion pictures, electricity, and unprecedented industrial growth. People dreamed big, and expected better. Everyone was breaking traditions and experimenting with advanced and diverse goods. Fitzgerald depicts Nick Carraway as a moral guide throughout a novel infused with lies and deception. Fitzgerald utilizes many themes throughout the book; truth versus lies, illusion versus reality, or compassion versus apathy. Within the novel, virtually all of the main characters are dishonest to others or to themselves, which exposes each character’s true self to the reader. Deception...
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...In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald presents his view that the American Dream is nothing more than an unachievable illusion, forever just barely out of our grasp. This is represented in the book by a variety of elements and plot points, most notoriously the green light. However, the symbol of the American Dream most central to the plot of The Great Gatsby is actually Daisy, with many of the other symbols flowing from their association with her. The vast riches and lands that Gatsby accrues, which in many other stories would represent that he, the son of dirt poor farmers who has managed to claw his way up to the top through whatever it took, has achieved the American Dream as it is commonly depicted, going from a pauper to a prince, are not his end goal but instead a means to the end, that of a happy life with Daisy as his wife, a life which he has thus far only been able to imagine whilst gazing at the light at the end of her dock which is as green as his envy that Tom is living the life Gatsby...
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...The Great Gatsby: Summary: Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg, Long Island, a wealthy area populated by the new rich, people who made their fortunes due to the economic upswing of the Roaring Twenties. Nick’s next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a huge mansion and throws extravagant parties on the weekends. Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at Yale and has social connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island and the home of the upper class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening to have dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, a former classmate of Nick during his time at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also learns a bit about Daisy and Tom’s marriage: Jordan tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle. At a random, vulgar party in the apartment that Tom bought because of his affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose. As the summer progresses, Nick eventually gets an invitation to one of Gatsby’s legendary parties. He encounters...
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...The Great Gatsby: The Corruption of the American Dream through Materialism The American dream is an ideal that has been present since American literature’s onset. Typically, the dreamer aspires to rise from rags to riches, while accumulating such things as love, high status, wealth, and power on his way to the top. The dream has had variations throughout different time periods, although it is generally based on ideas of freedom, self-reliance, and a desire for something greater. The early settlers’ dream of traveling out West to find land and start a family has gradually transformed into a materialistic vision of having a big house, a nice car, and a life of ease. In the past century, the American dream has increasingly focused on material items as an indication of attaining success. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is a self-made man who started out with no money—only a plan for achieving his dream. He is so blinded by his luxurious possessions that he does not see that money cannot buy love or happiness. Fitzgerald demonstrates how a dream can become corrupted by one’s focus on acquiring wealth, power, and expensive things. Gatsby’s dream “is a naïve dream based on the fallacious assumption that material possessions are synonymous with happiness, harmony, and beauty” (Fahey 70). His American dream has become corrupted by the culture of wealth and opulence that surrounds him. Gatsby is a “nouveau riche,” and his romantic view of wealth has not prepared him for the self-interested...
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...In what ways does Fitzgerald and Williams present the importance of hopes and dreams? Both F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ and Arthur Miller’s ‘A Death of a Salesman’ focus their main ideas on the importance of hopes and dreams. Death of a Salesman, produced in 1949, has become a classic of modern American theatre. It is a story of an average salesman with a dream of being rich and well-liked. Willy believes whole heartedly in what he considers the promise of the American Dream. In the 1940’s The American Dream was as simple as it gets, to have a perfect, successful life with a common nuclear family, a house in the suburbs, a nice car and a life without conflict or family strife. ‘The Great Gatsby’ is a highly symbolic reflection on 1920’s America as a whole, in particular the disappearance of the American Dream in an era of material excess. On the surface, ‘The Great Gatsby’ is a story of the eternal love between a man and a woman. However, in reality the main theme of the novel involves a much larger, less romantic outlook. The 1920’s was an era of decayed social and moral values, which means that the idea of The American Dream was different to what it is now. When World War 1 ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who fought the war became intensely disillusioned. The rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden increase in the national wealth and a new found materialism, leading the younger generation to pursue a life of extravagance...
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...(Buffy the Vampire). The book, The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, has many significant elements and components throughout the story to enhance the theme, however, throughout the story, one of the most prominent, is the Green Light. The green light aids the theme of “when in love, one must suffer”. The light symbolizes an unattainable dream of true love between Gatsby and Daisy, as well as the sense of hope it gave Gatsby about Daisy, as she will remain in his life for as long as the light shines. The shining, green light across the bay, is a symbolical figure for Daisy, giving Gatsby a...
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