...Running head: THE GREAT GATSBY ESSAY #2 1 The Great Gatsby Essay #2 Logan Daniel Laabs Madonna University English 3020: Major American Writers (Tuesdays) THE GREAT GATSBY ESSAY #2 2 The Great Gatsby Essay #2 The Great Gatsby takes place over the summer of 1922 and is set in the area around Long Island, New York. At first glance Fitzgerald makes a superficial statement about romanticism; Gatsby’s love for Daisy and how that love was destroyed in 1919 when Gatsby left for the war and instead married Tom Buchanan. The better part of the story shows Fitzgerald’s real theme, the decline of the American Dream in the 1920s during a time when prosperity and material excess was at an all high. Fitzgerald renders the 1920s as a time for low social and moral values which is demonstrated by the greed, pessimism, and need to ascend to power. An example of this is the large parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night in order to impress others. The American dream seems to fade away with the need for wealth and pleasure dominating more moral objectives. This seemed to only intensify after World War I when young Americans came back home after witnessing brutal carnage. Another factor that lead Americans to desire wealth was the rise in stock market, which could have lead many people to easily acquire a small fortune themselves. Furthermore, crime was at an all-time high due to the flourishing underworld were bootleg liquor was in massive demand by the rich...
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...The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (published on April 10, 1925) is one novel that anyone would regret not reading. It has gone down in history as one of the most important works in American literature — and, to many, the great American novel. Fitzgerald has succeeded in offering up commentary on a variety of themes — justice, power, greed, betrayal, the American dream and so on through Nick as a narrator. There are two most impressive symbols in the novel. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock and the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg remains obsessing in readers’ minds. The first is a perfect example of the manner in which characters The Great Gatsby. Situated at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsby’s West Egg lawn, the green light represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, to whom “ he bought house to be near her, he threw all those parties hoping she would wander in one night”. In Chapter 1 he reaches toward the green light on the other side of the river, in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream: “all man are created equal and that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. Though, The Great Gatsby illustrates the downgrade value of American Dream, instead of...
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...The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald Chapter 6 Color Analysis May 24, 2011 Jay Gatsby | -“torn green jersey” (104): The color green symbolizes wealth and money. At this time in the book, Gatsby is working for Dan Cody, the guy who greatly supplies his wealth. The fact that the jersey is torn signifies the hard work that Gatsby demonstrates which then leads to him reaping the benefits of hard work. This section furthers to talk about his parents and how they were “unsuccessful farm people” also that Gatsby “was a son of God.” This is to say that although Gatsby’s parents were hard workers, they were unsuccessful in reaching their ideal “American dream”. Gatsby is currently making those dreams happen. He was helping to complete his father’s business, and is therefore relatively “a son of God.”---- The green jersey also symbolizes the new life that he yearns for that is full of wealth. Right at this stage in the book, Gatsby is called different names: Gatsby, James Gats, Jay Gatsby, young Gats: Each name recognizes a different stages of growth towards the Wealthy life.-“His brown, hardened body lived naturally through the half fierce, half lazy work of the bracing days.” (104): Brown is the color of earth, and of “getting down and dirty”. It further symbolizes the humility Gatsby underwent while with Dan Cody. Because the idea of wealth plagued Gatsby (“his heart was in a constant turbulent riot.”), he reaped the fruit of his labor as discussed with the color change discussed...
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...5 October 2014 The Great Gatsby Outline: THESIS: Fitzgerald describes the American Dream as unachievable, and chasing after it ends up doing more destruction to oneself, and ultimately, everyone comes up short in the end. I. George Wilson tried to live his life with honestly and morality. A. Wilsons wife cheats on him with a wealthy man B. Wilson lives in a terrible part of New York known as “The Valley of Ashes”. C. Wilson is treated like a peasant by the rich and by his wife because he is seen as a “lesser human being”. II. “The American dream” is dead. A. Co-founder of Facebook; Mark Zuckerberg burn others in order to make his billions. B. Millions of Americans being paid eight dollars and fifty cents an hour is not “The American Dream”. III. There is such thing as “The American Dream” if most successful and wealthy men made their earnings by cheating. THESIS: Fitzgerald characterizes the “Rich” as having more advantages and power than the poor, showing how unfair it is in the life of a common man. i. The rich can get away with anything because they have money and power. A. Gatsby is pulled over by police officer for speeding and then applogizes because he recognizes who Gatsby is. B. Tom treats Wilson like his peseant because he feels he has more power. C. Daisy gets away with murder. ii. Power is one of the many privileges the rich have. A. 16 year old Ethan Couch gets 10 years' probation for killing 4 people...
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...The Great Gatsby People spend a portion of their lives trying to better themselves. Many people set goals as motivation for something they would like to achieve. Having goals was definitely a factor in the lives of Jay Gatsy, Tom Buchanan, and Nick Carraway. Jay Gatsby has the goal of being a success and getting Daisy for his own and admitting she has never loved Tom. Tom Buchanan has the goal of running down Gatsby and proving his illegal ways. Nick Carraway also has the goal of being a success but his main goal is to keep his morals and honesty. All three men work to achieve their goals. Some succeed fully while some only succeed partially. The goals of these three men play a major role in the novel The Great Gastby. Jay Gatsby had the goal of becoming a success and getting Daisy for himself and having her admit that she has never loved Tom. Jay Gatsby has only partially met his goals. Jay Gatsby met Daisy when he was a poor solider with the name of James Gatz. At first he thought of her as just a woman to use but than he discovered he loved her. She was part of the blue bloods and her social class did not approve of them together, her parents would not even let her say goodbye to him when he left for war. Gatsby knew in order to have Daisy he would have to make himself rich and successful. This motivated him to change his name to Jay Gatsby and make a whole new person out of himself. Gatsby became involved in illegal activities such as bootlegging and became rich. He than...
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...have taken from our sheet and mad our own. Mr. Kasten suggested discussing why a character would be considered one of the greatest literary characters. I instead want to discuss why the Great Gastby is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written. When I was little, I loved to read, every Sunday my dad would take me to the library and I would get around 10 books or so that I would devour. Now this happened every week from the time I was in first grade to the time I was in 6th grade or so. My advanced reading skills would draw me to the young adult section, wher as a first grader I read the Princess diaries, a book that was meant for kids 13 and up. This was not me, I was around six years old. But every week I would still be drawn to the young adult section with books about the glitz and the glamour, these were books that you would never find in the kids section. Every week my dad would ask me : Why don’t you want to read any classics and I responded “because they are boring.” But that changed when I picked up the Great Gatsby...
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...Pursuing the American Dream The Great Gatsby, written by Scott F. Fitzgerald in 1925, follows the life of the various characters that lived in West Egg, a fictional town on Long Island. It is narrated by Nicholas “Nick” Caraway, a Yale graduate and one of the main characters. By the way the book is written, one can deduce that Nick lived through all the events, or wrote what others told him about the events he was not present in, and wrote the book by end of it all. Its main theme is the pursuit of the American Dream, and what characters have to do to reach it, and how it can all crumble down. Basically, in this essay I will show the different ‘American dreams’ that are strongly projected in this novel. The first dream, the one with the strongest portrayal, was the desire of escalating in the social status ladder. There were characters with a high social status for their family’s name, like Tom Buchanan who inherited his family fortune. He was described as the kind of person that thinks money allows him to treat people as the lowest scum; even though his mannerism and tastes were exquisite, his attitude towards those who were not on the same status as him was detestable. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” (Page 188, The Great Gastby) Tom counts as an example of the...
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...found that people who lose their jobs suffer lasting damage to their earning potential, their health and the prospects of their children. The longer it takes to find a job the deeper the damage appears to be. In a article by the Washington Post The-long term impact of unemployment it has been found that people who are unemployed eventually dip into their savings, retirement funds, and in many cases borrow money to pay rent, bills, and buy the basic necessities to survive such as groceries and everyday household products. With the prices of gas, food and many other products on the rise it seems like people who are unemployed will continue to struggle even after finding a job. According to studies nothing has been seen like this since the Great Depression when unemployment was at its highest in American history. Many people will accept a lower paying job just to make ends meet regardless of their potential and qualifications for their career field. The Yale economist Lisa Kahn has found similar long-term earnings loss among the college graduates who enter the workforce during a bad economy. Being a parent of three children and another three step-children these findings are truly heart breaking. I am one of the few lucky...
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...Text, Film, and Historical Fact: Soucing “The Name of the Rose” 1. Evaluate the following statement: The film “The Name of the Rose” is an accurate portrayal of the lives of medieval monks. “The Name of The Rose” is a historical murder mystery combining fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. The movie is very appropriate for historical class, because it simply describes the debate on the poverty of the clergy, but not converted beyond recognition. The scenes of the life in Abbey describe challenges and promises of monastic life. Such characters as dithering abbot and fat cellarer, quirky herbalist and dedicated illuminator demonstrate the variety of occupation and different personalities within the walls of the monastery. The scenes where after the second murder even the abbey became under the apprehension that they are experiencing the last days before the coming of Antichrist, is a perfect evidence that in the fourteen century many experienced divorce from the scholarly world turned to superstition, heretic movements, or apocalyptical outbursts. Moreover, the movie accurately described some parts of daily life medieval monks. The dining sessions, scenes of prayers, psalms and hymns were showed properly. Medieval monks devoted their lives to strict routine and discipline of life. For example, the part where elderly blind monk was angry at other monks because they were laughing claiming that monks never fool themselves. In the movie there...
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...During the 1800s women who went to prison were considered to be guilty both under the moral law and criminal law. The reason for this is because of the fact that she broke the moral laws society sets for women as well as the criminal law in place for all. There were many ways that criminals were punished during the 1800s; hanging, burning, banishment and slavery. The ones that were committing adultery or even killing her husband were automatically burned alive. Those that had only committed a misdemeanor crime were punished by things such as whippings, branding, and being placed in the stocks. There were even social punishments that were put in place just to promote public humiliation and shame to themselves and their families. There was even a mask like cage was placed over the woman’s face so that their husbands and fathers could punish them for being outspoken, gossiping, and disobeying. It was during the late 18th and 19th century there was a complete change in the way that juvenile criminals were treated. The first was that penitentiary life was extremely hard on the youth that were being imprisoned and therefore doing more harm than good. The second was that when the youth were in the prison with the older adults, they were learning bad behavior and habits from them which would cause further problems later on. The last is that the young people would only be rehabilitated if they were treated better by people that understood the children and how they behave. If there was...
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...AFTERSHOCK Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown Kevin Ung Economics 309, Fall 2010, Section 2 Professor N. Pulchritudoff December 9, 2010 In 2006, with home values high and credit flowing, authors David Wiedemer, Robert Wiedemer, and Cindy Spitzer accurately predicted the popping of the housing bubble, the collapse of the private debt bubble, the fall of the stock market bubble, the decline of consumer spending, and the widespread pain all of this was about to inflict on the rest of our economy. How did they get it so right while others got it so wrong? The authors saw a fundamental underlying pattern that others were—and, unfortunately, are still—missing. It may seem like the worst has come and gone, but it hasn't, say the authors in this new book. Things are not going back to how they were before. In Aftershock, the authors offer the definitive look at what is still to come—and what investors must do to protect themselves. This is not merely a down market cycle, the authors explain, nor is it a typical recession. It is a multi-bubble economy that is being hit by a "Bubblequake"—and the coming Aftershock will be far more dangerous. Aftershock details the next bubbles about to burst, including the Dollar Bubble and the Government Debt Bubble, while there's still time to protect your assets and position yourself to survive and thrive in this dangerous, yet potentially profitable new environment. They offer specific advice on how to profit...
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...Progressive Era through the Great Depression Latisha Blacknall Dr. James Allen HIS105 Contemporary US History November 5, 2012 In American History there were many turning points that occurred from the Progressive Era through the Great Depression. It was during this period that many historical events shaped Americans current society, politics, economy and culture. The progressive era was a time period that American people needed. When society was going through urbanization, this movement was needed to survive the harsh conditions they were forced to live and work in. If it had not been for the muckrakers, the progressive era might not have received the attention that was needed to become a success. They wrote newspaper columns about the unsatisfactory conditions people were forced to live and work in while the government did nothing. The progressive era also brought awareness to the importance of education and started the reformation of the system. It was during this time that more schools were built and teachers’ salaries were raised. There was two major turning points in the in progressive era, the first is the Women Suffrage Movement. The National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which was founded in 1890, the second is The National Women’s Party (NWP) which was founded in 1913 and was led by Alice Paul. NAWSA worked many states to try and convince opponents that women were a valuable asset to society and deserved the right to vote. Alice Paul was more...
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...“Sweat” and the “Man Who Was Almost a Man” Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright were distinguished black writers from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Coming only two generations after slavery, this was an amazing resurgence of black creativity in all fields from writing, art, dance, and music to philosophy, history, and the social and natural sciences. The Harlem Renaissance died out with the Great Depression, but it has left behind a lasting legacy for all Americans including these powerful stories. One idea that emerged from the Harlem Renaissance was called "double consciousness." This theory developed by writer-activist W. E. B. DuBois articulated the psychological effects of living under racism. DuBois's theory focused on the ways that blacks who were confronted with stereotypes but also were aware of a reality of black life much different from the stereotypes lived with both of these conflicting modes of thought. Double consciousness is an idea that seeks to explain the effects of segregation and racism in the daily lives of blacks, and can be seen in the choices Harlem Renaissance artists made. Harlem renaissance authors wrote during a time of self-awareness, which also included an awareness of self as perceived by others, primarily through the eyes of racism. The language choices made by these authors reflect this duality, as the characters "code switch" (a linguistic term for the way people use both dialect and Standard English in different circumstances) between...
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...Compare and Contrast: Jay Gatsby and Dick Diver Griffin Gilmore Mrs. Clark Humanities 28 November 2012 In the novels Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night by Scott Fitzgerald the two main characters, Jay and Dick both face problems in achieving their dreams and face much adversity trying to achieve it. In both novels pursuing their dreams leads to their demise due to their failure to realize that success is from within, not from the superficial qualities that the society around them looks up to. The first difference between Gatsby and Dick is how they value money. Jay Gatsby believes that with money he can buy his happiness, he plans on using his money to fall in love with him and have her leave her current husband (Tom) to be with himself. Dick on the other hand doesn't like all the wealth of Nicole and trues to distance himself way from it. When Nicole and himself start out they are living off of his few thousand a year. Nicole's parents then buy them their own clinic. Much like Gatsby his wealth by no means that he is happy. “had wedded a desire for money to an essentially unacquisitive nature … he had never felt more sure of himself … than at the time of his marriage to Nicole. Yet he has been swallowed up like a gigolo, and somehow permitted his arsenal to be locked up in the Warren safety deposit vaults.” This just goes to show how even with their almost endless income, they were not satisfied, which properly illustrates the time period which took place then,...
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...Themes Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained...
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