Comparison Between the Great Gatsby and Ebb Sonnets Essay

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‘A deeper understanding of aspirations and identity emerges from considering the parallels between the Great Gatsby and Browning’s poetry’. Compare how these texts explore aspirations and identity?

Both the texts ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F.Scott Fitzgerald and ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning explore the ideas of aspirations and identity developing a deeper understanding of the texts. Both texts share these ideas through the characters and the values of idealism and hope, and personal voice and identity. Although the two texts are separated in time and context, they both reflect the world of the text and composer.

‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ was written during the 19th Century in the period known as the

The character Gatsby’s’ cars, lavish parties, reckless conduct and carelessness is all part of this atmosphere of enjoyment in the context of the 1920’s.

Like Browning, Gatsby also shares similar aspirations, also longing for an ideal type of love that is not ordinary. But Gatsby’s idea of love is simply to recreate the past that he had with Daisy, whereas Browning explains the type of love she demands at length. Nick, the narrator describes Gatsby as a “dreamer”, a man who believes in the love he creates in his imagination an ideal world with his ideal woman Daisy, and then attempts to live out the fantasy in reality. His love for Daisy is pure but obsessive, primarily based on the relationship that he had with her 5 years ago “committing himself to the following of a grail”. Nick the narrator states that “Daisy vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing. He felt married to her that was all.” Nick seems to be implying that Daisy appears to be incapable of possessing real love. She contributes nothing to the relationship and will always return to Tom her husband, despite Gatsby’s greater, genuine love for her. Gatsby’s relationship with daisy does not ever really start and in the end he meets a violent death because of his hope. This clearly explores the idea of aspirations in the text.

Like Browning’s sonnets, The Great Gatsby also