Valerie Elliott
Ms. McCombe
English 11
9 April 2015
Literary Analysis of The Great Gatsby
Today the dreams of many Americans are solely based on love wealth, and fame. Many people came to America in search of a better life and in hopes of achieving the American Dream which was the engine driving our country since its birth. During the 10920s the economy was in full swing and people began buying stocks. Society during the 1920s was influenced by the American dream by basing their lives on wealth and love. In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s implies that the American Dream was only based on love and being rich, through his use of setting, symbolism, and characterization Fitzgerald shows that the American Dream was based on wealth through his use of setting. There are numerous settings in the novel that show the hardship of the American dream. A lot of the story takes place in East Egg or in West Egg which are both located in New York and early in the story the difference between both places is made clear. “ My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season” (Fitzgerald 5). People with old money live in East Egg and people with new money live in West Egg and Gatsby is considered new money. “Nick Carraway, the novel's narrator, points out that his rented summer cottage is located next door to Gatsby's mansion, but is still located in less fashionable West Egg” (Verderame). Through the use of setting, Fitzgerald shows us how society is separated based on who was wealthier and who was poorer by separating East Egg, West Egg, and The Valley of Ashes. Fitzgerald uses characterization to show how wealth can affect people’s views on the American dream. Many rich people tried to outdo each other when it came to the 1920’s and that is what Gatsby tried to do, thinking he could win Daisy back. “‘I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West- all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition’” (Fitzgerald 65). Gatsby does not think that Nick will know he is lying about where he went to school but he does. “Always perceptive, Nick senses something false about his new friend, something slightly absurd in the formality of his speech, for example, and this realization continues to be reinforced. In their next meeting, Gatsby lies to Nick about his background, saying he comes from wealthy Midwesterners and was educated at Oxford when he really was not educated there” (James). It is proven that you cannot buy someone’s love and “Both Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, Daisy's husband, possessed wealth. Gatsby at least used his wealth to seek out beauty and claim it for himself. Buchanan the lecher lacked any larger goals” (Trask) prove it. Through his use of symbolism, Fitzgerald shows exactly how the American dream was only based on wealth and love. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock stood for his dream which was to have Daisy just like he wanted five years ago as well. Fitzgerald shows this when he says “As I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it” (Fitzgerald 180). Everything Gatsby does is to try and create the past he had when he and Daisy were in love and he did not quite reach his goal but he was so close. “Wonder drove Gatsby "a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it ... Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. Our pursuit of it, Nick says, is why ‘we beat on’, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" (Bloom). Through his use of
The Great Gatsby does not adequately reflect the American Dream. Everyone has a dream. In the book The Great Gatsby the American Dream revolves around money. Money is very important on an Americans image at this period of time. One of the main characters was Daisy. She loved her husband Tom, but she also loved Gatsby. There was a big difference in “old” money and “new” money. Gatsby was new money, and Daisy was old money so because of that, if people would have found out about Daisy and Gatsby, her…
25 March 2015 The Great Gatsby Essay In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby , Daisy is a perfect model of The Lost Generation through her loss of faith for finding love, confusion about where and who she belongs to, and her reckless driving which causes chaos. Daisy does not have much faith when it comes to believing and finding her true love. Her first love was Gatsby, and they were madly in love. When Jordan Baker describes Daisy and Gatsby’s relationship, she says, “[Gatsby] looked at Daisy while she was speaking…
Great Gatsby Essay 3. Show how the author’s use of imagery and/or symbolism reveals them OR reinforces aspects of character in a work studied in this course. The Great Gatsby, written by F.Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel about the love story of the main character Gatsby during the 1920s. In the novel, the author uses colours to reinforce the aspects of characters. Each colour has symbolic meaning from the beginning of the novel, but as the story develops and as the true nature of characters are revealed…
The Great Gatsby Essay In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, the main character Jay Gatsby attempts to rekindle his long lost romantic relationship by flaunting his new found wealth and success. Furthermore, he declines from his deliberately crafted image of glory to his exposed, gruesome, and lonely death. The story of the novel is really the collapse of Gatsby’s image, and the various ways in which the true Jay Gatz is uncovered. All through the novel, Jay Gatsby…
The Great Gatsby Essay By- Happy Bhoombla English- 3A Date-9/28/10 The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a story about a wealthy man named Gatsby. Gatsby lives a luxuriant life in West Egg of New York. Gatsby’s wealth has an unknown secret because nobody seems to know where his wealth emerged from. Despite of having so much fortune, Gatsby’s true American dream has not been achieved. In the great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald develops Gatsby as a failed American dream to show the…
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English Matters III 54 BIRTH, LIFE AND DISILLUSIONMENT OF THE AMERICAN DREAM IN THE GREAT GATSBY Ivan Štrba Abstract: Gatsby’s dream might be described as the American dream of success. It is the dream of rising, of amassing a great fortune that will assure a life of luxuriant ease, power, and beauty in an ideal world untroubled by care and devoted to the enjoyment of everlasting pleasure with nothing to intervene between wish and fulfillment. It is a naïve dream based on the fallacious assumptions…
THE GREAT GATSBY.. In the Great Gatsby the story is narrated in the past tense and seen through the eyes of Mr Nick Carraway.He is a young man from Minnestota, who after serving in World War 1, went on to New York to learn the bond business. He moves to the West Egg and soon becomes friends with his neighbour, the mysterious Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald, the author uses the the settings of the East and West Egg to present the differences in the classes and the demise of the American dream in the…
Read great gatsby -class topic review 1)visual culture as a discipline and as a subject- in essence visual is superseding the print culture today Some critics have talked about the end of the age of the book- many aspects people are living through a screen There was an recent image that everyone saw of white house protest, rally ted cruise and sarah palin leading group of people toward whitehouse, man standing outside the whitehouse with the confederate flag with this group- confederate flag…
11 (3) 22 April 2013 Lies and Deceit Frederick Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby portrays a rich man who obsesses over the love of his past and as a result ends his life. Lies and deceit take a major role during the novel, the biggest lie of them all being Mr. Jay Gatsby himself. All humans are innately dishonest and superficial which reveals the characters true disposition and as a result leads to discontent and in Gatsbys case, death. Frederick uses Symbolism, Characterization, and Diction to…