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Theme of isolation in literature
Theme of isolation in literature
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Isolation is a major theme in Lord of the Flies, Great Gatsby and Native Son. The character’s isolation affects the characters’ free will and ambition in all three novels. By analyzing and comparing the effect of free will, ambition, and isolation on each character, the cause of their downfall will be made clear.
In Native Son the black population’s isolation from the whites plays a major role in Bigger’s development and viewpoint. He is placed at a great disadvantage by his race and is keenly aware of the unfairness of his situation. His isolation drives him to furious helplessness. He is confined to a small portion of the city where he feels the constant superiority of the whites. Everywhere he looks he can see their power. Whites own most of the
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To his guests he seems godlike and unapproachable. Although Gatsby throws large extravagant parties, he doesn’t seem to have any close friends. Gatsby is a mystery to his party guests, no one seems to know the the truth about Gatsby. Rumors are often spread about him but none are confirmed. The characters in this novel are isolated from each other through dishonesty and cheating. Each character appears shallow, concerned only with their own success, happiness, and wealth. Nick notices that Gatsby doesn’t drink and watches his guests from a distance. Gatsby purposely isolates himself from his guests at his party, perhaps because he is aware of the shallowness of his guests or perhaps because he is uninterested in anyone’s life but Daisy’s. Nick discovers that Gatsby’s dream is to reunite with Daisy. Although Gatsby is aware that Daisy is married Gatsby, he believes that he can sway her with his wealth. He is not concerned with how his desire may affect anyone else. Although the characters in this novel are not physically isolated, they are isolated by their lack of ability to connect with and care about
“ Its attitude is one of disillusionment and detachment; Fitzgerald is still able to evoke the glitter of the 1920s but he is no longer dazzled by it; he sees its underlying emptiness and impoverishment” (Trendell 23)The story is narrated from the point of view of Nick, one of Gatsby’s friends. The problematic and hopeless romantic, Gatsby, sets out to fulfill his dream in acquiring Daisy, his lifelong love, through his many tactics and ideas. Gatsby is introduced extending his arms mysteriously toward a green light in the direction of the water. Later, Gatsby is shown to be the host of many parties for the rich and Nick is invited to one of these parties where Gatsby and Nick meet. When Gatsby later confesses his love for Daisy he explains she was a loved one who was separated from him and hopes to get her again explained when he says, “I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool”(Fitzgerald 56). There are several obstacles that Gatsby must overcome and the biggest one that is Daisy’s current fiancé but that still does not get in the way of him trying to recover Daisy’s old feelings. His attempts are made through money and wealth because he tries to buy her love back instead of letting it happen naturally.
loses sight of who they are. Gatsby's house and parties were a part of the
In Native Son, the character Bigger Thomas is highly oppressed and treated as an outcast in society. This relationship with society is nearly identical to that of the creature in Frankenstein. Thomas did not choose which race he would be born as, nor did he choose to live in a time of oppression. Despite all this, Bigger is still treated as inferior to white people throughout the novel. After being raised in an environment in which he was told he would never be able to amount to his dreams, Bigger eventually stretches past his limits and becomes enraged.
He explores options to seize his environment, which is done through violence and defiance in every position. From the very beginning of Native Son, Bigger Thomas’s actions and thoughts convey a sense of alienation and limitation. The title of Wright’s novel suggests that Bigger is a son of the United States of
Bigger is consumed with fear and anger for whites because racism has limited his options in life and has subjected him and his family into poverty-stricken communities with little hope for change. The protagonist is ashamed of his family’ dark situation and is afraid of the control whites have over his life. His lack of control over his life makes him violent and depressed, which makes Bigger further play into the negative stereotypes that put him into the box of his expected role in a racist society. Wright beautifully displays the struggle that blacks had for identity and the anger blacks have felt because of their exclusion from society. Richard Wright's Native Son displays the main character's struggle of being invisible and alienated in an ignorant and blatantly racist American society negatively influenced by the "white man".
Gatsby displays his new money by throwing large, extravagant parties. The old money establishment of East Egg think Gatsby does this to show off his new money, but his motif is different. Jordan states, “I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties” (Fitzgerald 64). This shows that even Daisy’s friends know what the parties are centered around. Gatsby waits for Daisy to walk in one night, wanting her to see everything he has become, but she never does. He does it all for her: the money, the house, the cars, the criminal activities, everything. It takes Gatsby finding Daisy, to get her there. Gatsby tells Nick in a panic, “She didn’t like it,” he insisted. “She didn’t have a good time” (Fitzgerald 87). Ironically, Daisy does not enjoy the parties as much as Gatsby wants her too. She loves his new found wealth, but that still is not enough for her. Gatsby’s lack of understanding concerning the attraction of his money is described as follows:
... had thrown all of those glamorous parties in the summer it meant nothing after he died. At the beginning of the book nick says ‘’ sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all’’. The very depressing and even ironic thing about Jay Gatsby was that even though hundreds of faces where in his house at once, he was still alone. He had seldom friends and even fewer people who knew who he truly was. All that time he let his life become consumed by the materialistic show he put on for daisy, a women who really only cared for herself. He too was becoming a superficial snob like those around him. After his death a Meer three guest showed up to his funeral, proving that Mr. Jay Gatsby the man with everything truly had nothing. The man who chased a dream that was never reached.
Nick Carraway is Jay Gatsby’s closest and only companion. Nick said, “I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited—they went there” (Fitzgerald 45). Gatsby did not have friends that appreciated him enough to comprehend his inner being (Fitzgerald 45). When Gatsby grinned, Nick Carraway could instantly feel comforted and sympathized the way a real friend should feel. According to Gilbey, “But with the sound of Nick's description of that smile: ‘It seemed to understand and believe in you just as you wanted to be understood and believed in’” (Gilbey). Nick Carraway held several unspoken and interesting conversations with Gatsby (Vancheri). Jay Gatsby displayed his feelings and experiences from his past to Nick Carraway. Gatsby can trust Nick with his emotional memories towards Daisy. Jay Gatsby explained his real background to Nick wanting him to overlook all the rumors and lies people have babbled about (“Great”, Scott).
In “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, the main characters foolishly try to control time for their own benefits, but they all fail and die in isolation. These stories reveal the vulnerability of humanity compared to nature.
In the novel the Native Son, the author Richard Wright explores racism and oppression in American society. Wright skillfully merges his narrative voice into Bigger Thomas so that the reader can also feel how the pressure and racism affects the feelings, thoughts, self-image, and life of a Negro person. Bigger is a tragic product of American imperialism and exploitation in a modern world. Bigger embodies one of humankind’s greatest tragedies of how mass oppression permeates all aspects of the lives of the oppressed and the oppressor, creating a world of misunderstanding, ignorance, and suffering.
“The worst cruelty that can be inflicted on a human being is isolation,” stated Sukarno. This quote indicates that isolation causes physical and emotional conflicts within and between people, and that it can have a brutal impact. The relationship between the themes of separation and isolation is cause and effect, because isolation is the effect of separation, yet isolation can cause separation as well. Both isolation and separation are able to provoke feelings of low self-esteem in a person, and this idea is expressed thoroughly by the novel, The Great Gatsby, and the poem, “(love song, with two goldfish)”. The authors produced main characters that had a sense of loneliness and depression as the stories progressed. They declared that separation
At the end of the book, it is revealed that all of Tom, Daisy, and Nick are extremely careless. Nick’s carelessness detriments his reliability as a narrator. Because of Nick’s deep and familiar connection with Gatsby, Gatsby is “the exception” and Nick cannot be a reliable narrator towards him. Nick really admires and appreciates Gatsby as a friend, although it seems that Gatsby may not feel nth same way ads Nick. Gatsby may have befriended Nick solely because of his connection with Daisy. Nicks obsession with Gatsby and Gatsby’s obsession with
On the surface, the reader meant to feel apathetic towards Bigger. His personality is not one that people feel naturally empathetic for; even in today’s world, Bigger would be written off as a “bum” and “the reason why Civil Rights is not taken seriously”. He does not fit into the mold of what white society wants black people to be; some people, like the Daltons, want black people to be grateful towards them for the “donations” they gave, and others like Britten and Buckley want black people to know their place in this world, which is below white people. This may seem counterintuitive to Wright’s goal as a Civil Rights activist and active supporter of Communism, and maybe to some degree it is, but the purpose of writing Bigger as a person whose only method of dealing with conflict is violence is to prove that it is not right to pick and choose what black lives to care about. If Wright made a character that, in the eyes of most (white) readers, would’ve been less of a “menace to society” he would’ve been watering down his argument. The point of Native Son is that all black people, whether they be submissive or assertive, spiteful or
Gatsby downfall came when he sacrificed his morality to attain wealth. Gatsby realises that the illusion of his dream with Daisy, demands wealth to become priority, and thus wealth becomes the desire overriding his need for her [Daisy’s] love. Gatsby claims to others that he has inherited his wealth, but Nick discovers "[h]is parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people" (Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, pg 104) and that Gatsby has lied about his past. In a society that relies on luxuries, Gatsby throws parties to attract Daisy’s attention. Also, Gatsby expresses that same need to keep busy, just as Daisy does, in a society of the elite. Nick describes Gatsby as "never quite still, there was always a tapping foot somewhere or the impatient opening and closing of a hand" (Fitzgerald, pg 68). Gatsby fills his house "full of interesting people...who do interesting things" (Fitzgerald, pg 96). Gatsby's dream is doomed to failure in that he has lost the fundamental necessities to experience love, such as honesty and moral integrity.
Gatsby was someone who did achieve this dream. His intense drive and determination to achieve this dream is the love he has for Daisy. Through the process of achieving this dream, he never forgot about Daisy as everything he was doing is for her. After he achieved this dream, he was using his wealth to throw parties in hopes that one day, Daisy would walk in and they would meet again. Regardless of what others say, Gatsby has to marry Daisy and spend the rest of his life with her. When Daisy, Tom, Nick, Jordan and Gatsby were all in New York, Gatsby forces Daisy to say that she has never loved Tom, but she could not because it was not true and Gatsby was unable to accept this fact. This also shows that he has no respect for Tom, regardless of his rank. Gatsby is also very rebellious as he is involved with illegal business and bootlegging. In addition to this, he is socially isolated as he does not have any friends besides Nick Carraway. This demonstrates the trait of him having an intense drive and determination to live out his