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Discuss jay gatsby's ambition
Gatsby past and future
Gatsby past and future
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Whenever a prospective writer enters their first workshop the golden rule is write what you know, even when it comes to less than realistic texts like Science Fiction. There might not be humanlike androids walking around, but writers can use their personal feelings of oppression and isolation to make the story flow and feel realistic. Realistic aspects of fiction is what makes stories attainable. This is even true when it comes to writers from the early 20th century; “Babylon Revisited” not only stands out a national story with the fall from the grace that was the Jazz Age, but is also the personal story of Fitzgerald’s fall from a Gatsby character to Charlie Wales.
The 1920’s was an age of prohibition, illegal parties and flapper culture. This era of time is marked as the Jazz Age, because of the big parties, fluidity of jazz music, and fast moving cultural boom. As a writer for this Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgerald created Jay Gatsby to be his symbol; “’Gatsby?’ demanded Daisy. ‘What Gatsby?’” (Fitzgerald 11). Gatsby was Fitzgerald’s enigmatic symbol of the American Dream, the symbol of a boisterous age, and most importantly an allegory for the decadence that America found in the time period. “Gatsby epitomizes the mystery and glamour of the future dream; without question, the struggle to fulfill a lofty unrealized conception of self is prominent American Values…” (Wilson). He was a metaphor to the struggle of becoming something in a society which declares that it is possible to climb up the ladder of culture. He stood as a symbol to the, what could be, of a self-made man. He was also a tragic character, “[he was], a figure marked by failure and shadowed by death throughout most of the novel, nevertheless, [he] achieves a form of...
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...g as you accept the past as it is.
Works Cited
""Babylon Revisited" F. Scott Fitzgerald." Shot Story Criticism. Vol. 31. Detroit: Gale, 1999. 1-38. Gale. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
Baym, Nina. "Babylon Revisited." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 675-89. Print.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.
Gross, Seymour L. "Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited"" National Council of Teachers of English 25.2 (1963): 128-35. Jstor. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. .
Van Der Crabben, Jan. "Babylon." Ancient History Encyclopedia. TSO Host, 28 Apr. 2011. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
Will, Barbra. ""The Great Gatsby" and the Obscene Word." College Literature 32.4 (2005): 125-44. 2005. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
Wilson, Robert N. "Fitzgerald as Icarus." The Antioch Review 17.4 (1957): 481-92. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.
Dao, Bei. “Notes from the City of the Sun.” One World of Literature. Ed. Lim, Shirley G., and Spencer, Norman A. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. 231-233. Print.
Gindin, James. "Gods and Fathers in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Novels." Modern Critical Views: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1985.
In the book Alas, Babylon, the author, Pat Frank, discusses the condition of the human race. Mainly, his view differs from others because rather than write about the countries in a nuclear war, he writes about people living in the countries that are involved in that war. His discusses these peoples’ progress, both technological and moral, as well as their use of power. These topics make the book as intriguing as it is to read.
Babylon Revisited is made up of different characters with different ideologies in life. The Protagonist, Charlie is a reformed alcoholic who had come back to take his daughter. Marion is Charlie's sister- in - law who dislikes him because she thinks he caused her sister's death. I think Marion is emotionally disturbed. She overacts to things that happen in everyday life. Lincoln is Marion's husband .He tries to keep things as even as possible for Marion. Loraine and Duncan are ghosts from Charlie's past and they came to haunt him at the end of the story.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “Babylon Revisited”. Short Fiction: Classic and Contemporary. 6th ed. Ed. Charles Bohner and Lyman Grant. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
Sutton, Brian. "Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby." Explicator 59.1 (Fall 2000): 37-39. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Linda Pavlovski. Vol. 157. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Feb. 2011.
The 1920’s was a time of prosperity, woman’s rights, and bootleggers. F. Scott Fitzgerald truly depicts the reality of this era with The Great Gatsby. Jay Gatsby, an enormously wealthy man, is famous for his extravagant parties and striking residence. However, this is all that is known about Gatsby. Even his closest friends continue to wonder what kind of man Gatsby actually is. The mysteriousness of Gatsby is demonstrated by conceivable gossip, his random departures, and the missing parts of his past.
Considered as the defining work of the 1920s, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was published in 1925, when America was just coming out of one of the most violent wars in the nation’s history. World War 1 had taken the lives of many young people who fought and sacrificed for our country on another continent. The war left many families without fathers, sons, and husbands. The 1920s is an era filled with rich and dazzling history, where Americans experienced changes in lifestyle from music to rebellion against the United States government. Those that are born into that era grew up in a more carefree, extravagant environment that would affect their interactions with others as well as their attitudes about themselves and societal expectations. In this novel, symbols are used to represent the changing times and create a picture of this era for generations to come. The history, settings, characters, and symbols embedded in The Great Gatsby exemplify life in America during the 1920s.
Ornstein, Robert "Scott Fitzgerald's Fable of East and West" College English, Vol. 18, No. 3 `
Bewley, Marius. "Scott Fitzgerald's Criticism of America." The Sewanee Review 62.2 (1954): 223-46. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
Bewley, Marius. "Scott Fitzgerald's Criticism of America." Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Great Gatsby. Ed. Ernest Lockridge. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. 37-53.
Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.
The 1920’s were a time of social and technological change. After World War II, the Victorian values were disregarded, there was an increase in alcohol consumption, and the Modernist Era was brought about. The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a perfect presentation of the decaying morals of the Roaring Twenties. Fitzgerald uses the characters in the novel--specifically the Buchanans, Jordan Baker, and Gatsby’s partygoers--to represent the theme of the moral decay of society.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the most compelling twentieth century writers, (Curnutt, 2004). The year 1925 marks the year of the publication of Fitzgerald’s most credited novel, The Great Gatsby (Bruccoli, 1985). With its critiques of materialism, love and the American Dream (Berman, 1996), this dramatic idyllic novel, (Harvey, 1957), although poorly received at first, is now highly regarded as Fitzgerald’s finest work (Rohrkemper, 1985) and is his publisher, Scribner 's most popular title, (Donahue, 2013). The novel achieved it’s status as one of the most influential novels in American history around the nineteen fifties and sixties, over ten years after Fitzgerald 's passing, (Ibid, 1985)