The Great Gatsby and the Destruction of a Romantic Ideal In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story of a romantic ideal and its ultimate destruction by the inexorable rot and decay of modern life. The story is related by Nick Carraway, who has taken a modest rental house next door to Jay Gatsby's mansion. Jay Gatsby is a young millionaire who achieves fabulous wealth for the sole purpose of recapturing the love of his former sweetheart, Daisy Fay Buchanan. Five years prior to the principal events of the story, Daisy broke off with Gatsby and married the vulgar and arrogant Tom Buchanan because he was rich and came from a respectable family. In the years since, Gatsby turns his memory of Daisy into a near-religious worship. He places her on a pedestal and transforms her into his own romantic ideal. In the process, he also transforms himself. He changes his name from Gatz to Gatsby; he invents a past, saying he was from a wealthy family and studied at Oxford; he affects the speech patterns of an English aristocrat ("old sport"), and stages parties that resemble theatrical productions. The irony is that Gatsby's extreme pursuit of materialism is just an elaborate facade that allows him to pursue his enchanted spiritual vision. All of the trappings of his wealth have a sense of the unreal, as having no weight or substance. Our first sense of this occurs in Chapter 3, when Gatsby invites Nick to one of his parties. In Gatsby's library Nick encounters a drunken guest who announces that Gatsby's books are actually real: "What do you think?" he demanded impetuously. "About what?" He waived his hand toward the book-shelves. "About that. As a matter of fact you needn't bother to... ... middle of paper ... ..., boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Works Cited and Consulted: Bruccoli, Matthew J. Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Carrol and Graf, 1993. Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes. New York: Pantheon, 1994. Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963. Posnock, Ross. "'A New World, Material Without Being Real': Fitzgerald's Critique of Capitalism in The Great Gatsby." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 201-13. Raleigh, John Henry. "F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby." Mizener 99-103. Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.
is here to see him this might be a secret message by J.B Priestly (the
Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.
Chambers, John B. The Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald. London: Macmillan/New York: St Martin's P, 1989.
An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley An Inspector Calls is the tale of a wealthy manufacturer who is holding a dinner party for his daughter’s engagement. Into this cosy, what seems secure scene, appears a harsh police inspector investigating the suicide of young working class woman. Under the pressure of his thorough investigations, every member of the Birling family is revealed to have a shameful secret that finally led to the corruption, and consequent death of this young woman, Eva Smith. Priestly attempts to convey his attitudes and ideas through his characters and their behaviour in the play.
Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.
An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley The inspector wants to show and teach the Birlings that they are responsible for how they affect the lives of others (Eva Smith). The inspector tries to make the family clear that each uncaring behaviour can produce serious consequences. While the children Sheila and Erik notice and then admit their heartless acting, their parents just see their legal innocence and do not accept any moral guilt. J.B Priestley's main concerns about the class divide were how the middle class treated the working class. Priestley is trying to show that the upper classes are unaware that the easy lives they lead rest upon hard work of the lower classes.
McMahon, Thomas. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Authors & Artists for Young Adults. Michigan: Gale Research, 1998. N. pag. Print.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print. The.
What is even more ironic than the overall absence of the lower classes within the novel is where this neglected level of wealth actually did become part of the novel. Ironically, the only character that lower wealth was associated with was Gatsby. In his past, he was of lower class, but in the actual time when the novel was written, Gatsby was not only representative of wealth, but he seemed to have had the most wealth of all the characters. He was the most prestigious when compared to all of the other characters, yet was the only to have the absence of money in his past. The quote in the p...
Mangum, Bryant. A Fortune Yet: Money in The Art of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Short Stories. New York: Garland, 1991.
Works Cited and Consulted. Claridge, Henry, ed., pp. 113-117 F. Scott Fitzgerald: Critical Assessments. 4 vols. of a book.
Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.
Fitzgerald's Critique of Capitalism in The Great Gatsby." Critical Essays on Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1984.
Student Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 2000. Piper, Henry Dan.
"Joel get up you lazy get! Jo is right, all you ever do is eat and