‘The Great Gatsby’ was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in, and set, in America during the 1920’s. Like all literature, this novel reflects the time period in which it was written; that is, the American Dream and its decline, social classes and the difference between them, along with World War I. The Elizabeth Browning Sonnets were written during the Romantic era. This was a period of great change and emancipation, which is unmistakably evident in E. Browning’s sonnets. Both Fitzgerald and E. Browning use a multitude of techniques throughout their texts. These techniques have an effect, whether similar or different, on the reader.
The American Dream has no strict definition, however in the twentieth century and in many ways still today, it has become the term which describes an inherent faith in the promise of the new world. It was an age of capitalism and materialism. In the post war period America became an incredibly affluent country, which rapidly industrialized and developed the quality of life. The American dream, through the eyes of Fitzgerald, was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet the 1920’s are depicted in the novel, as a time of decayed social and moral values, corrupting this dream, evident in its overreaching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. This is epitomized in the lavish parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night. As the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpass more noble goals the American Dream reaches its ultimate corruption.
In America during the 1920’s, anyone from any social background could potentially make a fortune. However the American aristocracy, that is the families of old wealth, scorned the newly rich. The novel represent...
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...e to the depths and breadth and height.” It is not physically possible to love someone in such a way. However, by describing her love for R. Browning like this she is positioning the reader to realize the intensity of their relationship.
In closing, both ‘The Great Gatsby’ and the E. Browning sonnets are reflective of the time period in which they were written. ‘The Great Gatsby’ portrays the American Dream and its decline, social classes and the difference between them, as well as World War I. The Elizabeth Browning Sonnets were written during the Romantic era. This was a period of great change and emancipation, which is unmistakably evident in E. Browning’s sonnets. Both Fitzgerald and E. Browning use a multitude of techniques throughout their texts. These techniques have an effect, whether similar or different, on the reader.
Works Cited
sparknotes.com
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations- F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. Print.
The dawn of the 20th century was met with an unprecedented catastrophe: an international technological war. Such a horrible conflict perhaps threatened the roots of the American Dream! Yet, most do not realize how pivotal the following years were. Post war prosperity caused a fabulous age for America: the “roaring twenties”. But it also was an era where materialism took the nation by storm, rooting itself into daily life. Wealth became a measure of success and a facade for social status. This “Marxist materialism” threatened the traditional American Dream of self-reliance and individuality far even more than the war a decade before. As it morphed into materialistic visions (owning a beautiful house and car), victims of the change blindly chased the new aspiration; one such victim was Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby. As his self-earned luxury and riches clashed with love, crippling consequences and disasters occur. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby delves into an era of materialism, exploring how capitalism can become the face of social life and ultimately cloud the American Dream.
Through the use of symbolism and critique, F. Scott Fitzgerald is able to elucidate the lifestyles and dreams of variously natured people of the 1920s in his novel, The Great Gatsby. He uses specific characters to signify diverse groups of people, each with their own version of the “American Dream.” Mostly all of the poor dream of transforming from “rags to riches”, while some members of the upper class use other people as their motivators. In any case, no matter how obsessed someone may be about their “American Dream”, Fitzgerald reasons that they are all implausible to attain.
Throughout his life, F. Scott Fitzgerald, a prestigious writer of the Jazz age, experienced many battles during his unsatisfactory life. Many of his disturbed endeavors lead to his creation of many marvelous novels including his exquisite novel The Great Gatsby. From beginning to end, Fitzgerald’s notable use of paradox and metaphorical language creates phenomenal and modernistic symbols. Whether distinguishing relationships between characters and morality, Fitzgerald continuously uses symbols to express the adequate meaning of what is behind the true theme of The Great Gatsby-the power of hope cannot determine a dream.
Throughout the history of America, the classic struggle has been to attain the current “American Dream.” During the 1920s, this ideal included owning a home, car, and dog, and having a good woman. In The Great Gatsby, Daisy and Tom Buchanan are, on the visible surface, an example of this American Dream (Fitzgerald 10). Tom and Daisy are in love and married, with money, a beautiful home, and a wonderful child. They also own a car, and their home is in a very affluent area. In the 1920s, middle-class Americans owned their own homes and cars, and were making their own money. Also in the 1920s, increased wealth was an aspect of the American Dream. The Bull Market of 1919 signaled the initial increase of wealth per capita (Allen 7). A second bull market in 1927, 1928, and 1929 signaled a second major increase in wealth. Fitzgerald’s narrator, Nick Carraway, works in bonds (Fitzgerald 7). In The Great Gatsby, Nick mentions his own books on banking, credit, and investment, as the key to “shining secrets that only Midas, Morgan, and Maecenas knew” (8). Yet another characteristic of the American Dream was a return to belief in the Nativist philosophy; that all inhabitants of America should be 100% White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP), and most of all, not Socialist or Communist in any way (Allen 42). In The Great Gatsby, Tom refers to a book he has recently read, Goddard’s The Rise of Coloured Empires (Fitzgerald 17). This is a mangled allusion to the actual novel The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy, by Theodore Lothrop Stoddard (Maurer 24). One last characteristic of the ...
The early 1920’s were a time when the economy began to soar, and the notion of the American dream began to take effect. The American Dream is the idea that anyone can come from any background and no matter who they are, if they work hard and stay true to themselves, they can achieve their dreams. The Great Gatsby, set in the early twenties, displays that socio-economic power is obtained through inheritance, forming an aristocracy of power and wealth. The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, demonstrates how geography and location dictate where the social-class level of an individual exists permanently in society. Furthermore, illusion and affectation portrayed in the novel to conceive the image of power and wealth in a way for someone to attempt to become something they are not, this goes against the idea of the American Dream. Even when the American Dream seems obtainable it is restricted by unruling variables. Therefore, the American Dream is simply, just a dream.
The novel The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald is the great American novel. It is full of the disillusioned, the skeptics, the hypocrites and the careless dreamers of high society New York. The characters are reckless in the way they live, hurting each other and having fake relationships, abandoning people. The characters betray each other, over and over throughout the novel, they question Gatsby’s sincerity, and they are horrible people. This novel truly breaks the traditions associated with the pureness of the American dream; it reflects the contemporary American experience. It does so by the carelessness of the characters as well as their hypocrisy and skepticism.
Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has indisputably been one of the most influential and insightful pieces on the corruption and idealism of the American Dream. The American Dream, defined as ‘The belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone,’ was a dominant ideal in American society, stemming from an opportunist pioneer mentality. In his book ‘The American Tradition in Literature’, Bradley Sculley praised The Great Gatsby for being ‘perhaps the most striking fictional analysis of the age of gang barons and the social conditions that produced them.’ Over the years, greed and selfishness changed the basic essence of the American Dream, forming firmly integrated social classes and the uncontainable thirst for money and status. The ‘Roaring Twenties’ was a time of ‘sustained increase in national wealth’ , which consequently led to an increase in materialism and a decrease in morality. Moreover, the
Written during and regarding the 1920s, ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald is both a representation of this distinctive social and historical context, and a construction of the composer’s experience of this era. Beliefs and practises of the present also play a crucial role in shaping the text, in particular changing the way in which literary techniques are interpreted. The present-day responder is powerfully influenced by their personal experiences, some of which essentially strengthen Fitzgerald’s themes, while others compete, establishing contemporary interpretations of the novel.
“So The Great Gatsby house at West Egg glittered with all the lights of the twenties, there were was always Gatsby’s supplicating hand, reaching out to make glamour with what he had lost be cruel chance...of how little Gatsby wanted at bottom-not to understand society, but to ape it”(21-22). The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald features constant parties, glamorous houses, and extravagance to reveal the values of the characters and the society they live in. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby exemplifies the innate values and morals of its characters and the society in which they live by using continual partying, glamorous houses, and extraordinary extravagance.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is an absurd story, whether considered as romance, melodrama, or plain record of New York high life. The occasional insights into character stand out as very green oases on an arid desert of waste paper. Throughout the first half of the book the author shadows his leading character in mystery, but when in the latter part he unfolds his life story it is difficult to find the brains, the cleverness, and the glamour that one might expect of a main character.
The American Dream is a concept that has been wielded in American Literature since its beginnings. The ‘American Dream’ ideal follows the life of an ordinary man wanting to achieve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The original goal of the American dream was to pursue freedom and a greater good, but throughout time the goals have shifted to accumulating wealth, high social status, etc. As such, deplorable moral and social values have evolved from a materialistic pursuit of happiness. In “Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity”, Roland Marchand describes a man that he believed to be the prime example of a 1920’s man. Marchand writes, “Not only did he flourish in the fast-paced, modern urban milieu of skyscrapers, taxicabs, and pleasure- seeking crowds, but he proclaimed himself an expert on the latest crazes in fashion, contemporary lingo, and popular pastimes.” (Marchand) This description shows material success as the model for the American Dream. In his novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald reveals the characterization of his characters through the use of symbols and motifs to emphasize the corruption of the American Dream.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises are equally similar and different. The two stories are similar in their commitment to the failure of the American dream and its moral hollowness. However, the means and literary methods which the two authors choose to prove their point are distinctly different. Hemingway and Fitzgerald attempted to evoke aimless traveling across East to West and West to East through their writing styles in which the various nature of modernism in literature is reflected. Hemingway adopts his original sentence structure called “cablese” which consists of ordinary speech and exact words without any vague expressions, while Fitzgerald describes the protagonist, Gatsby through Nick’s perspective.
The Great Gatsby is an American novel of hope and longing, and is one of the very few novels in which “American history finds its figurative form (Churchwell 292).” Gatsby’s “greatness” involves his idealism and optimism for the world, making him a dreamer of sorts. Yet, although the foreground of Fitzgerald’s novel is packed with the sophisticated lives of the rich and the vibrant colors of the Jazz Age, the background consists of the Meyer Wolfsheims, the Rosy Rosenthals, the Al Capones, and others in the vicious hunt for money and the easy life. Both worlds share the universal desire for the right “business gonnegtion,” and where the two worlds meet at the borders, these “gonnegtions” are continually negotiated and followed (James E. Miller). Gatsby was a character meant to fall at the hands of the man meant to be a reality check to the disillusions of the era.
The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald was written in a unique and intellectual way using three devices providing the readers with detailed descriptions, emotions and creativity capturing the American Dream. They are Diction, Syntax, and connotation, Fitzgerald 's word choices and arrangement of the sentences using this devices put an image in our mind to how the Jazz Age use to be back then. The author was able to recreate Jazz Age or the roaring 20s is when wealthy people spend their money on alcohol, material things that will not last a long time in the novel in order to enhance the aspect of the American Dream back then and in current human society. His figurative language throughout Great Gatsby captures images appealing to