Are some ambitions simply too bold to end in any possible happiness? F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, William Shakespeare 's Macbeth, and Jean Giono’s “The Man Who Planted Trees” share many similarities with each other. A similarity that stands out the most is the ambition that drives the characters to achieve their professedly impossible goal. The characters that are most fueled by ambition in the stories are Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, and Giono’s Elzéard Bouffier. The Great Gatsby tells the story of a man named Jay Gatsby, who stands hopelessly devoted to the idea that his former love, Daisy Buchanan, is willing to leave her husband and return to Gatsby once more. Despite Nick’s warnings not to push Daisy too far, Gatsby insists everything will soon come …show more content…
(iv.i.127) His ambitions, in the end, prove to be his inanity when he gets killed by an unforgiving group of people he had stepped on or hurt in order to become King of Scotland. “The Man Who Planted Trees” is a short story that recounts the adventures of a man who meets an old farmer by the name of`Elzéard Bouffier, who lives in solitude up in the French Alps. Elzéard is a quiet dreamer, who wishes to plant thousands of trees across the hills surrounding his home, and has already planted several thousand.
If God gave [Elzéard] life, in 30 years he would’ve planted so many other trees that these ten thousand would be a drop of water in the ocean. (page 3) The narrator admires Elzéard’s ambition, and continues to return in interest of the farmer’s progress. Unlike Gatsby and Macbeth, Elzéard’s ambition is completely selfless, and his work allows for a town to rise from the rubble of a former civilization that once thrived in the plains. “More than ten thousand persons owe their happiness to Elzéard Bouffier” (page 4) the narrator suggests, after witnessing the town thrive because of Elzéard’s untiring
...l life. By planting the sequoia it allows a memory to life forever even when things around it continue to die.
The character of Jay Gatsby was a wealthy business man, who the author developed as arrogant and tasteless. Gatsby's love interest, Daisy Buchanan, was a subdued socialite who was married to the dim witted Tom Buchanan. She is the perfect example of how women of her level of society were supposed to act in her day. The circumstances surrounding Gatsby and Daisy's relationship kept them eternally apart. For Daisy to have been with Gatsby would have been forbidden, due to the fact that she was married. That very concept of their love being forbidden, also made it all the more intense, for the idea of having a prohibited love, like William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, made it all the more desirable. Gatsby was remembering back five years to when Daisy was not married and they were together:
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.
Theodore Geisel, commonly known as Dr Seuss, published “The Lorax” in 1971. “The Lorax” is a popular children's book that focuses on human ecology and the environmental movement. The book tells the story of the Once-ler, and how his business led to him cutting down all the Truffula trees, which destroyed the ecosystem, habitat, and polluted the water and the air in the meantime. “The Lorax”, while it is a very substantial tool for the environmental movement, presents several wrong ideas about the ecological movement. Even though Seuss' book is successful, people who wish to use this book to teach about the environment should be careful about how they utilize it as a text. While raising important questions, “The Lorax” offers answers that can be precarious, despite Seuss' good intentions. The main point of “The Lorax” is that no society can benefit from exhausting their renewable resources. However, there are contradictions within the story and the solutions steer the attention of the audience away from alternatives that can accomplish the goals stated in the book; the second point is shown in the story because the idea that people must change instead of their motivations is obvious in the interaction between the Lorax and the Once-ler. Before going examining these statements, this paper will summarize “The Lorax” and will challenge the story's solidity.
When reflecting on his memories of the man he knew as Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway recalls the unique individual’s finest quality: “It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again” (Fitzgerald 2). Although Gatsby occasionally stepped off the straight and narrow, he never lost sight of his ultimate goal: Daisy’s love. Even when it seemed as though everything was working against him and that he would never regain his lost love, Gatsby kept going, knowing that the strength of his hope would see him through. His childlike determination, while ultimately his downfall, was what made Gatsby truly “great.”
In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald analyzes three main characters, Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, and Nick Carraway. The Great Gatsby is a story about finding out who people really are and how far they will go to protect their secrets from spilling to everyone. The Great Gatsby is like a story of our time, we have the rich and the poor towns, we have people who cheat on their spouses, and lastly, we have racism towards different cultures and races (Schreier). Many ironic events take place throughout the book. For example, Gatsby and Nick become friends, Tom and Myrtle being secret lovers, also, Daisy and Gatsby carrying on an affair, and lastly Daisy running over Myrtle in Gatsby’s car (Coleman). Fitzgerald purposely wrote the book to tell about lovers that were not supposed to be together and how they overcame that and fell in love with one another (Shain). He also wrote the book to relate to American society (Tolmatchoff).
...conclusion, the characters ambitions that I described show how their ambitions can both lead to great harm to oneself and to the people around them and great success to themselves. Furthermore, the characters of Great Gatsby that I described went beyond what a normal person could do, in both cruelty and judgment towards one another and towards themselves. A good example of this would be how Gatsby, ruined his life by chasing a girl that was already married and seeking perfection in the real world, so that it could match his dreams. Furthermore, in the book it showed that the characters that followed their ambitions that I described ended up being heart broken and devastated at the end of the book. The ambitions of a person, can lead them to act in complete dispersion, which ends up hurting the ones around them, and themselves.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”(Fitzgerald 180). The Great Gatsby considered to be one a great novel about the 1920’s follows the story of a man named James Gatz, who tries to relive the past, or his alias Jay Gatsby. The story is unravelled through the eyes on Nick Carraway, a young bonds salesman trying to make it in the East. Nick moves in to his house neighbor to Gatsby. Nick meets Gatsby at one of Gatsby’s parties and they become friends quite fast. Gatsby in in love with Nick’s cousin Daisy whom was Gatsby’s lover. Gatsby gets Nick to introduce Daisy to Gatsby. They hit it off but Daisy’s cheating husband Tom Buchanan, racist, is jealous and uses a garage owner, George Wilson, to murder Gatsby. Gatsby has died, George has died and Nick is left to himself to ponder on about Gatsby. Gatsby is a young man that makes it big, say chases the American Dream, yet the American Dream does not exist in The Great Gatsby.
Gatsby encompasses many physiognomies such as ambitious. Ambitious outlines one who is eagerly desirous of achieving or obtaining success, Jay Gatsby. It is evident that Gatsby generates his own fantasy world, a realm where he is not the underprivileged James Gatz, but the fantasized Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald conceives him as, “… the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end” (98). This quote expresses how he dreams up a new world to escape the blandness of his own existence. But his imagination and turmoil pays off because he ends up making his dreams reality. He personifies a man who goes from “rags to riches” because he strives to better himself as opposed t...
In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby functions under the illusion that Daisy is perfect and is living in such distress because she was forced to marry Tom due to Gatsby being away at war and being poor. This illusion leads Gatsby to spend his entire adult life pining after Daisy and cheating his way up the social and economic ladder in order to win her over. Gatsby believes that Daisy will someday come back to him because she loves him so much and they will live happily ever after together.
In the beginning of the story we are introduced to a young girl and the setting for the story is laid out. It is through the setting and background information we can compare life to today and the way we live. The young girl is traveling through the woods with her grandmothers cow at dusk. “The woods were already filled with shadows one June evening, just before eight o'clock” (Jewet) The girl is about the age of nine and she is
The Great Gatsby, is a classic American novel about an obsessed man named Jay Gatsby who will do anything to be reunited with the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan. The book is told through the point of view of Nick Caraway, Daisy's cousin once removed, who rented a little cottage in West Egg, Long Island across the bay from Daisy's home. Nick was Jay Gatsby's neighbor. Tom Buchanan is Daisy's abusive, rich husband and their friend, Jordan Baker, has caught the eye of Nick and Nick is rather smitten by her. Gatsby himself is a very ostentatious man and carries a rather mysterious aura about himself which leads to the question: Is Gatsby's fortune a house of cards built to win the love of his life or has Daisy entranced him enough to give him the motivation to be so successful? While from a distance Jay Gatsby appears to be a well-educated man of integrity, in reality he is a corrupt, naive fool.
Jay Gatsby believes that wealth and power can lead to love and happiness. He spends his entire life trying to create himself and change his past so that he can rekindle his love affair with the love of his life Daisy Buchanan. The two were young lovers, unable to be together because of very different social statuses. After Gatsby learns that he cannot be with Daisy because of this, he spends the rest of his life attempting to acquire wealth and power.
The Great Gatsby presents the main character Jay Gatsby, as a poor man who is in love with his best friends cousin, Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby was in love with Daisy, his first real love. He was impressed with what she represented, great comfort with extravagant living. Gatsby knew he was not good enough for her, but he was deeply in love. “For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s”(Fitzgerald 107). Gatsby could not think of the right words to say. Daisy was too perfect beyond anything he was able to think of. Soon Gatsby and Daisy went their separate ways. Jay Gatsby went into the war while telling Daisy to find someone better for her, someone that will be able to keep her happy and provide for her. Gatsby and Daisy loved one another, but he had to do what was best for her. Gatsby knew the two might not meet again, but if they did, he wanted things to be the same. “I 'm going to fix everything just the way it was before”(Fitzgerald 106). He wanted Daisy to fall in love with him all over again. Unsure if Daisy would ever see Gatsby again, she got married while he was away. The two were still hugely in love with one another, but had to go separate ways in their
...rn day society, illusive ambitions can be incredibly detrimental, just as they are demonstrated to be in Macbeth. Ambitions, if they are untamed, can be an impediment to free will; they can overpower your good conscience, possibly leading you into causing death and destruction. They can also corrupt one’s mental health, while practically morphing that person’s perception of reality into something demonstrably wrong and twisted. Finally, they can boost ones ego to a point where that person is engulfed and imprisoned in the vehemence of their own denial, which can ultimately bear fatal consequences. If one’s hopes and desires are innately destructive, then it logically follows that that one’s ambition is also innately destructive; be wary of one with an immense ambition.