Jay Gatsby the Dream: Charlie Wales the Nightmare

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.