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Importance of setting in literature
Importance of setting in literature
Literature essay example
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A critical element to any novel is the setting. Setting is “the time and place of the action of a literary, dramatic, or cinematic work” (“Setting”). A clever author will craft the setting with a purpose. While the characters of a novel live in the setting, “it can help set the mood, influence the way characters behave, affect the dialogue, foreshadow events, invoke an emotional response, reflect the society in which the characters live, and sometimes even plays a part in the story” (Benedict). Both Charles Dickens and F. Scott Fitzgerald take full advantage of the setting in their novels A Tale of Two Cities and The Great Gatsby. The two novels focus on the interactions between the different social classes. The social classes that are portrayed in the two books fit into the classification of either upper or lower class.
The upper class characters are separated from the lower class by their wealth. Both authors created a few characters that represent a whole class of people. Dickens created the Marquis Furemonde and a character known as Monsignor to represent the French nobility. He created Doctor Manette to embody the English upper class. The East Egg is the refuge of the old money society where Fitzgerald’s characters of the Buchanans reside in The Great Gatsby; the West Egg is the neighborhood of the newly wealthy Jay Gatsby.
All of the characters that are part of the upper class are physically separated by the setting. Through their wealth the characters are able to afford residencies that disconnect them from the densely populated urban areas. F. Scott Fitzgerald created the East and West Eggs “twenty miles” “due east of New York” (Fitzgerald 9). They do not live in the busy city. Instead, they are separ...
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... Scott Fitzgerald are masters of crafting settings that contribute to their plots. The different settings make for an interesting plot as well as emphasizing the themes within the novel.
Works Cited
Benedict, Carol. "Story Elements: Importance of the Setting." The Writing Place. 13 Apr. 2010. Web. 27 Sept. 2011. .
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. New York: Signet Classics, 2007. Print.
Domhoff, G. William. "Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power." UC Santa Cruz - Sociology. Sept. 2005. Web. 28 Sept. 2011. .
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner Paperback, 2003. Print.
“Setting.” Def. 3b. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam, 1979. Print.
Within the novel of the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses a symbolic setting to contribute to the novel's overall purpose. Right in the beginning of the great Gatsby, he introduces the idea of West Egg and East Egg. East Egg being where Tom Buchanan and Daisy reside, among other people who live lavishly off of their inherited family money,”across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water”(Pg.8). This part of the two eggs represents “old money,” which is the way the author calls wealth that has been passed on through generations within families.West Egg being the location where the narrator, Nick Carraway, and Jay Gatsby reside, represents “new money,”or people who are new to wealth, as opposed to people who have had it in their families,”West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two”(Pg.7). Fitzgerald sets this sort of tension between the West and East Eggers. Many of the East Eggers thought the entrepreneurs living on the West were shady, “A lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers…”(114). Between West Egg and East Egg, there is a place the author calls the Valley of Ashes, “a fantastic farm where ashes grow like
Nick's neighbor Gatsby is a wealthy person, who spends a lot of money giving parties for strangers only to meet Daisy, the dream of his life. He is seen as representing "new money" because he has no good education and no family background over several generations, he is self-made, invented by himself. For this reason, he is not accepted as being dignified enough to enter the exclusive "old money" upper class.
The Great Gatsby is one of the most renowned books known to mankind. A story about a man’s quest to fit into a society built for the rich whilst wooing a childhood crush may seem extremely simple and straightforward, however, the mystery is not behind the plot, but rather, it is in the writing itself. The words F. Scott Fitzgerald used were chosen with such delicacy, one cannot even hope to assume that anything was a mere coincidence. The book is laced with intricate strands of symbolism bound together by a single plot. One of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s more major themes is the use of locations. The importance of location as symbols are further expressed through the green light at the end of the dock as well as the fresh, green breast of the new world.
In the novel, The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a novel was written in the 1920's and during that time society had no civilized manners, they only cared about money. Because the society has no ethics they hurt others and do not realize how greedy they are. The author uses different characters throughout the novel to present his theme. Symbols can also be found in The Great Gatsby. An example would be West Egg which represents the recent rich and East Egg which represents the established upper classes. The West Egg and East Egg symbolize the different social status of society.
In the novel Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates the segregation of the society into different social classes in the 20th century. Fitzgerald uses vivid visualization of the settings of the East and West Egg and Valley of Ashes to represent the environment of the people from both high and low class. He also introduces different characters who eventually reveal their personalities and behaviors towards gaining and maintaining their wealth and power. Additionally, Fitzgerald focuses on the contrast between the “old money”, who are the people who automatically possess great affluence even before they are born, and the “new money”,
The ethics of society in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby are clearly noted through the endless partying, fancy houses, and the lavishness of their lives. Time and time again Fitzgerald displays his skills of developing his characters through plots and scenes of enchanting parties and mansions. Through these scenarios, the reader develops a sense of the purposelessness of the rich, the values of West and East Egg society, and Gatsby. Each individual scene reveals the subtle nuances of each and every character. Is shown to the reader in such a way that the reader picks up an idea of who each character is. By a landslide, the Great Gatsby owes a lot of its character development to its settings. The settings of The Great Gatsby provides for its substantial character development.
In my final paper I will argue that F. Scott Fitzgerald represents the country in relation to civilization and the city in his novel The Great Gatsby. This novel take takes place in New York City on the East Coast of the United States shortly before the start of the great depression at some point in the 1920’s. This novel is constantly comparing the fictional cities East Egg and the West Egg witch is modeled to be the two different sides of long island. The continued comparison of the society on the East side versus the West side of Long Island shows the difference that earning your wealth has on your morality compared to being born into it.
Throughout the novel The Great Gatsby, there is a constant theme present: social class. Fitzgerald makes a connection between the theme of social class, and the settings in the novel for example The Valley of Ashes which is described as a “desolate area of land” (p.21) and a “solemn dumping ground” (p.21) which is where the poor people live. The Valley of Ashes is situated between West Egg and New York, West Egg being the place where the aspiring classes are situated, which is the “less fashionable of the two” (p.8), this is where Gatsby lives. West Egg is the place of ‘new money’, Fitzgerald shows this by the idea of the main character Jay Gatsby, rumoured to be selling illegal alcohol (prohibition) which means he is quickly making vast amounts of money.” Who is this Gatsby anyhow? Some big bootlegger?”(p.86) Gatsby shows off the amount of wealth he has by his fabulous parties and oversized mansion. “There was music from my neighbour's house through those summer nights. In his enchanted gardens, men and girls came and went like moths, among the whispering and the champagne and the stars.”(p.33) Fitzgerald uses the word ‘enchanted’ to paint a visual picture of what the house and the scene looks like, a magical and enchanted castle, with elegant furniture. This is in comparison to East Egg where Tom and Daisy Buchanan live, in a house where “The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside” (p.10). East Egg being the place of ‘old money’ which is made from the inheritance of their past generations, the people who live it East Egg are mainly well educated, historically wealthy and live quite elegantly, but they are also quite ‘snobbish’. Gatsby’s background does not fit into the social standards of East Egg...
Such is exemplified by Jay Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson and Tom Buchanan. Their ambitions distinctly represent the class in which Fitzgerald is strongly associated. Jay Gatsby is a wealthy young man living in a Gothic mansion in West Egg, where the New Money lives. He is famous for the lavish parties he throws every Saturday night and represents the new rich that the old rich distaste. The new rich are described as vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social grace and taste.
F. Scott Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby takes the reader through the nineteen-twenties, a time of industrial revolution and bootlegging. In the novel Nick, the narrator, tells the reader what he experienced while living in on the West Egg, a neighborhood in suburbia New York. Nick 's cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband Tom are of old wealth and live on the Easg Egg, where only the american elite reside. Gatsby, Nick 's neighbor, though has made his money off this time of prohibition through bootlegging so he lives on the West Egg, where many of the noveu rich live. Nick 's perspective allows the reader to see the characterisitics that make up the noveu rich and Amercian elite as well as how different the two social classes are. This is
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, reveals thin threads woven between himself and the novel, revealing the truth about a corrupted society filled with discontentment and superficiality. From marriages to women to an impossible dream, all these aspects of Fitzgerald’s life influences his work, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s novel quite closely resembles his own circumstances through his portrayal of the characters and the society of the 1920’s. Though Fitzgerald himself lived in a society of shallowness, he was able to portray that the emptiness in society would not bring anyone happiness. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the characters in The Great Gatsby to represent the people in his own life and to show that wealth causes corruption.
...and the upper middle class members mixed in the neighborhood, creating a disturbing mix. West Egg provided a direct confrontation to the establishment that disturbed the rich such as Daisy Buchanan (107). The residents of the city have foreign names like “Joens”, “Muldoon”, and “Eckheart” with uncouth professions such as actors and politicians (63). Epitomizing the qualities of the people and the buildings of West Egg is Jay Gatsby. Gatsby possesses a house designed to imitate royalty. However, Gatsby fills that very house with the risque parties, juxtaposing the old idea of wealth with a new one. The juxtaposition between the two ideas strongly characterizes the West Egg resident.
William Domhoff’s investigation into America’s ruling class is an eye-opening and poignant reading experience, even for enlightened individuals regarding the US social class system. His book, Who Rules America, exploits the fundamental failures in America’s governing bodies to provide adequate resources for class mobility and shared power. He identifies history, corporate and social hierarchy, money-driven politics, a two-party system, and a policy-making process orchestrated by American elites amongst a vast array of causes leading to an ultimate effect of class-domination theory pervading American society. In articulating his thesis and supporting assertions, Domhoff appeals rhetorically toward an audience with prior knowledge of America’s
The story has different elements that make it a story, that make it whole. Setting is one of those elements. The book defines setting as “the context in which the action of the story occurs” (131). After reading “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemmingway, setting played a very important part to this story. A different setting could possibly change the outcome or the mood of the story and here are some reasons why.
The East and West Egg are two opposite parts of Long Island. The East Egg is where people of old money reside, like Daisy and Tom, who have inherited the riches of the aristocracy. However, the West Egg is the home of the nouveau riche or new money. It is where Gatsby and Nick reside, who have accumulated great wealth on their own. Fitzgerald contrasts these two places and the characters from each Egg to highlight the cultural clash in the 1920’s between old and new money and the contrasting theme of corruption and morality.