¶ … Great Gatsby the old rich and the new rich. The power play between these two sectors at the East Egg and the West Egg is one of the most immediate themes of the novel. The old rich or traditional aristocracy is represented by Tom and Daisy Buchanan, and Jordan Baker who behave with ingrained grace, simple taste, subtlety and elegance. They are suspicious about, and discriminating against, the new rich, who are represented by Jay Gatsby (Fitzgerald 1925). In contrast with the aristocratic rich, he is ornate, exaggerated, outlandishly clothed, ill-mannered and an absolute wastrel. Both the old and the new rich measure themselves and others with materialistic standards as to their existence and excellence and use these standards in achieving non-materialistic objectives, such as relationships and loyalty.
A the rise of national wealth and material prosperity in the 20s. Fitzgerald uses the material and social conditions of the 1920s as the setting of this novel. The conditions began with the peaking of the stock market after the War and the massive increase of national wealth and evolution of an overpowering sense of materialism and luxury. The unprecedented trend led people to spend widely and wildly and become greedy. Wealth was so bountiful that anyone of any social background could then suddenly get rich. More so when the 18th Amendment was passed in 1919 that banned the sale of alcohol. The disappearance of alcohol in the market, in turn, made it a source of much money in the underworld, where there was steep demand for bootleg alcohol both by rich and poor underworld characters.
Materialism is the value assigned to physical wealth and pleasure, and the novel, as well as the 20s, teems with both. Fitzgerald shows that marked search for pleasure in the characters of his novel and the resulting social, physical and moral decay in the times and in the characters. The exuberance and waste by Jay's Saturday evening parties with wild jazz display in his mansion are all the fading noise and color of vanity and fantasy that miss the American dream. The extravagance and unrestrained desire for money and pleasure were out of sync with the genuine American dream of discovery, individualism and the pursuit of true wealth. All the barrage and flicker are mere sense data and stimulation, aimed at something in the inside from the outside.
A the West and the Mid-West. Nick Carraway describes their struggle:
That's my Middle West... The street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark see now that this has been a story of the West... - Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I... possessed some deficiency...subtly adaptable to Eastern life (Fitzgerald Chapter XI)."
He places the East and West starkly as opposed cultures: the East had a fast-paced life style, extravagant parties, decaying morals and an obsession for wealth. The West and the Midwest, in contrast, observes more traditional values. Nick describes the goings in the East Coast in New York and his and Gatsby's inadaptability to the milieu, which creates the tensions and misbehavior in them and towards their companions who are at home in the milieu. These tensions and misbehavior reflect each of these characters' response to the overwhelming materialistic attitudes that prevail. Only Nick manages to resist the pressure and return to Minnesota and realizes that materialism has swallowed Jay Gatsby whole and destroy him rather than fulfill his illusion and delusion. East is East and West is West and never the two shall meet, according to a saying, but the power of money, power and lust can narrow or erase the gap.
4. Jay Gatsby's wealth, pomp and "mystery." Nick reveals slowly in his narrative how intrinsically intertwined his fellow-soldier friend Jay Gatsby's garishness, deceitfulness and materialistic values. He introduces Jay only in the third chapter, but before that, Nick relates how Jay first becomes the subject of wild gossips in New York for his newfound and fantastic fortune and then his inordinate Saturday evening parties for the rich, famous and powerful men and women (Fitzgerald). Something has made him an overnight legendary success and celebrity who awes everyone and that something is his accidental fortune. As long as he has wealth, he will retain the aura of success and excellence and the toast of opportunists and advantage-takers. This appears to give him the power to create his own identity because money seems to be able to buy everything,...
Scott Fitzgerald and the Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald, born on the 24th of Sept 1896, was one of the greatest writers, who was well-known for being a writer of his own time. He lived in a room covered with clocks and calendars while the years ticket away his own career followed the pattern of the nation with his first fiction blooming in 1920s. "His fictions did more then report on
Scott Fitzgerald's character Dick Diver from "Tender is the Night" takes on characteristics of both Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway from "The Great Gatsby." Two sources. MLA. Character Analysis of Dick Diver Scott Fitzgerald was a mosaic of the characters he created. Fitzgerald, himself, can be found in Jay Gatsby, Nick Callaway, and Dick Diver. His own personal history reflects those he gave his characters, drinking habits, social status, and affluence (Brief
Great Gatsby And Sun Also Rises Both F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises depict the American psyche in the aftermath of the First World War. Although The Sun Also Rises is set in Europe, many of its main characters are American expatriates who seek fulfillment unsuccessfully through partying and sexual affairs. Similarly, the characters in The Great Gatsby seek stimulation through romantic relationships but
Topics The theme of unrequited love in The Great Gatsby Discuss the fallibility of youth in The Great Gatsby Discuss the primacy of socioeconomic status as it manifests in The Great Gatsby: which characters confront it with the most grace? Which with the least? If Daisy and Jay had been members of the same socioeconomic class would they have ended up together? Why or why not? Provide textual evidence. Nick Carraway goes to great lengths
Fitzgerald wrote his novel during the Roaring 1920s, but his book seems uniquely relevant to our own times. The Roaring 1920s was coming to a rapid slow-down of material prosperity, and questions of who was a 'real' American arose as social mobility had introduced individuals of new races and ethnicities into higher American society. Fitzgerald suggests that it is important to question what lies beneath the veneer of American society
To Gatsby, this was the biggest failure and he was not willing to accept defeat. Though he finally realizes that Daisy's enticing voice-that "low, thrilling" siren's voice with its "singing compulsion" (p.14) that "couldn't be over dreamed" (p. 101) was actually nothing "full of money." (p. 127). The dreams of his future were the dreams that sustained Gatsby. "For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they
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