Compare And Contrast Essay On The Great Gatsby

    Nick Carraway had just moved from the Middle East into a part of New York called West Egg where people of new wealth lived and he had his cousin Daisy who lived in the East Egg with her husband Tom Buchanan which is where people of old money lived. Near where Nick lives is also  where Gatsby's mansion is located. In the beginning Nick always notices that Gatsby would

Nick, the narrator of the novel, introduces the reader(s) to Tom Buchanan, the husband of his cousin, Daisy, and explains how Nick has always known Tom as the annoying, egotistical, and the stereotypical rich white man, which is shown in his thoughts,

​Nick Caraway moves from Minnesota to the West Egg neighborhood on Long Island to pursue a career in the bond industry. He lives in a tiny house wedged between large, expansive mansions. His neighbor, Jay Gatsby, is a well todo man with a mysterious past. Everyone in town knows Mr. Gatsby for his huge wild parties, but no one is quite sure where he has acquired his wealth. Across from Gatsby’s mansion, Nick’s cousin Daisy lives with her husband Tom Buchanan. Daisy and Tom have a complex relationship where neither of them are happy, but they will not separate even though both have been unfaithful. Tom has a mistress in the city whom is not unbeknownst to Daisy. Gatsby and Daisy have a romantic history from when Gatsby was in the army. This is the motivation behind Gatsby’s desire to acquire all his wealth. Gatsby throws his parties in an attempt to get Daisy’s attention, but Daisy is completely unaware that he is her neighbor until Nick brings them together. Though Nick is not a considerably wealthy man himself, his relationship to the Buchanans, and now Gatsby, are enough to keep him relevant in the social circles of East Egg and West Egg. Nick’s connection to Daisy also makes him highly attractive to Gatsby as all he wants is some form of an interaction with Daisy and involving himself with Nick is an easy way for Gatsby to make his way into Daisy’s life again. Money is power in the Great Gatsby, as it influences everyone’s status, aspirations,

As a society, America has created certain ideas and stereotypes of each class including the citizens within them. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald focuses around the superficial communities of West and East Egg, and their misconceptions of one another. The citizens of East Egg, such as Daisy and Tom Buchanan, frown upon the up-and-coming men of West Egg. This includes Gatsby, who dreams of the riches they take for granted. Gatsby, who obtains his money through dishonest means appears villainous, unsuccessfully attempting to join the wealthy and elite society of East egg. However, there may be more to Gatsby's story. As Nick, the narrator, says he is “worth the whole damn bunch put together”(154). Through his descriptions and comparison of Tom’s house and Gatsby’s house, Fitzgerald reveals the true nature of the two men. While Gatsby appears to be morally corrupt, in the end he actually has pure intentions, instead it is Tom who emits negativity and is ungrateful for his life.

The novel The Great Gatsby is an interesting tale of two cities really. Nick Carraway; the narrator, represents all that is good an wholesome in the great midwest. He is a well-educated man who aspires to be a bond broker. His character is conflicted internally and externally throughout the novel but really culminates into a loathing for all things eastern. Carraway’s farmboy charm and doe-eyed innocence is put to the test when he meets The Great Jay Gatsby. Gatsby represents all things Nick is unfamiliar with and is curious about. Nick, being from the midwest, has no real street smarts so when he meets the “wicked” east, his lack of experience is proof positive that he really does not belong

Nick is an educated man from Yale and has social connections in East Egg which includes his cousins, Daisy Buchanan and a classmate of his, Tom Buchanan who is married to her.

Bootlegging became a means of serious wealth and survival in the beginning 1920’s, and Gatsby (who had previous teachings from his mentor Dan Cody) got connected with a mobster, the big time gangster, Meyer Wolfsheim, who Gatsby would call, “the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919”. Meyer Wolfsheim was a business associate of Gatsby; he (Meyer) helped him (Gatsby) to make his profit off distributing illegal alcohol. In the movie of “The Great Gatsby, where Gatsby invited Nick to lunch with Wolfsheim, when Gatsby excuses himself, Nick and Meyer talk a little. Wolfsheim made sure Nick understood that he (Meyer) “made” Gatsby. With Gatsby’s newly illegal wealth from his criminal disposition in organized crime, he is now what old rich people would call, “new money”. This “new money” from the wave,

Fitzgerald chose Nick to narrate the text because his perspective creates a multifaceted view of the world Fitzgerald portrays. He is an outsider to the wealthy materialistic world in which he lives. His similarity to Gatsby in that respect helps us gain an appreciation for Gatsby’s character, but although Nick and Gatsby are both outsiders Nick fails to fully understand Gatsby. This appreciation but lack of full understanding gives the reader a very different perspective than a narration from Gatsby’s point of view or that of anyone else in the novel. Nick is caught between the perspective of the man “looking up and wondering” (35) and the man in the party. Gatsby is neither; he holds the party but then scarcely shows up. Far from being an outsider to the world of wealth and materialism, he seems to embody it. Gatsby and Nick both disdain the world of vacuous wealth, but they do so from different perspectives. Gatsby has everything he needs to be part of it and chooses not to; Nick is caught on the edge, unsure whether or not he wants that world, but ultimately he cannot have it. If Nick is an outsider unsure about trying to become an insider, Gatsby is an insider trying, studiously, to make himself an outsider.

In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author writes about the life of a man named Jay Gatsby from Nick Carraway’s point of view. Eventually Nick moves away, leaving the West and East Egg behind. Nick learns that happiness cannot be achieved by money because of the decline of moral standards, insatiability, and the upper classes lack of integrity. Fitzgerald shows us the decline of moral standards by portraying the characters as dishonest and careless. Tom and Daisy have an affair against each other.

Nick sees Gatsby as the beacon of human perfection a man with a dream so pure it couldn’t be corrupted by anyone. Nick sees this once incorruptible dream in the “Gatsby believed in the Green light, the orgastic future…” (Fitzgerald 180). Nick’s tone shows that he saw Gatsby’s dream not what the end goal was but what the dream symbolized. The dream of Gatsby was treated so poorly as if it meant nothing to everybody, and Nick could sympathize with this dream for, in the beginning, Nick was much the very same way weak and vulnerable to the power of everyone else. Gatsby’s dream only grow the more he wanted to achieve it and Nick grows in character from watching Gatsby never give up on it. Gatsby teaches Nick to be dignified indirectly and teaches him to see the world as a place that is formal and filled with dignity. When Gatsby is murdered because of the corrupt people around him, Gatsby’s dream dies with him, and Nick is tormented by the absence of the once great Gatsby. Nick later walks the streets of the once great wonderland and sees its wonder no longer, “After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction” (Fitzgerald 176) Nick has been taught by Gatsby that the world should be seen as formal and be dignified, and with this knowledge he realizes that the

Through Fitzgerald’s characterisation of the protagonists, the moral chaos within the society becomes evident, with a society of immense greed and wealth being born, revealing the dreaded materialistic trait within individuals in the society leading to drastic consequences. Similarly to the prodigious increase in wealth during the “roaring 20’s”, the luxurious society of New York revolves heavily around money, with “the rich getting richer and the poor getting children”. The materialistic trait is evident within the protagonist Daisy Buchanan - ‘a careless person”. We learn of Daisy’s materialistic behaviour through her decision to marry Tom Buchanan over Jay Gatsby “because she was

Nick Carraway is the only character worth knowing in The Great Gatsby. He is living in East Egg with the rich and powerful people. He is on the guest lists to all of their parties and yet he is the person most worthy of attending such parties because he is well bread and his family is certainly not poor. “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” (Ch1, P1). These words were taught to Nick by his father showing the qualities that a man with goals and values would have in a place where goals and values was no existent. His Judgmental eye for character and guts of using them when desired makes him more interesting. He has a greatest fear that he will be

Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota – also the narrator of the story – moves to New York in the summer of 1922. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the “new rich”, a group who have made their fortunes too quickly to have made social connections. Nick’s next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a huge mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night. Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg as he was educated at Yale and has social connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan and her husband, Tom, an aggressive, womanizing man who was a classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful young woman with whom Nick has a romantic relationship. Nick also learns a bit about Daisy and Tom’s marriage. Tom has a mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after finding out, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle. They all go to an indecent party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair. Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose.

Jay Gatsby is the protagonist of The Great Gatsby. Like many others in the novel Gatsby is a young, very wealthy man. Nick Carraway neighbors Gatsby and his large mysterious mansion famous for his shindigs. Even though many people attend his parties, nobody really knows who he is or his story. Throughout the novel we learn that Gatsby was born in a rural town in North Dakota. He was not rich then, but he gained his fortune throughout the years by committing criminal activities. In the beginning of the novel Nick looks at Gatsby as a faulty man, but he later then sees that he works hard to get to where he wants to be reaching for the green light.

Despite the general characterization of the upper class as gentle, well-mannered people, the kind, well-bred characters are more of the West Eggers than the upper class East Eggers. In fact, the upper class displays the worst behaviors. Tom, for example, is arrogant, selfish, hypocritical, and constantly rude to Gatsby. He proudly speaks out racist and sexist views, and shows violence such as when he breaks Myrtle’s nose for merely annoying him. When the Buchanans at the end, simply move away than attend Gatsby’s funeral, they prove to be inconsiderate, careless people who “let other people clean up the mess they had made.”(179) Jordan, who is dishonest and a cheater, is not such a refined character either. Gatsby, on the other hand, is a “perfect gentleman”, what Wolfsheim regards as “a man of fine breeding”(71) He always maintains a polite and kind attitude, even when he’s with Tom and his condescending friends. He is continuously considerate and loyal, and although his manners come off as affectations, Nick nonetheless finds “something gorgeous about him”. When it comes down to personal charm and character, wealth and class mean nothing.