Essay on Comparison Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye

All tragedies eventually end in chaos; however, Othello and The Great Gatsby both begin with innocent characters thinking little about the possibility of disarray. During the climax of both works it becomes evident that the idea of order is doomed, inevitably leading to a bounding spiral of problems. The Great Gatsby and Othello both end in chaos because the protagonists, Othello and Gatsby are outsiders entering an ordered society. The actions of many characters cause confusion in the storyline, and the chaos in both works gradually impact the downfall of every character.

" You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. "- James Allen

“‘I think he [Gatsby] half expected her [Daisy] to wander into one of his parties, some night,…” (Chapter 4). Yet, no matter what Gatsby does, his American Dream is unattainable, because Daisy chooses her husband, Tom Buchanan, over Gatsby. “Her [Daisy] frightened eyes told that whatever intentions, whatever courage, she had had, were definitely gone” (Chapter 7). The protagonist from The Great Gatsby desires something he cannot obtain, similar to the protagonist from The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield.

The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a story about a wealthy man named Gatsby. Gatsby lives a luxuriant life in West Egg of New York. Gatsby’s wealth has an unknown secret because nobody seems to know where his wealth emerged from. Despite of having so much fortune, Gatsby’s true American dream has not been achieved. In the great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald develops Gatsby as a failed American dream to show the impossibility of the American dream in the 1920’s.

Alienation can be defined as a state of being cut off or separate from a person or group of people. There are many factors that cause people to become alienated: race, political views, social status, etc. The texts “The Great Gatsby”, “The Catcher in the Rye”, and the play “Death of a Salesman” all portray characters who are cut off from the rest society. Despite the character's best effort to fit in, they ultimately fail. The authors argue that one's ideology can cause them to be alienated.

Gatsby creates an identity for himself as a wealthy man, who lives a glamorous life by throwing huge parties, and is known by the most prestigious figures in New York. What the partygoers don’t realize is that the parties and his wealth is all in the hopes of rekindling with his love from the past, Daisy. In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story of a young man named Jay Gatsby, who came from nothing, and built up to be everything that he had hoped and dreamed of being. However, his one dream did not become a reality due to misfortunate events. All the money in the world couldn’t make Gatsby happy, as he died as his true self, not the identity he created for himself.

In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye, Holden Caulfield, a seventeen-year-old boy, transitions from childhood to adulthood. The death of Holden’s little brother signifies the beginning his loss of innocence and growth of maturity. As he enters adulthood, Holden views society differently from his peers by characterizing most of his peers and adults he meets as “phonies.” Thus, Holden takes the impossible challenge of preserving the innocence in children because he wants to prevent children from experiencing the corruption in society. The Catcher In The Rye embodies Holden’s struggle to preserve the innocence of children and reveals the inevitability of and the necessity of encountering the harsh realities of life.

“In his blue gardens men and women came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars” (Fitzgerald 39). In his character, his relationships, and his gatherings, Jay Gatsby epitomized the illusion of a perfect romance. When Gatsby and Daisy met in 1917, he was searching for money, but ended up profoundly falling in love with her. “[H]e set out for gold and stumbled upon a dream” (Ornstein 37). Only a few weeks after meeting one another, Gatsby had to leave for war, which led to a separation between the two for nearly five years. As “war-torn lovers” Gatsby and Daisy reach the quintessential ideal of archetypical romance. When Gatsby returned from the war, his goal was to rekindle the relationship he once had with Daisy. In order to do this, he believed he would have to work hard to gain new wealth and a new persona. “Jay Gatsby loses his life even though he makes his millions because they are not the kind of safe, respectable money that echoes in Daisy’s lovely voice” (Ornstein 36). Gatsby then meets Daisy’s cousin, Nick Carraway, who helps to reunite the pair. Finally being brought together after years of separation, Gatsby stops throwing the extravagant parties at his home, and “to preserve [Daisy’s] reputation, [he] empties his mansion of lights and servants” (Ornstein 37). Subsequent to their reconciliation, Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, begins to reveal sordid information about Gatsby’s career which causes Daisy to

Finally, Jay Gatsby’s delusions draws more pity for him. Daisy comes from a rich family and chances of her ending up with Gatsby, a poor soldier, is totally unrealistic. Furthermore Gatsby wants Daisy to “ go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you’” (105) but Daisy asserts that “ [she] can’t say [she] never loved Tom…It wouldn’t be true.”(126) Jay cannot grasp the present reality that Daisy could not leave Tom permanently, especially when the fruit of their love is already three years of age.

Jay Gatsby, the title character of The Great Gatsby, is really not all that the title might suggest. First of all, his real name is James Gatz. He changed it in an effort to leave behind his old life as a poor boy and create an entirely new identity. He is also a liar and a criminal, having accumulated his wealth and position by dishonest means. But he is still called ‘great,’ and in a sense he is. Gatsby is made great by his unfaltering hope, and his determination to live in a perfect world with Daisy and their perfect love. Gatsby has many visible flaws—his obvious lies, his mysterious way of avoiding straight answers. But they are shadowed over by his gentle smile and his visible hunger for an ideal future. The coarse and playful Jay

American politician Marco Rubio once said,“The American dream is a term that is often misunderstood. It isn’t really about becoming rich or famous. It is about things much simpler and more fundamental than that” (brainyquote.com). This concept is true in the novels The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald. In both novels, the protagonists (Holden and Gatsby) are pushed by society to live up to the stereotypical ‘American dream’. Both Holden and Gatsby have high and unrealistic expectations of themselves. They both share fond memories and their different ideas of the American dream; but in the end, they realize their ideas of them are just fantasies. After realising the truth behind the American dream, it leads them to their tragic end. The American dream is not beneficial because it pushes people in society to be something they are not. Both stories are tragic because the pursuit of the dream, and Holden’s individuality.

     Gatsby lives a selfless life in order to attain his dream. His loyalty to his dream is Gatsby’s most noble characteristic. Although it seems to be too idealistic, Gatsby “[throws] himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that [drifts] his way.” (101) His entire existence revolves around his dream; recapturing Daisy’s heart, taking her away from Tom and living happily ever after in his mansion he built with her approval in mind.

    The success of Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is in part due to his successful characterization of the main characters through the comparison and contrast of Daisy Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan and George B. Wilson, and Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby. The contrast is achieved through two principle means: contrasting opposite qualities held by the characters and contrasting one character's posititve or negative qualities to another's lack thereof. Conflict is generated when the characters sometimes stand as allegorical opposites. On the other hand, comparison of two characters is rather straightforward. This comparison and contrast is prevalent in Fitzgerald's

The transformation between James Gatz and Jay Gatsby is an example of how people can transform themselves according to their ambition for wealth and prosperity. The use of illegal activities to gain Gatsby's wealth is alluded to in the book, this shows the extent of how the American Dream circumvented the moral revulsion and pushed people who were crazy about money into crime - driving the moral standing of wealthier citizens into the ground. To Gatsby, his dream was symbolised by Daisy, Gatsby even says that her voice sounds like money, a direct correlation between Daisy and the wealth and happiness that Gatsby would supposedly enjoy if only he could have married Daisy but could still enjoy if he had married her five years later. His pursuit of happiness with Daisy was the ultimate cause of the degradation of Gatsby's morals and realistic dreams. This is because he held an unrealistic view of life and how he could recreate the past. His dreams had distorted reality to the point where when his rationality realised that the image of life and of Daisy did not coincide with the real life version his mind did not grasp that perhaps the dream had receded to the point of no return, consequently his dreams helped to

Born into a poor family, James Gatz attempts to improve from his current position by pursuing Daisy, the first woman to resemble his ideology of Jay Gatsby. An ambitious young reporter from New York arrives at Gatsby’s door in search of answers to scandals about his past life. Gatsby explains that, “His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people - his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all… that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world… the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to