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Contradictory Characters in the River Between and the Great Gatsby

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Writers of fiction often create characters who behave in contradictory ways. Discuss how writers present contradictory characters in two or three works you have studied.

A contradictory character is a combination of statements, ideas, thoughts etc. of the particular character that oppose each other. Contradiction in a character arises, mainly, as a result of internal conflict within the character. It could also arise from other influences such as external conflicts or a moment of shock etc. or it could be the nature of the character to be contradictory to his or her actions, thoughts and speech. For the essay question, we will be looking at mainly two books: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The River Between by Ngūgī wa …show more content…

Gatsby is by nature a sober and a straight thinker. He usually had clear and well thought out ideas and speeches in his head, which is why he rarely fumbled and made mistakes. However, in cases of external conflicts, such as in chapter five when Gatsby regrets his decision of asking Nick Carraway to invite Daisy over for tea. At first, he was very excited at the idea and he was looking forward to seeing Daisy as he had been planning for this meeting for five years as stated in the book. He had been patiently waiting for an opportunity to stage this meeting between himself and Daisy Buchanan. However, when he met her, he regretted his decision entirely because of the awkwardness in their meeting. They could not talk properly to each other. This contradiction in his initial reaction and final reaction is a result of the external environment such as the presence of awkwardness between them. The awkwardness then indirectly leads to a change in Gatsby’s decision, which is regret. There was probably also the presence of internal conflict as Gatsby sees his long time lover after such a long time. He was probably feeling jittery as shown in the chapter where he had “dark signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes” before the meeting. The jittery feeling probably carried on to the point where they met each other again, giving him an immense amount of stress and pressure. This could have

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