F. Scott Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby Essay

Gatsby was employed by Dan Cody doing various jobs and during that time, became close friends with one another, and each had a trust with one another (Fitzgerald 100). Cody showed Gatsby the lavish things in life, and Gatsby held a tight grip on them and made them his lifelong aspirations. Dan Cody evokes in Jay Gatsby the appreciation for wealth. “To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world” (Fitzgerald 100). Jay Gatsby stares in amazement at Cody’s possessions, in Gatsby eyes, being corpulent in wealth and power causes bigger and better things for one’s self. The greatness of Gatsby comes through the willingness he has to make his dreams a success. Jay Gatsby’s dreams are the reason for his existence, and his purpose in life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the popular novelists of twentieth century America. He is the representative novelist of the age because his novels deal with the American life in 20th century.

Throughout the novel, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby’s unrequited love for Daisy is evident, as well as George Wilson’s love for his wife, Myrtle. Unlike Gatsby, Wilson is the least important character in the novel due to his important role in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unique plot scheme that led to Gatsby’s murder. However, both characters have similarities and differences the reader is incapable of detecting due to Wilson’s brief mentions in chapter two and seven. Gatsby and Wilson’s love is similar due to their love murdering them both and their affection by remaining loyal to their women, but Gatsby was more ambitious to obtain a wealthy girl like Daisy and Wilson was forcing Myrtle to move west.

F. Scott Fitzgerald uses his life experience in his works. He explains, ‘that was always my experience-- a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy 's school; a poor boy in a rich man 's club… However, I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has coloured my entire life and works.’ The short story of Winter Dreams was written around the same time that Fitzgerald was developing ideas for The Great Gatsby. Whilst this wasn’t published until 1925, Winter Dreams débuted in 1922 and the similarities between the novel and short story were intentional. Winter Dreams became a short draft, which Fitzgerald based The Great Gatsby on. Both resemble Fitzgerald’s real life; although both were written before most of the comparable events occurred. Preceding this, The Jelly Bean, a short story from Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age (published in 1922) invited the reader to follow Jim Powell through his dreams of social advancement and love, which parallel Fitzgerald’s later stories and life experiences. In addition, Fitzgerald’s The Rich Boy, a short story published in 1926 in All the Sad Young Men suggests that the author’s life experiences shaped his work up to and even after The Great Gatsby, which is considered to be Fitzgerald’s greatest work.

The main theme of the novel “The Great Gatsby” focuses on the American Dream and it is portrayed through the life of Jay Gatsby. Through Gatsby’s life we see the withering of the American Dream, a tragedy that struck Jay’s near finished dream. The American Dream is what many have hoped of achieving, it has existed in the past and is in the present. The American Dream gives people a goal that they can work towards, it also gives them a purpose in life. The American Dream represents luxury and wealth it believes the goodness of the quality of life. For Jay Gatsby, he was so close to achieving the American Dream. He had the wealth and the class, all he needed was his long lost love, Daisy. Gatsby truly believed that he

Jay Gatsby moves from being the son of "shiftless and unsuccessful farm people" (Fitzgerald 105) to becoming the owner of a huge West Egg mansion with "a marble swimming pool and over forty acres of lawn and garden" (Fitzgerald 11), this exemplifies the possibilities offered by the American dream. Gatsby earns his money through illegal means, which places him in the new money category, and as a result he flaunts by throwing extravagant parties and purchasing expensive cars. The main reason Gatsby does these things is to get the attention and win the affection of Daisy, which is the major component of his dream. Old money, on the other hand, has had money for generations, so they do not flaunt their wealth. Old money, people like Tom and Daisy, look down on the newly rich, because they got rich quick, illegally and, because they are threatening the status quo.

The 1920s is the decade in American history known as the “roaring twenties.” Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is a reflection of life in the 1920s. Booming parties, prominence, fresh fashion trends, and the excess of alcohol are all aspects of life in the “roaring twenties.”

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, many of the characters live in an illusory world and only some can see past this. In the novel, West Egg and its residents represent the newly rich, while East Egg represents the old aristocracy. Gatsby seeking the past, Daisy is obsessed with material things, Myrtle wanting Tom to escape her poverty, George believing that T.J. Eckleburg is God, and Tom believing he is untouchable because of his power and wealth are all examples of the illusion v. reality struggle in the novel and Nick, the only character aware of reality, witnesses the fall of all the characters around him to their delusions.

1. We see all the action of The Great Gatsby from the perspective of one character whose

People’s actions or choices are antecedents to the reactions of others that follow, whether positive or negative. The Great Gatsby, in written and film form, is a testament to the innate desire of people to possess that which they perceive will bring them happiness regardless of the true physical and psychological results. The perception of the American dream is encompassed in a world devoid of moral balance seen through the eyes of a pessimistic bystander, Nick Carraway, and lived out through a group of characters representing some of the most consequentially immoral acts such as greed, adultery, false idolatry, and murder. This window view of the intentions and actions of the seemingly normal upper class society of the nineteen twenties forces the viewer to question why it is easier to enable those around us to self-destruct through some form of dependence than it is to listen to our conscience. The Great Gatsby, both the 2013 film directed by Baz Luhrmann and the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, uses point of view, setting, characterization, and symbolism to argue that anyone is capable of evil and that those actions can lead to an endless and futile pursuit of the light. However, the film presents a more humane end for some of the characters that were hopeful and giving throughout this pursuit such as Gatsby when he believes Daisy actually called or Nick as he gets treatment for his alcoholism as he writes his novel, thus giving audiences a vastly different message of hope

The Great Gatsby was composed in connection to the Jazz Age, a period when the music of Jazz and dance styles became popular. In spite of the fact that it was condemned by the aristocratic individuals, many were fond of this way of life. The Jazz Age was not the only new thing created, this carefree lifestyle was followed by a change in women. Numerous young ladies began to wear short skirts, cut their hair short, wore excessive makeup, who were called "flappers." These flappers moved to the jazz music that evoked an inspiring and lively state of mind.

“So The Great Gatsby house at West Egg glittered with all the lights of the twenties, there were was always Gatsby’s supplicating hand, reaching out to make glamour with what he had lost be cruel chance...of how little Gatsby wanted at bottom-not to understand society, but to ape it”(21-22). The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald features constant parties, glamorous houses, and extravagance to reveal the values of the characters and the society they live in. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby exemplifies the innate values and morals of its characters

An Austrian physician by the name of Sigmund Freud, a well renowned psychologist, aside from his studies, was once rumored do have done enough cocaine to kill a baby horse. Other than his cocaine addiction he also developed the theory of Psychoanalysis, which in short means that he studied the longstanding difficulties in the ways that people think and feel about themselves, the world, and their relationships with others. Sigmund Freud’s ideals of psychoanalysis was translated to in a way where we are able to analyze media in all it’s shapes and forms. Psychoanalytic media analysis argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the characters within a movie, and the literary work is a manifestation of the Id, Super-Ego, and Ego. The text that I will analyze using the psychoanalytic media theory will be the film The Great Gatsby, originally a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I will be using Freud’s primary psychoanalytic theory of the ID, Ego, and Super-Ego to analyze the movie The Great Gatsby, and also analyze the potential cultural and societal impacts of an authors use of psychoanalytic theory.

How came people did not respect Fitzgerald’s writing in the twentieth century, but why people are respecting and valuing Fitzgerald work in the twenty-first century? Fitzgerald had a hard time to profiting from his writing, but he was not successful after his first novel. There are three major point of this essay are: the background history of Fitzgerald life, the comparisons between Fitzgerald and the Gatsby from his number one book in America The Great Gatsby, and the Fitzgerald got influences of behind the writing and being a writer. From childhood to adulthood, Fitzgerald faced many good and bad experiences that inspired him to achieve his own American dream in a short amount of time.

Willa Sibert Cather, famous American author, once said “where there is great love, there are always miracles” (“Quotes by Willa Cather.”). In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway moves to New York in hopes of becoming a successful bond salesman. Carraway lives next-door to millionaire Jay Gatsby. The two men live across the bay from Gatsby’s lover, Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby throws lavish parties in hope of seeing Daisy at one of them. Throughout Daisy’s marriage with her husband, Tom Buchanan, Tom has multiple affairs. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is clearly great because he remains true to his love, his friends, and his dreams.