F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby Essay

“It’s a shallow life that doesn’t give a person a few scars”. This quote said by Garrison Keillor, metaphorically exemplifies the true meaning of hollowness and shallowness. Hollowness and shallowness were a major part of people’s characteristics in the 1920’s ‘easy money’ era because of the great economic boom. During this era, people earned their money by corruption with smuggling alcohol during prohibition. In addition, people earned their money by people unknowingly investing in major stocks. A few people earned their money with hard work; it was mostly made easily for them. Throughout the novel, The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the shallowness and hollowness of the upper class is persistently shown. Hollowness and

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.

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.

Thesis: The pursuit of the American Dream is a dominant theme throughout The Great Gatsby, which is carried out in various ways by F. Scott Fitzgerald, how the author represents this theme through his characters and their actions is one small aspect of it.

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.”

When Cody died, he left the boy, now Jay Gatsby, a legacy of $25,000. Unfortunately

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

Any American is taught a dream that is purged of all truth. The American Dream is shown to the world as a belief that anyone can do anything; when in reality, life is filled with impossible boundaries. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald gives us a glimpse into the life of the upper class during the roaring twenties through the eyes of a moralistic young man named Nick Carraway. It is through the narrator's dealings with the upper class that the reader is shown how modern values have transformed the American Dream's pure ideals into a scheme for materialistic power, and how the world of the upper class lacks any sense of morals or consequence. In order to support Fitzgerald's message

After a time of prosperity, the roaring 1920’s became a decade of social decay and declining moral values. The forces this erosion of ethics can be explained by a variety of theories. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald paints a convincing portrait of waning social virtue in his novel, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald portrays the nefarious effects of materialism created by the wealth-driven culture of the time. This was an era where societal values made wealth and material possessions a defining element of one’s character. The implications of the wealthy mindset and its effects on humanity are at the source of the conflict in The Great Gatsby, offering a glimpse into the despair of the 20’s. During a time

When reading a book you should be transported into a world that you can both relate to but also learn from. In the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald you are effectively transported into the early twentieth century. You see many things that people living in 1922 would have to go through as well as things that are still relatable to today. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald shows you many images to effectively convey and highlight his themes of the innocence and lose of innocence, differences in social classes, and the american dream.

The social hierarchy is influenced by the amount of money one owns which determines whether one can attain their dream. By creating apparent social classes within ‘The Great Gatsby’ – old money, new money and no money, Fitzgerald strongly suggests that American society is intensely stigmatised. Daisy, Tom and Jordan represent the elite social class of society where despite their problems and failures they are always protected and immune by their wealth. Tom refers to Gatsby as ‘Mr Nobody from nowhere” and a “common swindler who would have to steal the ring he put on her finger” as he boasts about his hereditary wealth compared to the other distinct elite group of society who acquire their wealth through business deals, which are sometimes corrupt. Although Fitzgerald mainly attacks the rich, by making them look judgemental, superior and selfish, evidently the lower class of society are vulnerable within American society. This is shown where so many, like Myrtle,

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, about half of the main characters present themselves as something they are not. Throughout the novel, the theme of passing is apparent in Nick, Jay Gatsby, Daisy, and Myrtle Wilson, although they are all passing, each does it for a very different reason. Many scholars have touched on the idea that these characters are not who they appear to be and that their passing is associated with social class issues of the 1920s. Fitzgerald’s characters are built around the idea of passing and social class restrictions.

The novel The Great Gatsby is a story that takes place in the 1920’s. The story

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.