Idealised love hope and mortality in 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Sonnets from the Portuguese'

Myrtle Wilson, the wife of George, and the lover of Tom Buchanan, is brutally murdered toward the end of the novel. After an uncivilized afternoon in New York, Daisy and Gatsby head swiftly back to East Egg. Gatsby explains to Nick, “It all happened in a minute, but it seemed to me that she wanted to speak to us, thought we were somebody she knew” (Fitzgerald 109). Myrtle ran out toward the car looking for Tom but sadly for her it is not him. Many know about Tom’s affair, but not with whom he is having it, especially Daisy. Daisy never slows the car down, and she never realizes who she hits. This shows that Daisy is oblivious to Myrtles existence. Myrtle is sleeping with her husband, she ruins their marriage, and Daisy kills her. The irony exists in this because Daisy actually saves her marriage by killing

In the final few chapters we finally get to see Gatsby’s true colors. We see that Gatsby is expressing love towards Daisy when they all decide to go to New York for the day. Tom becomes suspicious and accuses Gatsby of having an affair with his wife and also being a bootlegger. Gatsby tells Tom that he and Daisy love one another and that they are going to be together like they once were in the past. Gatsby was wrong and Daisy ends up staying with Tom. Myrtle Wilson is then ran over by Daisy but Gatsby says that he will take the blame and ends up getting shot. At the beginning of this novel we thought that Gatsby was a well liked, popular guy, but it turns out that no one shows up to attend his funeral.

George and Myrtle Wilson are two characters in The Great Gatsby representing the working class of society aiming for the American Dream. George Wilson owns a run-down auto shop in the Valley of Ashes and is doing his best to get business, while Myrtle Wilson chases after wealth and status through an affair with Tom. However, both characters face a tragic ending in their attempts to achieve the idealistic life: Daisy strikes and kills Myrtle with Gatsby’s car and George commits suicide after murdering Gatsby. George and Myrtle’s deadly fates help illustrate the novel’s pessimistic attitude toward the American Dream, symbolizing that it is impossible to achieve. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the Wilsons as a tragic way to demonstrate the unnatainable American Dream.

. . . And one fine morning- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (Fitzgerald 180). Furthermore, Fitzgerald illustrates that no matter how much effort a person gives, the world will ultimately oppose them. As in Gatsby’s case, he died an unknown figure and nobody dared to attend his funeral to commiserate him. Another instance of Fitzgerald’s opinion regarding the American dream was prevalent through the actions of Myrtle Wilson. Throughout the novel, Myrtle was engrossed in the lavish lifestyle she attained through a surreptitious affair with Tom Buchanan. Myrtle’s personality transformed as she took advantage of Tom’s money by using it to live out her fantasy. Although Myrtle’s American dream occured sparsely, she displayed how materialistic she was by stating, “I married him (George) because I thought he was a gentleman. . . . I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in, and never even told me about it .

Another example of the corrupt American Dream is the automobile, a classic symbol of material wealth in America at that time. Gatsby owns a remarkable automobile whose appearance is envied by many. "It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and super-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns" (p.64) Gatsby's car in an overblown item created by wealth to fulfill the American Dream of personal material success. It is, however, Gatsby's car that kills Myrtle Wilson when Daisy runs her over. This indirectly leads to Gatsby's own death and portrays Fitzgerald's theme that basing the Dream on materialism

In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby’s hold of the past and his pursuance of his own American Dream ends in certain death. Throughout the story, Gatsby believes that his passion can sway Daisy to leave Tom. These events lead him to relentlessly chase wealth in order to gain social status that is worthy of Daisy. However, the story does not end according to Gatsby’s ideals. Fitzgerald utilizes symbolism to demonstrate Gatsby’s tragic flaw, his chasing of a dream that is already dead.

Through the literary device of language, Fitzgerald has positioned the reader to view myrtle in a certain way through the voice of Nick. However, unlike Nicks description of Daisy, where he concentrates on her voice, mannerisms and beauty and unlike his description of Jordan which were he emphasises on her posture and athleticism, Nicks description of Myrtle focuses entirely on her body. This can be shown when Nick says, “She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smoldering” (Fitzgerald, 2016). Fitzgerald has done this to emphasise that nick has described her this way as she is Tom’s mistress and it speaks to the strong physically attraction between tom and myrtle which undergirds their affair. This attraction serves as a halt to the deep emotional attraction that daisy and Gatsby share.

In the lower class society, The Great Gatsby displays unhappiness in a number of ways and at a variety of extents, this is displayed though the eyes of Myrtle Wilson. Unhappy in her marriage and her position on the social hierarchy. George Wilson, Myrtle’s husband, gave an impressionable first encounter; this lead Myrtle to believe he was true gentleman worthy of her love and affection. She comes to find he is nothing short of

Fitzgerald uses the murder of Myrtle Wilson to symbolize the death of the American Dream. Myrtle is a character who lives in the valley of ashes, a place between West Egg and New York City covered in “gray land” and “spasms of bleak dust” (23). The valley of ashes is where all of the city’s waste ends up and the people that live there are poor and low class. Myrtle was not content with her life in the valley and her socioeconomic status. Her husband was a car repair man and Myrtle was embarrassed by his lack of wealth. The day after their wedding she “lay down and cried” after figuring out that George had borrowed someone’s suit for the wedding, and she knew then she had “made a mistake” marrying him (35). Myrtle wanted to escape this life of poverty and social inferiority, and she imagined she could do so by having an affair with one of the richest men in New York, Tom Buchanan. This, however, did not get her very far because she was later run over and killed by Daisy, who was driving Gatsby’s car when Myrtle “rushed out” of the garage “waving her hands and shouting” (137), thinking it was Tom driving the car coming back for her. George had Myrtle physically trapped in the house, symbolizing how she was trapped in her class and social status. When she saw that expensive, fancy car, she saw it as an opportunity to run off with Tom, representing how she thought she could escape her life of poverty. Myrtle’s death symbolizes the death of the American Dream because she is someone who tried to achieve it and move up in life but was ultimately killed because of it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, portrays the life of a man who is truly focused on one dream: to reclaim the love of his life. Fitzgerald illustrates the problem of being so single-minded through Gatsby’s ultimate demise. His slow evolution and reveal of the character of Gatsby leads to a devastating climax once his dream fails. Fitzgerald uses extended metaphor and sharp diction to depict Gatsby’s crumbling life in his last moments.

At first glance, they appear to have everything they could possibly wish for: a luxurious home, each other and more money than they need. However, beneath the façade of happiness lies dissatisfaction with life. Tom in particular is not content with his marriage as he has “got some woman in New York” that he is having an affair with. Tom and Daisy epitomise the couple who have everything that can be achieved by the American Dream, but they are such despicable people that they give the American Dream no value or merit at all. They are “careless people”, without morals, and show how you do not have to work hard to have everything the American Dream promises, as they do nothing at all meaningful with their time, to the extent that Daisy has to ask “What do people plan?”. Another character that clearly displays the corruption of the American Dream is Myrtle. She is a dreamer - like Gatsby she wants status and power, and she thinks that she will get this through her affair with Tom Buccanan. The meaning of the noun “myrtle” is very telling of Myrtle's character as it is a climbing plant, just as Myrtle wants to climb the social ladder. However, she is deluding herself as Tom Buchanan clearly shows no real affection for her and even behaves in a violent way towards her and he “broke her nose with his open hand”. The way in which Gatsby's and Myrtle's, the two dreamers in 'The Great Gatsby', lives end

Myrtle like Gatsby had an American dream which was obtaining wealth, she had planned to achieve her goal through Tom. Unlike Daisy Tom doesn’t embody the American dream he represents a mean to get to that dream. Tom gives Myrtle many gifts but he has no intention of marrying her, but she doesn’t know that. When Catherine tells Nick that “it's really his wife that's keeping them apart. She's a Catholic, and they don't believe in divorce” (33), we can deduce that Tom is lying Myrtle. Just as Gatsby Myrtle dies before she can reach her American dream, this pattern shows that Fitzgerald believes that the

    "It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which is not likely I shall ever find again." (2). The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel that takes place in the Roaring 20's. It's about a man who changes everything he is for the inaccessible woman of his dreams. After losing her before the war because of his financial status, he finally tries to win her heart back through his newly attained money. She is faced with a cheating husband and a man who wants to repeat the past. In the end, she has blood on her hands. After all his effort, he loses her in a heated argument and he loses his life to a

     Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is a fascinating work that details the corruptive influence of greed. The main character is a man named Gatsby. The two main female characters are Daisy and Myrtle. These two women provide an interesting contrast while complementing each other at the same time. Daisy is living a life of luxury while Myrtle is struggling to make ends meet. They both play major roles in the novel, and, although their intentions seem pure and promising enough, they both are doomed to succumb to greed which causes eventual death.

Good morals and values are considered to be good qualities in most people’s perspective. In Fitzgerald’s, morality is something that many characters lack. Murder, bootlegging, and adultery are all traits that the characters in the novel possess. Myrtle Wilson is one of the two characters that is murdered in the story. In this conversation between Nick and Gatsby, “’Well, I tried to swing the wheel—‘ He broke off and suddenly I guessed the truth. ‘Was Daisy driving?’ ‘Yes’” Gatsby reveals the truth about who was driving (Fitzgerald 143). This proves that Daisy was driving when Myrtle was hit and killed. Gatsby is also murdered in the story. George Wilson, Myrtle’s husband, kills Gatsby because he is told that Gatsby is who killed his wife. Hickey writes, “He shot Gatsby and killed himself,” talking about George when he goes to Gatsby’s house in pursuit to Murder Gatsby (4). This proves that George murdered Gatsby.