My Lost City Analysis

I think it conveys the human condition of unreasonably struggling against our predicament, hoping and believing that we can control our world and our destiny, when experience should convince us we cannot. Fitzgerald seems to admire this quality of "beating on against the current", an optimistic life-force that at compels us, against all evidence, to battle our fate with sheer will. Of course, Nick muses, that the battle is lost long before it is fought. But ignoring that fatalism is a better way to live and more noble at that. Critics have also framed this around the American character of optimism that drove us as a nation. America, and the unknown world it represented, as Nick says just before, represented to the first Dutch sailors a new world with finally something commensurate with our capacity to wonder. With such a capacity, how can we not fight to live and struggle while we are

New York City, overwhelmed with success, money and image in the 1920s was drowning in corruption. F Scott Fitzgerald composed a riveting novel, The Great Gatsby, which follows the journey of several characters dealing with love, greed, confusion and lust during the 1920s. Fitzgerald illustrates the corruption of the American dream by allowing us to follow the downfall of Jay Gatsby, revealing the reality of the American dream.

In the novel The Devil in the White City, Author Erik Larson uses imagery, irony, and juxtaposition to parallel the good and evil sides of the city of Chicago during the 1893 World’s Fair. Larson takes a more upbeat, joyous tone while following the story of Burnham and the architects designing the World Fair, but the tone turns much darker when perspectives change and we follow the plot of H.H. Holmes, America’s first known serial killer. Using rhetorical devices like imagery, diction, and syntax, Larson is able to paint a picture of Chicago from both the good and evil side, setting a more serious and ominous tone for the novel.

Imagine a world where one side of the equator was filled with wealth, happiness, and content. Now imagine the other side of the equator filled with poverty, sadness, and death. These two completely opposing halves enhance each other's descriptions and make one think of each side more deeply about the concept. This same scenario is also present in one of America’s favorite novels based upon the 1920s and the American dream. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald juxtaposes two contrasting places, the Valley of Ashes and New York City, using imagery to magnify the difference between reality and a fantasy, which is central to the meaning of the work.

Everyone knew that when one stayed in the water too long, one drowned. However, that was not the case. In Alden Nowlan’s, “The Fall of the City,” Teddy was a young boy who had a very vivid imagination. Although at times it went to the dark side, it was ultimately the mistreatment from his aunt and uncle which cause Teddy to destroy his city. For example, his uncle’s threats of physical abuse leaded Teddy drowned in his imagination, the only place where he can feel safer. Although Teddy hardly spoke back to his uncle, he was still threatened that he will not “be able to sit down the rest of the week.” The threat isolated Teddy from his uncle and Teddy felt as if he has no one to turn to. Without someone who truly understands his feelings,

“The sight is so inspiring that all conversation stopped, and all were lost in admiration of this grand sight. The equal of it I have never seen, and i doubt very much if i shall again’” (Larson 271). Erik Larson’s nonfiction novel The Devil in the White City centers around the Chicago World’s Fair, also known as The World’s Columbian Exposition, and two of the men whose lives were intertwined: Daniel Burnham and H. H. Holmes. Daniel Burnham was the chief architect who built the World’s fair with a grandeur image in his mind; in contrast, H. H. Holmes used the fair to masquerade his horrific and numerous murders, exploiting the fair. In The Devil in the White City, author Erik Larson uses vivid imagery, captivating tone, and figurative language to portray the dreamlike qualities of the White City.

In conclusion, Fitzgerald uses this tragic story to express his feeling about the American Dream of the American people during the 1920's. The characters in the novel are being used to reflect the gradual demoralization of the people in the society. Every person living in this

Using Daisy and Gatsby as illustrations, he implies that the world of the Roaring Twenties was really corrupt, careless, and harmful and that the American Dream is unreachable and unrealistic. Fitzgerald, through Nick Carraway, depicts the wealthy as having a “quality of distortion…beyond [the] eyes’ power of correction” (176). Fitzgerald expends his full opinion of America’s elite through Nick’s disillusionment with Daisy and Tom Buchanan, calling them “careless people….[smashing] up things and creatures and then [retreating] back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together” (179). Basically, Fitzgerald accuses them of being destructive, selfish, and careless, assuming they have the right to be such things because of their wealth and social status. They’re just as destructive and corrupt as anyone else—if not more so—but they have the option to retreat and “let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald, 179) because of their financial and social status. With Gatsby, Fitzgerald shows the unreality of the American Dream. Gatsby “had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it”—but “it was already behind him” (Fitzgerald, 180). Though Gatsby planned his future around his dream of Daisy, he died still living in the past. Fitzgerald asserts that the same outcome is destined for all who chase the American Dream. Although it seems so close that they can hardly fail to grasp it, the dream eludes them, receding year by year. They convince themselves that tomorrow they’ll “run faster, stretch out [their] arms father…and one fine morning” they’ll finally seize it—but they really never do (Fitzgerald, 180). Fitzgerald says it’s like “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”

Throughout the story, Lost in the City by Edwards P. Jones there are many different ways the city influences the different characters. Lost in the City takes the reader through some difficult times of many African Americans in Washington. The different characters form bond that cannot be broken in order to handle what life throws at them. In the stories "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons" and "The First Day" the city influences the different main characters in different ways, to help them come of age.

It is evident that Fitzgerald admires the pursuit of the ‘American Dream’, for he uses beautiful imagery, “a fresh, green breast of the new world”, “trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house”, “a transitory enchanted moment man

Fitzgerald employs the extended metaphor of the “new world” to illustrate the total collapse of Gatsby’s reality(169). After Gatsby realizes he has lost the one dream of his life, he enters a world “where poor ghosts breath[] dreams like air”(169). Though Gatsby is in his own backyard, he is looking up at “an unfamiliar sky”(169). Before, this yard gave view to the green light near Daisy’s house, a symbol of hope and love and promise for Gatsby, but with his dream evaporated he finds himself vacantly looking out on his empty wealth. Once Gatsby has lost hope, he himself becomes a “poor ghost” with no conceivable aim, drive, or purpose(169). This shift in reality aligns with the change from summer to autumn as Gatsby felt “he had lost the old warm world,” instead “disappear[ing] among the yellowing trees”(169). Gatsby’s dream to reunite with Daisy depended on a disregard for the passage of time, and this metaphor reiterates that his life has crumbled because of that disregard. The transition from summer to fall parallels Gatsby’s transition from his old world full of hope to the new world devoid of meaning. As the leaves and trees and grass lose their vitality, so do Gatsby and his dream. Furthermore, Fitzgerald draws a connection between Wilson and Gastby as “poor ghosts...like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding towards him through the amorphous trees”(169). This comparison further sheds light on Gatsby’s state: Wilson just had the one thing he loved snatched from him, exiling him into the world of ghosts and driving him to murder. The utter hopelessness more overtly seen in Wilson is extended to Gatsby as they are thrust together in the new world and, soon after, death. Finally, the futility of Gatsby’s new life is displayed by the lack of a

F. Scott Fitzgerald presents multiple themes and characters that have an overlaying façade that they portray throughout the novel. Fitzgerald’s main representation of illusion is with James Gatz or Jay Gatsby as he is known in the time covered in the novel. Gatsby can also be considered to be the embodiment of illusion within the novel.

While explaining his new daily routine, he expressed his views on the city, “I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the contrast flicker of men and women and machines give to the restless eye” (56). When he says this, his tone is a tinge of sadness but mostly acceptance. It doesn’t seem to affect or bother him that he feels solitary in a big city. He admits that he feels lonely, but he also believes other people in New York feel lonely as well. Showing that even though a big city can be exciting and filled with opportunities, it’s not always as grand as people make it

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s works deliver the most vivid depictions of life in all literary history, and those explored by his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby are no exception. Fitzgerald plays with colors to quite literally paint the town of New York and its surroundings. These colors suggest things about his cast of characters that one might have otherwise missed. Fitzgerald cleverly weaves color into Jay Gatsby’s life to delineate his chase of Daisy, Daisy’s character development, and the reality of life.

As Albert Einstein once said, “look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better” (“Albert Einstein Quotes”). In The Lost City of Z by David Grann, nature plays an important role in the development of the book. It is about the author going on a journey following Percy Fawcett’s footsteps on his last expedition to find the lost city of Z. In the beginning of the book, David Grann gives the readers an insight of Percy Fawcett’s early life up until his disappearance in the Amazonian jungle in nineteen twenty-seven (Andrews). The author then goes on to describe his journey as he gathered information pertaining to Fawcett’s last expedition to find Z and follows his footsteps into the jungle in search of what happened to Percy Fawcett. David Grann’s The Lost City of Z analyzes his own experiences figuring out what happened to Percy Fawcett and teaches readers to look further to find what nature has concealed.