Similarities Between The Great Gatsby And The Hunger Games

The Great Gatsby is a novel which critically discusses the ideals of the American Dream and recapturing the past. In the film adaptation, producer Jack Clayton stays very closely to the plot and even quotes the novel verbatim but fails to capture the essence of the themes portrayed in the novel. The text did not translate well into film; some facts are distorted, the depiction of the characters are different, the general ambience of certain settings do not match, and the movie is weighted towards the beginning of the book, with half of the movie based closely on the first two chapters of the book.

The book The Hunger Games, portrays a society where people are treated unfairly based on factors that they cannot control. The people are born into one of 13 districts. There lives vary drastically based on where they are born. Someone born in the Capitol has a completely different life than someone born in district 12. A person born in the Capitol lives a wealthy life and is always treated with respect. On the other hand someone born in district 12 has a life of constant back breaking work. They live in poverty and struggle to survive.

Upon watching the movie “The Hunger Games” from a sociological perspective, I learned that many of the things that we have gone over in this online sociology course were incorporated heavily into what is perhaps one of my personal favorite movies of all time. Things like social status, culture, heritage, gender, and more were all used throughout the film in order to portray a realistic and believable setting for the viewer from a social perspective. Probably the most important sociological themes explored in this movie were the struggle to maintain a high ranking social status amongst surrounding humans, the pre-perceived idea of what you were and weren’t allowed to do legally speaking based on your district, and most importantly, how humans can ultimately make life or death decisions based on the value or benefit of a certain person to the group.

Alienation can be defined as a state of being cut off or separate from a person or group of people. There are many factors that cause people to become alienated: race, political views, social status, etc. The texts “The Great Gatsby”, “The Catcher in the Rye”, and the play “Death of a Salesman” all portray characters who are cut off from the rest society. Despite the character's best effort to fit in, they ultimately fail. The authors argue that one's ideology can cause them to be alienated.

Have you ever had a best friend? Someone that was always there for you? Do you truly know how they felt about you? The Great Gatsby is about a young man named Jay Gatsby, a motivated bootlegger pursuing a grandeurous life that ends with a tragedy caused by betrayal. Of Mice and Men tells a story about two men who travel ranch to ranch together. They stumble upon a ranch that in the long run is the end of the road for them. The Great Gatsby and Of Mice and Men both portray two different stories in different time periods, yet both stories have strong resemblance. Both F.Scott Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck exemplify through their characters that friendships are not always perceived the same between two individuals.

While written centuries apart, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald both focus on societal expectations and personal shame. Though Gatsby and Hester both commit adultery and face derision from society as a result, Gatsby, unlike Hester, is not able to accept his position in the community and remains a social pariah of the upper-class he so dearly wishes to join.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is the story of a young millionaire named Jay Gatsby told from his best friend's point of view. Gatsby throws famously large parties in an attempt to bring the girl of his dreams back into his life. Jake, Reinvented is a modern retelling of The Great Gatsby and features Jake Garrett and his master plan to make the girl of his dreams, Didi, his girlfriend. Both books feature a young man going above and beyond for a girl who means everything to them. The main largest difference between the two story lines is the age of the characters and the time in which they occurred. The characters, Jordan, from The Great Gatsby and Jennifer, from Jake, Reinvented are two counterparts of one main idea. For example, both girls are close with Daisy or Didi, respectively. Jordan and Jennifer also fall in love with either Nick or Rick, a different set of characters who are also counterparts between the two books.`A third parallel between Jennifer and Jordan is their selfish personalities. Yet some differences separate the two. In The Great Gatsby Jordan Baker’s relationship with Nick ends on a sour note unlike Jennifer’s relationship with Rick in Jake, Reinvented. Even though the two characters are counterparts of the same story there are still slight differences throughout the books.

Intertextuality is the relationship between texts, or the way that one text is similar/influenced by another through techniques such as literary devices and narrative elements. Gone is a novel written by ‘Michael Grant’, and was published by ‘Harpercollins’ in 2008. In the book, everyone over the age of fifteen in the town of Perdido Beach disappears, with a dome barricading those left inside. The kids are left to survive on their own, with some developing powers after a nuclear explosion in the past. The Hunger Games is a also a novel, written by ‘Suzanne Collins’ and was published by ‘Scholastic’ in 2008. The book was adapted into a film in the year 2012 under the direction of ‘Gary Ross’, and will be compared to Gone. The story follows Katniss Everdeen in a post-apocalyptic setting, where children from twelve districts are sent to fight against each other for food, money and other necessities. Both texts share similar themes with each other, so how does setting impact the intertextuality between themes used in The Hunger Games and Gone?

“What is better, the book or movie?” a commonly asked question by many individuals who are curious to know one’s opinion on a novel or film he/she is interested in. The book is usually always better than the movie because the book is more detailed, one gets to know the characters better, and it allows one to be more creative and have his/her own interpretation on what is occurring. In this case, The Great Gatsby is a remarkable 1925 novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which was made into various movie adaptions in 1926, 1949, 1974, 2000 and 2013. Each version takes place in drastically different periods, so each type has its own take on the film, also depending on the director’s vision. This goes to show that the cinema has been trying periodically to recreate F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, but the attempts of the movies have mostly failed. In particular, the 1974 film decreases its effectiveness in representing the message that Fitzgerald was attempting to demonstrate in the book, which contributes to the book being significantly better than the film for various reasons.

From the start the novel is laden with the pressures that the main characters are exposed to due to their social inequality, unlikeness in their heredity, dissimilarity in their most distinctive character traits, differences in their aspirations and inequality in their endowments, let alone the increasingly fierce opposition that the characters are facing from modern post-war bourgeois society.

In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald published what is considered to be his most popular novel, The Great Gatsby. Almost thirty years later, Arthur Miller released his play Death of a Salesman in 1949. One of the greatest similarities between these seemingly different works is how their authors portray the American Dream. The American dream, according to author and historian James Truslow Adams, is “…that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” In Death of a Salesman and The Great Gatsby, Miller and Fitzgerald create a critic of the American Dream through the protagonist’s dreams, lies, and their fascination with the past, factors that led to their demise, and then use their protagonists to create a critic on modern day American society.

American politician Marco Rubio once said,“The American dream is a term that is often misunderstood. It isn’t really about becoming rich or famous. It is about things much simpler and more fundamental than that” (brainyquote.com). This concept is true in the novels The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald. In both novels, the protagonists (Holden and Gatsby) are pushed by society to live up to the stereotypical ‘American dream’. Both Holden and Gatsby have high and unrealistic expectations of themselves. They both share fond memories and their different ideas of the American dream; but in the end, they realize their ideas of them are just fantasies. After realising the truth behind the American dream, it leads them to their tragic end. The American dream is not beneficial because it pushes people in society to be something they are not. Both stories are tragic because the pursuit of the dream, and Holden’s individuality.

Romance, love, and destiny. Connections are formed like bridges built of various things; love, trust, money, fate. Some bridges are stronger than others and some bridges connect people who perhaps shouldn’t be connected. The movie “The Great Gatsby” better expresses the romantic relationships and connections between characters. Between Tom and Daisy, whose relationship may have more to do with survival than love, with Myrtle and Tom, the bridge between them connecting two souls searching for something more in life. And then there are bridges like the one between Jordan and Nick, filled with lies and a bridge not often travelled, and if you’re lucky you come across a bridge like Gatsby and Daisy's, which is made of love but filled with obstacles. These bridges play a key part in the story and the movie most definitely does a better job at expressing these connections between characters.

Many similarities and differences can be found in The Great Gatsby: both the movie and the novel. One of the major differences between the two works is the initial meeting between Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway.

The tale of the Jay Gatsby is not only written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the novel, The Great Gatsby, but also directed and produced into a movie by Baz Luhrmann. Although thematically similar and entertaining, Luhrmann’s adaptation can hardly compare to the intricate and enchanting words written by Fitzgerald. Many differences fall alongside the similarities when comparing the novel and the 2013 movie of, The Great Gatsby, including characteristics of the narrator, relationships and Gatsby’s death.