preview

The Great Gatsby And A Street Car Named Desire

Good Essays

Arguably, the themes of illusion and fantasy are important in both The Great Gatsby and A Street Car Named Desire. F.Scott Fitzgerald and Tennessee Williams use these themes to shape characters as well as drive the plot. These themes are also present in the setting, narration and characterisation.
Illusion and fantasy dominate The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. They are essential to narration, setting and characterisation in the novel. Nick Caraway’s narration is conflicted between a realistic point of view and a fantastical point of view throughout the novel. In the first chapter, Nick states his family are descended from ‘the Dukes of Bccleuch’ but later confirms his family actually own ‘a wholesale hardware business’. This …show more content…

This highlights Nick’s incapability of seeing poverty, as instead he romanticises over the bleak setting. This can be linked to the way Nick views the character of Gatsby. He is aware of Gatsby’s involvement in illegal businesses yet still describes him as ‘gorgeous’ and proceeds to be slightly in awe of him. As a result of characters creating an illusion around them, many relationships are built on a superficial premise as nothing is what it seems. Jay Gatsby is the epitome of illusion, and is the central illusionist in the novel. Born James Gatz to ‘parents who were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people’ in North Dakota, Gatsby’s entire life is an illusion built from a young man’s fantasy. In the pursuit of his American Dream ‘he invented the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old would be likely to invent’. Using materialistic objects such as his clothing, his car and his mansion, Gatsby managed to create an illusion so convincing that his real identity was hidden. Gatsby’s parties act as an event in the novel that epitomises the stark contrast between reality and illusion. ‘Several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d’oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads’. Every element of the party is elaborate and excessive, yet Gatsby stands alone, ‘looking from one group to another with

Get Access