The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald Essay

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.”

1. We see all the action of The Great Gatsby from the perspective of one character whose

F. Scott Fitzgerald was accurate in his portrayal of the aristocratic flamboyancy and indifference of the 1920s. In his novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald explores many aspects of indifference and flamboyancy. A large influence on this society was the pursuit of the American Dream. Gangsters played a heavily influential role in the new money aristocracy of the 1920s. The indifference was mainly due to the advent of Prohibition in 1920. One major societal revolution in this period was that of the “new women,” who expressed new actions and beliefs. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald accurately portrayed his characters Nick Carraway, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, and the novel’s eponym, Jay Gatsby,

At a first glance, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye’s dark, depressing story seems to be worlds apart from the more colorful tone of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. As a teen, Holden Caulfield is thrown headfirst into the adult world, forced to deal with his teenage angst, loneliness, and pain without guidance or companionship, while attempting to preserve the innocence found in children in vain. Being older and wealthier, Jay Gatsby lives a luxurious life, devoting his time and resources to his mission of reuniting with Daisy, an old lover. Despite the age and lifestyle differences, both characters have a troubled history and are constantly plagued by their haunting memories, with Holden being unable to overcome his brother’s death and Gatsby constantly tormented by his inability to create a relationship with Daisy. Hoping to find comfort and unwilling to seek external support, both Holden and Gatsby resort to self-delusion, creating facades that blur the line between fact and fiction, in a final attempt to find the mental peace that they so craved. This desperation and their inability to differentiate between fact and fiction begins to manifest itself in their social lives, isolating them from society as they slowly drift away from the real world and closer to their fantasy world.

Throughout the novel “The Great Gatsby”, F. Scott Fitzgerald used a lot of different motifs and themes to symbolize to help see the reality behind Gatsby and the other characters in the novel including Daisy. The author uses various colors and physical places such as the green light at Daisy’s dock as Gatsby’s unattainable dream of being with Daisy while the Eyes of T.J Eckleburg in the valley of ashes to portray as God’s eyes as well as the reader’s eyes watching Gatsby yearn for his dream only for it to be crushed with a bullet and killed. The novel also illustrates how the American dream can attain one’s wealth and glory but at a hefty price of falling for greed and corruption through Gatsby’s fall. In the end, we really wonder why does attaining wealth make one so greedy and why is Gatsby trying to bring Daisy back to him despite it being a moment of the past that cannot be relived, a reality that Gatsby cannot accept. The most important motifs that are prominently symbolized throughout the novel is wealth, the American dream, and corruption.

Wealth, parties, and connections, were three things that were important to anyone looking to be anyone in East New York’s high society in the Roaring 20s. F. Scott Fitzgerald captured all three with his literary voice. He made impressions everywhere with the supreme achievement of his third novel, The Great Gatsby. This novel is a tale of people’s exciting lives in the 1920’s. Fitzgerald uses the Great Gatsby to illustrate the American identity during the early twentieth century. Fitzgerald uses symbolism and narrative techniques to illustrate the materialistic chase of the American dream by upper-class society in the 20's.

The belief that wealth and luxurious materialistic possessions can capture true happiness is yet again disproven in this tragic love story revolving around Jay Gatsby and his ambitious pursuit of happiness. Jay Gatsby, arguably the central character in the novel, perseveres and overcomes his poverty-stricken life. By keeping a low profile and participating in the illegal bootlegging of alcohol for several years, Gatsby acquires an immense amount of wealth and exhibits it, his grand mansion for example, in a hope to manifest a wealthy and respectable image. Fitzgerald intertwines Gatsby 's mansion along with the residences of the other major characters, with the intentional use of symbolism, to reveal more about their individual identities. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, the different residences owned by the major characters in this novel, aid to carve out the ways in which their separate identities are constructed.

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.

During the early part of the twentieth century, the American culture fantasized about achieving a successful future with financial stability and the opportunity to thrive in a world that it only dreamed about in the past. In the novel The Great Gatsby, the main character Gatsby, is not worried about money, which he has accumulated through the years, but instead has created an intense attachment to a woman whom he had once loved, and never has stopped loving. His “American Dream” does not involve monetary stability; instead the only thing that he wishes to attain is the love and control over Daisy. His fantasy has developed into an unreachable love that destroys his life at the end. In the case of Tom, his attachment to Daisy has also became a way to prove his male dominance, he might love Daisy, but he only needs her to feel secure. This attachment to the past and the love that both Tom and Gatsby is completely contrary to what the “American Dream” many times signifies. Although The Great Gatsby was written during this time, the “American Dream” for both Tom and Gatsby, is not involved with financial stability, instead it is focused on a love fantasy and attachment to Daisy, a fantasy which has been used to prove their male dominance and superiority.

Consumption and materialism were both taken to new and extreme heights on the eastern coast of America in the Roaring Twenties. Consumption, and especially materialism were always hallmarks of the elite upper class aristocracy of any culture in any time period, but with the new technology, urbanization, the consolidation of funds via the world stock market, and a brand new breed of elite, called millionaires, evolved the upper class culture beyond anything any human had seen before. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald imbues a story with many themes and qualities from his own life, reflected in the parallels between his own history and that of Gatsby and Nick Carraway. With new, unbridled, booming economic growth, what started as the Great American Dream became a vulgar, empty, greedy pursuit of material goods. On top of this rise in national wealth, the addition of disillusioned World War I veterans looking to grab the American Dream and use it to hoist themselves up in the world, and the 18th Amendment’s creation of a thriving and powerful organized criminal underworld gave birth to a new America, with unprecedented levels of consumption and wealth.

The American Dream has no place for dreamers. It embraces a concept of an individual to enjoy the endless bliss of freedom and self-confidence, while maintaining a healthy desire for something greater. The American dream has gone through many stages throughout different time periods, however in the roaring twenties, the dream has been distorted with materialism. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Gatsby transforms from James Gatz, portraying the original American values, to Jay Gatsby, a self-made man who is now focused on a corrupt materialistic dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates how a dream can become tainted by one’s ambition for wealth. Gatsby is a perfect embodiment of this ‘rags to riches’ theory, but is tragically cursed by the classic cliché that ‘money can’t buy happiness.’ The transformation of the American Dream is a prime example of the life of Jay Gatsby and his moral decline.

The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was written in 1925. The 1920s, often called the "Roaring 20s" was a time in which prohibition was in order and a new era of women came to life. These women were considered Flappers, and they rebelled against their expectations of the time, which was risky because of the big role Social Class played at this time. Jay Gatsby is one of the main characters in the novel living through the 1920s.Gatsby was born in a hard working farming family in the lowest social class, he learned how to present himself as a high class gentlemen by learning how to gain relationships with the wealthy. The American dream is a major underlying theme in the novel and Gatsby portrays this dream by dying while trying to successfully fulfill his goal by becoming what he was not born into. Although Gatsby thought that living in a high society and owning extravagant articles of clothing would help him be happy, his death proves that wealth was not what he needed, he needed true love.

A yearning for power, the thirst to become wealthy, intense cravings of lust, these examples of greed affects humanity in various ways, yet always seems to control a society. This constant longing for more is prevalent among most people, including the protagonists of beloved novels, often resulting in their gradual downfall. This corrupt behavior is addressed in Siddhartha Gautama’s ancient fire sermon, which discusses the important Buddhist idea of freeing oneself from desire. This ancient saying is among some of the most treasured and analyzed Buddhist compositions, and molds the values and morals of a culture. Its teachings illuminate the destructive qualities shown in society and throughout literature and its relevance can be examined in The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Macbeth written by William Shakespeare.

F. Scott Fitzgerald presents a scathing critique of upper class privilege in The Great Gatsby. Jay Gatsby’s library in particular, illustrates his fundamental misunderstanding of the self-perpetuating class society in 1920s America. It is a novel about surveillance: the ruling class constantly monitors the system; Gatsby is identified as the usurping “Other” who threatens their status, and must be put back in his rightful place.

How came people did not respect Fitzgerald’s writing in the twentieth century, but why people are respecting and valuing Fitzgerald work in the twenty-first century? Fitzgerald had a hard time to profiting from his writing, but he was not successful after his first novel. There are three major point of this essay are: the background history of Fitzgerald life, the comparisons between Fitzgerald and the Gatsby from his number one book in America The Great Gatsby, and the Fitzgerald got influences of behind the writing and being a writer. From childhood to adulthood, Fitzgerald faced many good and bad experiences that inspired him to achieve his own American dream in a short amount of time.