The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald Essay

F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the popular novelists of twentieth century America. He is the representative novelist of the age because his novels deal with the American life in 20th century.

In America the repercussions of World War 1 resulted in, the roaring twenties, a time period characterized as an era of economic prosperity. The stock market sky-rocketed, advances in technology were distinct and demands were shifting, but what value prominently elevated above everything else? Wealth. The widespread wealth was desired and people valued social class with such high regard that to attain these two fixations became the standard “American Dream” of the 1920’s. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s depiction exposes an era of poor social and moral values, and it was a miserable desire for wealth that progressed this. Fitzgerald utilizes the setting, a combination of the time period and geography, to reveal the message that it became

Thesis: The pursuit of the American Dream is a dominant theme throughout The Great Gatsby, which is carried out in various ways by F. Scott Fitzgerald, how the author represents this theme through his characters and their actions is one small aspect of it.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, a man named Jay Gatsby dreams of winning the love of a Daisy Buchanan, an upper-class woman who is married to Tom Buchanan. Before the current time present in the novel, summer of 1922 in Long Island and New York City, Gatsby and Daisy meet during October 1917 when Gatsby was a military officer who was stationed in Louisville. They fell in love, but Gatsby had lied about his social class to present himself as someone who was good enough for her. Gatsby had to go overseas and Daisy said she would wait for him but by the time he came back, Daisy was already engaged to Tom. Five years later, Gatsby and Daisy meet again and the two lovers act as if the five years in between never happened. Daisy and Gatsby drive to Long Island and on their way, Daisy runs over Myrtle Wilson, Tom’s mistress. Gatsby takes the blame for her leading to Mr. Wilson shooting Gatsby. Nick tells Gatsby, “You can’t repeat the past.” Gatsby responds saying, “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!” Throughout the novel and the last five years, Gatsby tried to win back the love of Daisy but never rekindled the relationship they had in Louisville and although at the surface it seems as though Daisy loves Gatsby as he loves her, Gatsby never truly had a real chance of getting her back.

     It has been said that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is about the pursuit of the American dream. It has also been said that the novel is about love, ambition, and obsession. Perhaps both are true. Combined, these themes may be understood in their most basic forms among the relationships within the novel. After all, each character’s reason for belonging to a relationship speaks very strongly of what really makes him tick; each character’s manifestation of his own desires is found within his lover. Throughout the novel, what universally unites each character beyond anything else is the love of a dream or position and involvement in relationships for the success of

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.”

When Cody died, he left the boy, now Jay Gatsby, a legacy of $25,000. Unfortunately

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, many of the characters live in an illusory world and only some can see past this. In the novel, West Egg and its residents represent the newly rich, while East Egg represents the old aristocracy. Gatsby seeking the past, Daisy is obsessed with material things, Myrtle wanting Tom to escape her poverty, George believing that T.J. Eckleburg is God, and Tom believing he is untouchable because of his power and wealth are all examples of the illusion v. reality struggle in the novel and Nick, the only character aware of reality, witnesses the fall of all the characters around him to their delusions.

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

Any American is taught a dream that is purged of all truth. The American Dream is shown to the world as a belief that anyone can do anything; when in reality, life is filled with impossible boundaries. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald gives us a glimpse into the life of the upper class during the roaring twenties through the eyes of a moralistic young man named Nick Carraway. It is through the narrator's dealings with the upper class that the reader is shown how modern values have transformed the American Dream's pure ideals into a scheme for materialistic power, and how the world of the upper class lacks any sense of morals or consequence. In order to support Fitzgerald's message

America has been labeled "The land of opportunity," a place where it is possible to accomplish anything and everything. This state of mind is known as "The American Dream." The American Dream provides a sense of hope and faith that looks forward to the fulfillment of human wishes and desires. This dream, however, originates from a desire for spiritual and material improvement. Unfortunately, the acquisition of material has been tied together with happiness in America. Although "The American Dream" can be thought of as a positive motivation, it often causes people to strive for material perfection, rather than a spiritual one. This has been a truth since the beginnings of America, such as the setting of F. Scott Fitzgerald s novel, The Great Gatsby, which is an example of this set in the 20 s. The characters in this novel are too fixed on material things, losing sight of what is real. In the book the Great Gatsby, none but a few people had the idealistic “American Dream”. To some characters it seems the “American Dream” has been replaced by materialism and greed. What does the American Dream mean? What does it stand for? If a person has achieved their American Dream how should they go about living? The American Dream is the vision to be successful and to provide from and family the best way you can. Their dream is to also have money.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby fuels the title character’s tragedy with the misconstruction of identity, by monopolizing the dialectic thereof. Gatsby’s several self-reinventions and fabrications regarding his personal background allow him to define himself unilaterally, forcing others into the roles of spectators. Despite his ability to control his image, he lacks the ability to sustain himself in the elite stratum of society, as his own determinations derive directly from that which favors the elite, and not his younger, James Gatz, self. Moreover, because Gatsby controls inherently meaningless empty signifiers to establish Jay Gatsby, he only entrenches himself further into the trap of the petit-bourgeoisie. Ultimately, in attempting to ascend the economic strata of American capitalism through reinvention of identity and creation of spectacle, Gatsby reinforces the systems that protect the interests of the bourgeois Buchanans and Carraways.

The 1920s, often deemed the “Roaring 20s,” took place in the middle of the Prohibition Movement. Prohibition was a constitutional ban on the sale, production, and consumption of alcoholic beverages resulting in a large supply of cheap alcohol and a high demand for it. Society was becoming corrupt and inhibited. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work, The Great Gatsby, is set in this very time period. The main character, Jay Gatsby, who at first appears to be a wealthy businessman is symbolic of the 1920 society. In the beginning of the novel, Fitzgerald reminds the reader not to judge too harshly, “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one…just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had” (Fitzgerald 1). Through Jay Gatsby’s characteristics of deceitful charisma, persuasion, and his fateful death, Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s society as the decline of the American dream.

An Austrian physician by the name of Sigmund Freud, a well renowned psychologist, aside from his studies, was once rumored do have done enough cocaine to kill a baby horse. Other than his cocaine addiction he also developed the theory of Psychoanalysis, which in short means that he studied the longstanding difficulties in the ways that people think and feel about themselves, the world, and their relationships with others. Sigmund Freud’s ideals of psychoanalysis was translated to in a way where we are able to analyze media in all it’s shapes and forms. Psychoanalytic media analysis argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the characters within a movie, and the literary work is a manifestation of the Id, Super-Ego, and Ego. The text that I will analyze using the psychoanalytic media theory will be the film The Great Gatsby, originally a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I will be using Freud’s primary psychoanalytic theory of the ID, Ego, and Super-Ego to analyze the movie The Great Gatsby, and also analyze the potential cultural and societal impacts of an authors use of psychoanalytic theory.

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.