The Great Gatsby Lost Generation Analysis

In book, “The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts how the American was corrupted through wealth. Fitzgerald provides many examples. The most common example shown was Jay Gatsby. Gatsby’s idea that to achieve his American Dream must be to acquire wealth. In order to show this, Fitzgerald uses various literary elements. Two of those being imagery and foreshadowing, these played a critical role in describing the theme, and specific moods to show what was to come and as well as describe the story as a whole. These play a vital role in representing Gatsby’s life and journey to acquiring Daisy, his version of the American Dream.

Conflict with the past is a central idea in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. While Gatsby longs for the past, “a simpler time”, he also goes through many attempts to avoid it. From his name change to his obsession over his teenage sweetheart, Jay Gatsby's unusual actions reveal a complex relationship between himself and his past. Gatsby's attempts to escape his past along with his longing to recreate it develop Fitzgerald's message that people have a natural complexity and duality in their relationships with their former selves that can result in often disadvantageous circumstances in the present.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby focuses on the excitement and adventure of the roaring twenties, a time filled with great economic success and parties said to last the whole decade. New to Long Island and New York, aspiring bond man Nick Carraway becomes infatuated with the lifestyle of his rich peers living the “American dream”. He gains interest in his mysterious neighbor Jay Gatsby, who lives in an incredible mansion and has a vast amount of wealth. Gatsby uses his money to try and steal his love, Daisy Buchanan from her unfaithful husband, Tom. Characters in The Great Gatsby are unhappy and unfulfilled with their lives due to greed manipulating their view of The American Dream. This skewed perception also affects their unreasonable life expectations and their narcissistic thoughts create a larger potential for failure, such as Gatsby’s extravagant plan to steal Daisy Buchanan.

Gatsby creates an identity for himself as a wealthy man, who lives a glamorous life by throwing huge parties, and is known by the most prestigious figures in New York. What the partygoers don’t realize is that the parties and his wealth is all in the hopes of rekindling with his love from the past, Daisy. In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story of a young man named Jay Gatsby, who came from nothing, and built up to be everything that he had hoped and dreamed of being. However, his one dream did not become a reality due to misfortunate events. All the money in the world couldn’t make Gatsby happy, as he died as his true self, not the identity he created for himself.

Fitzgerald displays Gatsby as man who came from nothing, with an unrelenting passion to obtain material success, or the 1920’s American Dream. Radical transformation was one of Mr. Gatsby’s most outstanding characteristics, taking his desire to change from the once impoverished man to the point of changing his name. Certainly Gatsby possesses admirable traits, as his will power is once again displayed through the longing for his lost love, Daisy. The misconceptions of the time period are illustrated as Fitzgerald displays that Gatsby’s underlying desire for money is to win over Daisy through impressing her with his wealth. Within Adam Cohen’s piece “Jay Gatsby Is a Man for Our Times”, Cohen discusses the worthiness of Gatsby’s goal: “The callow Daisy, whose voice is ‘full of money,’ may not be a worthy goal. But Gatsby’s longing for her, and his willingness to sell his soul to pursue her, are the purest thing in this sordid tale.” Essentially, Fitzgerald demonstrates that Gatsby, nor his relentless will to succeed, are not the issue. It is the time period, along with the misconceptions of a dream, which corrupt the character. Gatsby’s wealth is obtained through unethical ways, like many others who followed the path of easy money. The corruption of bonds does bring Gatsby the wealth he had always longed for, along with extravagant and lavish parties at his mansion. Consequently, we learn that reaching the goal of obtaining wealth ultimately does not lead to

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald displays society’s role in transforming one’s identity by creating complex and realistic characters. Jay Gatsby is a prime example of how one will change themselves to accommodate society. Once a poor son from a farming family, Gatsby puts up an extravagant facade to hopefully win a woman over, however in the process, puts aside morals and values. Fitzgerald demonstrates the importance of social expectations, wealth and the perception of the American Dream are in determining one’s identity.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, portrays the life of a man who is truly focused on one dream: to reclaim the love of his life. This one dream propels every one of Gatsby’s actions, words, and thoughts, making him extremely vulnerable. When she shatters his world in his last few hours alive, he finds himself with no meaning left in his life. Fitzgerald uses extended metaphor and sharp diction to show Gatsby’s crumbling life in his last moments. Fitzgerald employs the extended metaphor of the “new world” to illustrate the total collapse of Gatsby’s reality.

George Santayana once stated, "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. James Gatz, or better known as Jay Gatsby has lived solely to persuade the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan, into loving him. He and Daisy had a past relationship, but he could not fully provide her with the satisfaction of marrying a wealthy man who could support her needs. Like many others, The Great War separated them from their love, Gatsby was called to action and Daisy took her own action by marrying a wealthy man named Tom Buchanan. Gatsby was heartbroken when he returned to find Daisy had left without him. He devoted his life to her from then on until his death and she knew he would do anything for her. When Gatsby had found Daisy again he was reintroduced to her by her cousin Nick Carraway. Nick and Gatsby grew closer together, not only because they neighbored each other, but because Gatsby was Nick 's goal. Nick wanted to create his own life and wealth much like Gatsby and his curiosity of how he became well off created room for what lead to Gatsby 's death. F. Scott Fitzgerald recorded the novel as a parallel of his life. His life would not have been the same if he had not endured the 1920 's. The state of despair the nation was in caused the generation that came to age, to be coined the "Lost Generation". The disillusionment of this generation caused Gatsby to believe that he could hold Daisy once more. F. Scott Fitzgerald proves that the past is

Jay Gatsby was an ambitious young man, who became a victim to the American Dream. He, like many other Americans, had wanted it all. In other words, Gatsby’s goals and aims in life were all about money and love. Although he was able to obtain a large amount of money, Gatsby was not able to win the women of his dreams. Moreover, it seems as though he could not be satisfied with what he currently had. These unsatisfying feelings and the lack of accomplishment lead to Gatsby’s fall or death.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby provides the reader with a unique outlook on the life of the newly rich. Gatsby is an enigma and a subject of great curiosity, furthermore, he is content with a lot in life until he strives too hard. His obsession with wealth, his lonely life and his delusion allow the reader to sympathize with him.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, portrays the life of a man who is truly focused on one dream: to reclaim the love of his life. Fitzgerald illustrates the problem of being so single-minded through Gatsby’s ultimate demise. His slow evolution and reveal of the character of Gatsby leads to a devastating climax once his dream fails. Fitzgerald uses extended metaphor and sharp diction to depict Gatsby’s crumbling life in his last moments.

   The beauty and splendor of Gatsby's parties masks the decay and corruption that lay at the heart of the Roaring Twenties. The society of the Jazz Age, as observed by Fitzgerald, is morally bankrupt, and thus continually plagued by a crisis of character. Jay Gatsby, though he struggles to be a part of this world, remains unalterably an outsider. His life is a grand irony, in that it is a caricature of Twenties-style ostentation: his closet overflows with custom-made shirts; his lawn teems with "the right people," all engaged in the serious work of absolute triviality; his mannerisms (his false British accent, his old-boy friendliness) are laughably affected. Despite all this,

Gatsby does not belong to his own class and he is not accepted by the upper class, therefore he becomes an exception. Because of disappointment of being looked down upon and impossibility of accept by the upper class, he has nothing left except his love, which is also his “love dream”. Gatsby’s love for Daisy has been the sole drive and motive of his living. Gatsby’s great love is also the root of his great tragedy, because he is desperately in love with a woman who is not worthy of his deep love. Fitzgerald offers Gatsby with the spirit of sincerity, generosity, nobility, perseverance, and loyalty. All his good natures can be seen

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a story that has many different themes. Fitzgerald shows the themes that he uses through his character’s desires and actions. This novel has themes in it that we deal with in our everyday life. It has themes that deal with our personal lives and themes that deal with what’s right and what’s wrong. There are also themes that have to do with materialistic items that we deal desire on a daily basis. Fitzgerald focuses on the themes of corrupted love, immorality, and the American Dream in order to tell a story that is entertaining to his readers.

The 1920’s was the age of a dramatic social and political change. World War I ended 1918 just two years before this dramatic change and the economy was booming, emerging America as the new world superpower. The start of today's modern values was taking place. More people lived in cities like New York and Chicago, worked higher order jobs of that like a police officer or lawyer, the popularity of the car and traveling places were in a constant uprise, and the typical view of women had changed. Most women moved from a more conservative fashion to that of what is known as a flapper. Their hair was short, they wore shorter flowy dresses and got rid of the corset to get a more boy like figure erasing the typical feminine shape. Along with all of the dramatic political and social changes, there was the creation of the Lost Generation. A term given to the generation that reached maturity during or just after the war. This term encompassed writers like Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Agatha Christie, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Most of them rejected the post-war values of America, believing in a general loss in values, the idea of hope was gone, and most of their books were based on societal flaws.