The Great Gatsby and The Wasteland Essay

Fitzgerald 's Great Gatsby and Elliot 's The Wasteland are two stories that similarly express the modernist post-war disillusionment. Both stories comment pessimistically on the direction that our world is moving in from the post-war modernist perspective. Both men looked past the roaring twenties, and realized that this time period was actually a moral wasteland. The final paragraphs of The Great Gatsby sum up their mutual lack of faith in American culture to improve. Fitzgerald uses a number…

November 2007 Myrtle and Fitzgerald's Wasteland Myrtle Wilson is Fitzgerald's vessel for illustrating the modern wasteland. His conception of the wasteland as an unavoidable, vulgar part of the 1920s society is parallel to his characterization of Myrtle as an unavoidable, vulgar character that refuses to be ignored. He uses her to point out what he sees as the faults of modern society. Myrtle is materialistic, superficial, and stuck living in the physical wasteland referred to as "the valley of ashes…

In chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby Nick is invited to one of Gatsby’s extravagant parties. He arrives only to find he doesn’t know where Gatsby is, and then he runs into Jordan Baker. Together they set off to find Gatsby and they head to the library where they find “Owl Eyes”, a drunken man trying to get sober. After talking to “Owl Eyes” for awhile they head outside again where Nick unknowingly starts a conversation with Gatsby. After revealing himself, Gatsby tells Jordan that he would like to speak…

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, there is lots of reflection on symbolism, and especially colored symbolism. In this novel symbolism is a very important factor, it shows the difference between the different characters and scenes in the novel. The color green influences the story a lot. Green shows many thoughts, ideas, attitudes, and choices that Gatsby has throughout the story. White too plays an even more important role in the novel as it is used to represent some of the characters, it also talks…

Fitzgerald captured this era in his book, The Great Gatsby. Through his many symbols he illustrates the hopes, the forgotten God, and the oppressed Americans of the Twenties. The symbols in The Great Gatsby help convey several different themes, from wealth to loss of morals, to poverty. The green light in The Great Gatsby is an ambiguous symbol. The green light is deceiving at first, tricking the reader into thinking it is merely a symbol of hope. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic…

"I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light" Possibly F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, The Great Gatsby is not just a magnificent story, but a lesson of society's flaws during the roaring 1920's. Fitzgerald's story creates an atmosphere of superficiality, dissatisfaction and dishonesty by the description of each character. With the economical growth, and the immoral society of the 1920’s ultimately brought corruption to desire of the American Dream and the chance…

The settings and backdrops in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, are essential elements to the formation of the characters, symbolic imagery and the overall plot development. Fitzgerald uses East and West Egg communities to portray two separate worlds and two classes of people that are technically the same their status, but fundamentally different in their ideals. The physical geography of the settings is representative of the distance between classes of the East and West Eggers. Every setting…

by the name of Jay Gatsby. Nick is the narrator who is sees a different side of Gatsby that sees him “great” aside from his wealth and corruption. Nick grew up in the Jazz age and it was replaced with the vitality, and favor of the artificial American dream. Gatsby’s life was full of winnings along with failures that followed him into death throughout the novel; never the less he achieves a form of “greatness” because of his morality in Nick’s perspective. In The Great Gatsby, Nick’s perspective…

deep desire for Fitzgerald’s wealth, fame, money and material luxury. Both Gatsby and Fitzgerald idolize wealth and luxury and at last fell in love with a beautiful woman when they stopped at a military camp in the South. After, author fell in love with Zelda; he tried to convince her by attending reckless Saturday parties and wanted to win Zelda’s love by writing to earn money. In the novel, same thing happened with Gatsby, he devoted himself to acquire both name and fame and did his best to win…

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald deals on one level with Jay Gatsby’s hopes and dreams, but on a deeper level also deals with the Great American Dream. The novel starts and ends with a reference to the green light at the end of the dock, indicating an important symbolism. The first time Nick catches sight of Jay Gatsby, Gatsby “stretched his arms towards the dark water […] [Nick] distinguished nothing except a single green light […] that might have been at the end of a dock.” (Fitzgerald 2000:25)…