What Are The Sonnets From The Portuguese And The Great Gatsby

It is clear that both the Pre-1900 poetry and The Great Gatsby present characters who are self centred in nature and think only about bettering their personal position. This is a further theme within The Scrutiny and To His Coy Mistress with the speakers thinking only about their desire for sexual gratification and not taking into account the implications this may have due to the strict social constraints. It can be said that the selfish attitudes within both the Pre-1900 poetry as well as The Great Gatsby are not unexpected in nature due to the influences of the attitudes at this time. In The Scrutiny and To His Coy Mistress, the speakers possess the common attitude of Carpe Diem at this time which subsequently increases their self centred nature as well as the sense of urgency they express. Similarly, the self-centred attitudes of the characters within The Great Gatsby are heightened by the attitude of the roaring twenties and the obsession with self gratification that came about from the growth in the wealth of the nation.

The Human Condition is a big part of our understanding of literature, it can mean death, acceptance, judgment, and several other diverse things. It is about the positive or negative aspects of humans that everyone all universally deals with at least one time in one’s life. In the novel “The Great Gatsby”, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the short stories Raymond Carver’s “Everything Stuck to Him”, and Katherine Anne Porter’s “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”, all have the most prominent human condition: love. Love is portrayed as society’s primary concern in literature, and is represented as a main concern in today’s society .

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.

Both the texts ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F.Scott Fitzgerald and ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning explore the ideas of aspirations and identity developing a deeper understanding of the texts. Both texts share these ideas through the characters and the values of idealism and hope, and personal voice and identity. Although the two texts are separated in time and context, they both reflect the world of the text and composer.

In the roaring 20’s, America was referred to as the ‘Jazz Age’, a positive and optimistic time where possibilities seemed endless. The concept in EBB’s sonnet of ideal love transforming individuals is similarly interpreted through the characterisation of Gatz into Gatsby. The obsessive love to ‘own’ Daisy highlights the idea that this power of love can only exist in the Jazz Age. Gatsby’s idealised love is derived from the traps of wealth and money which is clearly evident in the dialogue “her voice is full of money”. Gatsby’s is willing to reinvent himself for Daisy and he consumes everything he does in life to make himself worthy of Daisy so they can marry as if it were five years ago. Nick the novel’s narrator, tells Gatsby that “you can’t repeat the past” to which Gatsby replies “why of course you can! I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before”. This evidently shows that the power of ideal love which is genuine and unconditional is very strong on individual’s and transforms them into a whole new world with new values. Gatsby’s determination to make everything right evidently depicts how the concept of ideal love had transformed him to attain his ideal love, Daisy. Hence, Fitzgerald conveys his perspective of ideal love during the Jazz Age, and similar to EBB, ideal love is seen to transform individual’s and demanding for love to

The decade of 1920’s, also known as The Roaring Twenties, was a time of prosperity and is characterized by great changes in America. The novel “The Great Gatsby” was published in 1925 and was written by the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. This book shows how life was during this time of change and development. The story focuses on the lives of five major characters and how are their lives affected by their relationships with others. One of these characters is Daisy Buchanan, Tom Buchanan’s wife and Jay Gatsby’s love interest and adoration. She is a beautiful, young woman who is also the narrator’s cousin. We get to know Daisy’s character by her actions and her decisions throughout the novel. Daisy Buchanan does not show any morals, she

Through Fitzgerald’s characterisation of the protagonists, the moral chaos within the society becomes evident, with a society of immense greed and wealth being born, revealing the dreaded materialistic trait within individuals in the society leading to drastic consequences. Similarly to the prodigious increase in wealth during the “roaring 20’s”, the luxurious society of New York revolves heavily around money, with “the rich getting richer and the poor getting children”. The materialistic trait is evident within the protagonist Daisy Buchanan - ‘a careless person”. We learn of Daisy’s materialistic behaviour through her decision to marry Tom Buchanan over Jay Gatsby “because she was

     F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a tragic tale of love distorted by obsession. Finding himself in the city of New York, Jay Gatsby is a loyal and devoted man who is willing to cross oceans and build mansions for his one true love. His belief in realistic ideals and his perseverance greatly influence all the decisions he makes and ultimately direct the course of his life. Gatsby has made a total commitment to a dream, and he does not realize that his dream is hollow. Although his intentions are true, he sometimes has a crude way of getting his point across. When he makes his ideals heard, his actions are wasted on a thoughtless and shallow society. Jay Gatsby effectively embodies a romantic idealism

Another aspect of Fitzgerald's criticism of the American dream is Gatsby's desire to gain the love of Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby's object of affection and his "holy grail" (Fitzgerald 160). Daisy on the outside is beautiful, pure, and seemingly perfect. Nick Carraway describes her as wearing white clothes and driving a white car. Her name itself is a white flower. But in actuality, she is as false and shallow as the rest of the society (Lathbury 20). The narrator Nick comments about the foul nature of Daisy and Tom Buchanan who were Americans living in the superficial world of the 1920's:

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, he presents a story set against the backdrop of the United States in the 1920s, a period in history that one would relate to lavish and excessive spending and materialism. To that end, he presents through the eyes of the narrator, Nick, some of the main characters, among them being Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby. Beginning with Tom, Daisy’s very wealthy husband who attended college with Nick, he comes across as dominating and arrogant from his first appearance when Nick visits him at his house. This is further accentuated by his musculature and rough speaking voice. Beyond these characteristics, he is enthralled by some disturbing and racist opinions, as well as the fact that he is involved in an affair with Myrtle, a married woman, despite being married to Daisy.

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s use of exposition to illustrate the superficiality and flaws within Gatsby and Daisy conveys his disapproval with classism, and the letter to his daughter extends his hope for societal reform. When Gatsby insists that Daisy leave Tom to marry him, Daisy firmly postulates, “Rich girls don’t marry poor boys” (Coppola). Fitzgerald elucidates the social stratification in West Egg through Daisy’s love for materialistic items and her reluctance to marry Gatsby. Daisy is a token of the social trend to gain material and represents the twentieth century misconception

As Daisy seems to move further and further away from Gatsby, his ambition and desire for her push him to greater and greater displays of excess, while he sinks deeper and deeper into loneliness and crippling depression. Gatsby’s wondrous parties provide a sanctuary for the super-rich to pursue their earthly desires, and yet, his disdain for such activities provide an insight into Fitzgerald’s America – a place of shifting social values, a place of wealth without responsibility, where ‘the ends justify the means’. Gatsby's dreams remain beyond his reach. His ambition has established an empire, a wealthy and powerful empire, but Daisy’s disappearance from East Egg with her husband and Gatsby being shot by Wilson ensure that his dreams will stay beyond his reach forever. Like the green light on Daisy’s clock visible across the water, “the dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it”.

Although it is the repercussions of their deceptive fantasies that Gatsby and Lester fall victim to, it was their continued search for love that leads them to these. Love is the principal value in The Great Gatsby and is illustrated best by the contrast of Gatsby’s idealized romantic love for Daisy with Daisy’s “love” for wealth and status, a love which is common to the majority of their irresponsible society. F Scott Fitzgerald emphasizes Gatsby’s “romantic readiness” through this contrast as well as Gatsby’s fall from grace that results in him becoming lost in “the colossal vitality of his illusions” (pg. 92). Daisy characterizes the power of a love of money in the Great Gatsby and is used by Fitzgerald in condemning Gatsby’s hedonistic society as well as his own. However it is the absence of love –rather than the presence- that is most prominent in American

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, the reader sees a common theme of corruption of the American Dream. In the 1920’s, the times are changing in America and morals are becoming looser and the lifestyle of the wealthy is more careless. New fashion, attitude, and music is what nicknamed this era the “Jazz Age,” greatly influencing Fitzgerald’s writing. He created similarities between many things in pop culture and the journey his characters Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Myrtle are taking to achieve the American dream. Through the use of the lively, yet scandalous, jazz music from the 1920’s, Fitzgerald reflects the attitudes of the characters in The Great Gatsby at the end of innocence and prevalence of

The saying “money can’t buy happiness” is a common recurring theme displayed in The Great Gatsby. The book explored the search for happiness and wealth through the American Dream and depicts the flawed relationships, materialism, and corrupt morals. Fitzgerald captures this susceptible behavior through relationships and what love perceives to be. Daisy, the main female representation, is influenced by money in a way that can be manipulated and bought just how Gatsby and Tom did. Because of this, women such as Daisy and Myrtle were reduced to be insignificant and looked upon as an object due to their dependency on men.