The comparison of narrative voices and protagonists in both ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘Sonnets of the Portuguese’ reveals the universal value of love, yet its capacity is determined by context and value systems. ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘Sonnets of the Portuguese’ depict the contrasting contexts of Fitzgerald and Barrett-Browning.
The narrative voices makes this evident; both composers are parallels to the narrative voices within the texts. Fitzgerald utilises Nick’s controlled narrative voice to challenge and criticise his chaotic and immoral society. This is evident in Chapter 1, when Nick states, “When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever”. Fitzgerald is
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However, the contrasting contextual backgrounds of each of the composers influenced the texts developments. Within ‘The Great Gatsby’, Fitzgerald portrays a post-war world in which value systems have gone out of balance. He characterises protagonists such as Tom and Daisy to show the lack of human decency in the materialistic period. Gatsby's death is meaningless to them, except as a personal inconvenience and complication. Fitzgerald’s employs Nick’s voice once again to criticise the immoral society, “. . . I began to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me against them all.” (9.20) Whilst Fitzgerald scorns the rejection of pre-war values and perspectives, the ‘Sonnets of the Portuguese’, in comparison, is a celebration of moral abandonment in Barrett-Browning’s staid and conservative era. Barrett-Browning utilises her poems to make personal commentary on the conservative Victorian period and perspectives of society. This is clear within Sonnet XXII,“Let us stay Rather on earth, Beloved,—where the unfit Contrarious moods of men recoil away, And isolate pure spirits”. Barrett-Browning’s scandalous elopement with Robert undid the world by breaching social mores and challenged the suffocating values of her
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.
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.
Fitzgerald uses Nick to lead us to sympathize with Gatsby whom Nick understands and sympathises with.
Fitzgerald writes a story with a character that is considered “larger than life”; he throws massive parties, is in love with a married woman, is rich and goes 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.
Themes of hope, success, and wealth overpower The Great Gatsby, leaving the reader with a new way to look at the roaring twenties, showing that not everything was good in this era. F. Scott Fitzgerald creates the characters in this book to live and recreate past memories and relationships. This was evident with Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship, Tom and Daisy’s struggling marriage, and Gatsby expecting so much of Daisy and wanting her to be the person she once was. The theme of this novel is to acknowledge the past, but do not recreate and live in the past because then you will not be living in the present, taking advantage of new opportunities.
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 Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald tells us a variety of themes-justice, power and greed, The American dream and so on. The Great Gatsby is regarded as a brilliant piece of social commentary. The Great Gatsby concerns the wasteful lives of four wealthy characters as observed by their acquaintance, narrator Nick Carraway. Like Fitzgerald himself, Nick is from Minnesota, attended an Ivy League university, served in the U.S. Army during World War I, moved to New York after the war. The narrator, Nick, is a very clever and well spoken storyteller. Nick confides with the reader in the first pages of the novel. He says that he needs to tell the story of a man called Gatsby. It is as if Nick has to overcome disappointment and frustration with a man who has left him with painful memories. This thesis is valid for three main reasons. First, it is evident that dreams and memories are central to the overall plot and meaning. Secondly, the American Dream is a “green light” of desire that Gatsby never stops yearning for and something he will not forget over time, even as he is dying. This is so, even though no one cares about Gatsby or his dreams after he died, except maybe Nick. Finally, the fact that Fitzgerald uses flashback; that Nick is telling us about a main character after he has already died and before the story begins, is ultimate proof.The Great Gatsby is structured by Nick’s memory. Fitzgerald’s clever use of flashback throughout and within the
It is often said that certain literary works and characters within such works represent real-world issues. In the work The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the character of Gatsby is shrouded in ambiguity to the reader, providing them with a possibility for personal interpretation. In the work, Gatsby’s character develops from a character representing materialism and a fixation on status to one filled with humility and selflessness for his romantic devotion towards the character of Daisy. Through this shift, the reader is provided with insight in order to draw parallels between Gatsby and two distinct periods in American history. The materialistic side of Gatsby, driven by wealth and his status in Long Island, represents the moral corruption and materialistic desires of America in the 1920s, whereas the romantically devoted Gatsby represents wartime America, devoted to sacrifice and nobility. The contrast within the life of Gatsby allows for a profound insight into the significance of the work as a representation of changing American values.
This is conveyed through EBB’s subversion of the Petrarchan sonnets; traditionally a male form of writing during the conservative Victorian era. The spiritual connection between EBB and Robert Browning is reinforced in sonnet XXII ‘Our two souls stand up erect and strong.’ The use of first person plural, signifies the appreciation of authentic love, and displays the two individuals to be one unit, creating a sense of connectedness. This challenges the traditional innocence encompassed by women at the time by displaying her passion in a sexualised manner. Ironically, a sense of physical intimacy is also evident from the sexual connotation of ‘stand up erect and strong’, suggesting the physical desire and emphasises on the value of sexual union.
The two Browning poems, ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘My Last Duchess’ were written to convey to the reader how women were treated in that era; as possession, as assets. Both of these poems can be read from different points of view and they also both are what is
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has always been known to be one of the best representations of literary modernism. This novel set the bar for modern American literature in the earlier decades as well as the present day. The characters populating The Great Gatsby are a reflection of the generation the author grew up with. In many ways, Gatsby and his friends could be seen as the perfect representation of the people Fitzgerald was known to associate with, as well as a minor reflection of himself. Through his characters’ dreams, their social status’, their pasts, and their blatant materialism, F. Scott Fitzgerald managed to present a detailed portrait of Modernism and the dilemma of the modern man in his now classic novel.
The Great Gatsby, first published in 1925, echoes its era, and predicts its tragic end. In the novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald “revealed the negative side of the period’s gaiety and freedom, portraying wealthy and attractive people leading imperiled lives in gilded surroundings” (Danzer 656).It illustrate “the dying American Dream and the corruption of historical values”(Bewley 23). The wealthy characters in the book are careless, materialistic and empty, showing the corrupt side of the American Dream, but Gatsby is different. In the novel, Nick describes him as having “an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such I have never found in any other person and which is not likely I shall ever find again” (Fitzgerald 2).He kept believing and fighting for his dreams to the very end, even after it became clear that Daisy would not leave Tom to stay with him.
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by a renowned American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The magnificent tale is told through the eyes of Nick Carraway and it is through his perceptions of characters that influence our thoughts of the entire story. Fitzgerald allows Nick to see both worlds and sides of conflict, as he is the moral center of the book. Even though the protagonist can be considered as an unreliable author, readers tend to agree with his sincere perceptions distinguishing between right and wrong, good people and bad people, truths and lies and reality. However, this quality does not interrupt the fact that he is an unreliable author. Revolving around the criticism of the ‘American dream’, Fitzgerald clearly uses Nick Carraway
Written during and regarding the 1920s, ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald is both a representation of this distinctive social and historical context, and a construction of the composer’s experience of this era. Beliefs and practises of the present also play a crucial role in shaping the text, in particular changing the way in which literary techniques are interpreted. The present-day responder is powerfully influenced by their personal experiences, some of which essentially strengthen Fitzgerald’s themes, while others compete, establishing contemporary interpretations of the novel.
In The Great Gatsby, a classic novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is in love with Jordan Baker, George Wilson is in love with Myrtle Wilson and Jay Gatsby is in love with Daisy Buchanan. Regrettably, all of these women are unworthy of the love and affection bestowed upon them by these men. Throughout the course if this essay, the love between these individuals will be analysed and the reasons why these women are unworthy will be highlighted.