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What Is The Narrative Voice In The Great Gatsby

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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 …show more content…

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

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