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Essay on With the setting of the sun

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With the setting of the sun

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, there is a constant feeling of movement and the desire to get away. Nick, Gatsby, Wilson,
Tom and Daisy all move, or have the intention of moving. Not only does this movement seem to foreshadow events in the book, but it also seems to lead to the conclusion that society as a whole in the 1920's was rather unstable and was undergoing constant change. Not all the characters move in the same way, and this shows how different their backgrounds and lifestyles are. The main movement seems to be from west to east. Throughout the decades man is said to be progressing through the steps of evolution and toward the setting sun, or east to west. The characters …show more content…

Nick says, "[h]e talked a lot about the past and
I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy." (117) This shows how time could never change his dream, and that Gatsby feels that if he talks about the past then he will be able to change the future for the better. The sun also stands for power and greatness, which made Jay Gatsby shine right through Jimmie Gatz. He starts of engulfed in darkness, as his dream does not exist. From there he seems to be obsessed with this reverie, and effectively kills off Jimmie Gatz and creates Jay Gatsby.
This new personality is formed when the sun rises, bathing him in light. Jay Gatsby "sprang from his Platonic conception of himself"(104), and even with this change he still believed that "the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing."(105) This new light blinds the people that look at him, and covers up his old self. Although it covers him, some people like Mr. Sloane see him as
Jimmie Gatz, and are disgusted by it. The first time Tom meets Gatsby is when he, Mr. Sloane and a young woman stop by his house while out riding. Gatsby tells Tom that he knows Daisy, to which Tom states later, "I may be old fashioned in my ideas but women run around too much these days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish."(110)

Slowly, as Jay

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