The Great Gatsby is an example of literary realism because it depicts the world as it really is. Realist novels employ geographically precise settings and locations, factual historic events, and accurate descriptions of social systems to reflect and implicitly critique contemporary society. Realist writers strive to reflect a world the reader recognizes, and provide insight into how human nature functions in this reality. East and West Egg are recognizable as fictionalized versions of the real towns of East and West Hampton.
References to the First World War and Prohibition situate the novel in a specific time and place. The Great Gatsby is also an example of modernism, a literary and artistic movement that reacted against the romantic, often sentimental novels and art of the Victorian period, and reached its height during and after World War I. In some aspects, however, Fitzgerald deviates from modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.
Their novels Mrs. Dalloway and Ulysses both follow one or two characters over the course of a single day and are narrated in a stream-of-consciousness style of interior monologue, while Gatsby has a more traditional plot and narrative style.
Characters in social satires are frequently unsympathetic, functioning as emblems of social problems in order to highlight inequality and injustice.
In Gatsby , many of the minor characters serve as symbols of the mindless excess and superficiality of the Jazz Age. But while some social satire retains a superficial tone throughout, The Great Gatsby goes deeper into human fallibility.
Satire is often limited in its ability to engage emotions of sadness, sympathy, and melancholy, and Fitzgerald uses a more serious tone to communicate these emotions. He expands his main characters, especially Nick and Gatsby, beyond caricature into fully realized, believable individuals. Ace your assignments with our guide to The Great Gatsby!
All his money also cannot help him when George Wilson kills him in his swimming pool. Gatsby sees himself as a failure when Daisy chooses Tom instead of him. They take away the choice of their partners, returning to their comfortable positions at the top of society, the position they were born into, when all is said and done.
The big day has arrived, it 's the last chance. If the family could accept one outsider then they could accept Tory they just could not see his potential. He was soon to be married to their daughter they would have to accept him one way or another. In the novel, it is not made certain that if the family finally accepts Troy or not.
After the suffering of World War I in the s, many of the upper class Americans focused on filling their lives with endless joy and concentrating their energies on their own pleasure and comfort to forget about wartime memories. The s era was were money had become the foundation of society due to the American dream, where everyone left behind their horrible past and centralized on becoming wealthy and being the most superlative.
As a result, in The Great Gatsby through many rhetorical devices, Fitzgerald uses Nick Carraway as his persona in order to portray that money became too powerful and people became extremely selfish and greedy in the s. For instance, through diction, Carraway adequately describes his disgust of the East in. These criterias categorize Jay Gatsby, the protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby. Gatsby's tragic flaw lies within his inability to realize that the real and the ideal cannot coexist.
His false perception of certain people of ideas lead him to his moral downfall and eventual demise. Gatsby's idealism distorts his perception of Daisy. He sees her as perfect and worthy of all his affections and praise, while in reality she is undeserving and proves she is more pathetic than honorable. Throughout the novel white imagery symbolizes purity and innocence, while yellow imagery symbolizes corruption and …show more content… Gatsby does not see things as they really are and expects them to play out exactly as he thinks they will.
When Nick tells Gatsby that he can't repeat the past, Gatsby responds, "'Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can! At the graveside are a few servants, the mail carrier, the minister, Nick, and Mr. Nick is struck by the bitter injustice of Gatsby's solitary death.
Despite all the people who found their way to Gatsby's parties, not one, with the exception of a man known only as "Owl Eyes," bothered to make an appearance at his funeral and he only made it to the gate after the services ended.
Nick then moves to memories of traveling West when he came home from college. As the train moved further and further West he became more and more comfortable, as if he were returning to a special place just his own. Remembering this memory launches Nick into a discussion of the merits of the Midwest versus the vices of the East.
The story is brought to a close when Nick interacts with two people from his past. First, he speaks with Jordan and, although he still feels fondly toward her, he once again coolly dismisses her. Finally, one autumn day, Nick meets Tom along Fifth Avenue. Tom, seeing Nick, makes the first move to speak.
Initially Nick refuses to shake Tom's hand, upset with what Tom has come to represent. In the course of their short discussion, Nick learns Tom had a role in Gatsby's death — George Wilson worked his way to the Buchanan house in East Egg and Tom told him who owned the car that struck Myrtle. When Nick leaves, he shakes Tom's hand because he "felt suddenly as though [he] were talking to a child.
The time comes for Nick to leave West Egg and return West. On the last night, he wanders over to Gatsby's for one last visit.
Strolling down to the water he is called to remember the way Gatsby's house used to be, filled with people and lavish parties. He considers Gatsby's wonder at picking out Daisy's dock in the darkness, how far Gatsby had traveled in his life, and how he always had hope in the future. In his final thought, Nick links society to the boats eternally moving against the current on the Sound.
The last chapter of The Great Gatsby continues a theme begun in the previous chapter, bringing the reader face-to-face with the ugly side of the American dream. Throughout the story, Gatsby has been held up as an example of one who has achieved the American dream — he had money, possessions, independence, and people who wanted to be around him.
Or so the reader thinks. Gatsby's funeral takes center stage in this chapter, and with the exception of Nick, who continues to show his moral fiber, what Fitzgerald reveals about the moral decrepitude of those people still living is even worse than any of Gatsby's secrets.
As the chapter opens, Nick tells readers what an impact this course of events makes upon him. They came to investigate, and once again, the carnivalesque atmosphere that so often accompanied Gatsby's parties establishes itself. This time, however, the situation is decidedly less merry. Nick, showing he has come to respect Gatsby over the course of the summer, worries that, in fact, the circus-like atmosphere will allow the "grotesque, circumstantial, [and] eager" reporters to mythologize his neighbor, filling the pages of their rags with half-truths and full-blown lies.
For Nick, however, even more disturbing than the free-for-all that surrounds the investigation is the fact that he finds himself "on Gatsby's side, and alone. Nick, by default, assumes the responsibility for making Gatsby's final arrangements, "because no one else was interested — interested. First, the Nick who is blooming at the end of Chapter 7 has come into fruition in this chapter.
He is a man of principles and integrity which shows more and more as the chapter unfolds. The second idea introduced here is the utter shallowness of the people who, in better times, take every opportunity to be at Gatsby's house, drinking his liquor, eating his food, and enjoying his hospitality, but abandon him at the end: Daisy and Tom have left without a forwarding address.
Meyer Wolfshiem, who is "completely knocked down and out" at Gatsby's death, and who wants to "know about the funeral etc. Even the partygoers disappear. The party is over, and so they move on to the next event, treating their host with the same respect in death that they gave him in life — none at all. Klipspringer is a shining example of all the partygoers when he phones Gatsby's, speaks to Nick, and sidesteps the issue of Gatsby's funeral, shamelessly admitting, "what I called up about was a pair of shoes I left there.
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