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Comparing Love In The Great Gatsby And The Fault In Our Stars

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Tragic love: the love between a man and a woman that once it is realised cannot be fulfilled. Othello, The Great Gatsby and The Fault in Our Stars each display how relationships become tragic due to faults within individual human nature as well as faults which are beyond their control. The Great Gatsby; a novel set in the 1920s, depicts a society viewed by Fitzgerald as surrounded by emptiness and recklessness. Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship is made tragic partly by society, but also by the flaws of Jay. Similarly, Othello depicts a flawed, noble protagonist placed in a stressful, heightened situation due to prejudice and a flawed male dominated society, both of which lead to tragedy. The Fault in Our Stars is a post-modernist, tragic love …show more content…

In order to become a better suitor for Daisy, Jay makes his millions bootlegging, in order to provide her with the wealth and luxury she desires. Jay believes that this is the way to Daisy’s heart; however the importance of class and social standing in 1920s society makes this impossible. The line ‘She’s not leaving me! Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal to put a ring on her finger’3 shows how Tom believes that it’s not only wealth that Daisy desires, but also the superior social status and upper class background which Tom possesses but Jay lacks. The use of the adjective ‘common’ demoralises Jay, suggesting he is the complete opposite of the powerful elite. It is used to exaggerate Jay’s inferiority and intensify the difference between the nouveau riche and the older moneyed families. The use of lexis from the semantic field of fraudulence, ‘swindler’ and ‘steal,’ embellish the indecency of Jay and expresses to Daisy that he is no more than a vulgar, lower class fraud. The exclamatory sentence, ‘she’s not leaving me!’ indicates an element of forcefulness and portrays the male dominance and patriarchy that exists in this society and within Tom and Daisy’s relationship. Patriarchy is mirrored earlier in the novel where Nick describes Daisy as being ‘buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon3.’ This specific use of imagery displays patriarchy by implying that Daisy is not a free person. Domination is shown in the juxtaposition of ‘an anchored balloon’ as it suggests that Daisy has certain freedoms like the ‘balloon’, yet Tom continues to want to restrict and deflate her. Lois Tyson believes The Great Gatsby reinforces a patriarchal standpoint, in part through its representation of women as limited and shallow4 which is supported by the way Tom is able to suppress Daisy, and her shallow view of staying

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