Comparing Huckleberry Finn And The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Samuel Gray Mr. Walter AP Literature and Composition 27 November, 2023 Social and Individual Identity in "Huckleberry Finn" and "The Great Gatsby" Introduction: The novels, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Great Gatsby” both serve as literary devices that summarize the core of two distinct literary movements: Realism and Modernism. The first major Realist work is “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, Twain successfully captures life in America during the 19th century by depicting the issues of society like racism, war, and materialism. Twain utilizes several different characters to portray these issues through characters like Jim, The Duke, and The King. Characters like Jim upend the negative racial stereotypes and present a philosophical

Symbolically, the social ranks and classes that the novel portrays are finally represented by the characters of Jay Gatsby and his unnatural obsession with Daisy Buchanan (Britannica, “F. Scott Fitzgerald”). Gatsby's ruthless pursuit of wealth and status, represented by pretentious parties and expensive habits, depicts a materialistic American Dream that has no substance. As Gatsby laments, "He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: "I have never loved you" (F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby"). Gatsby is a novel set in the Roaring Twenties. It is a period that is characterized by social and cultural changes and the world is depicted through commercialism and the moral decay through which it is known (Britannica, "Roaring Twenties"). The author shows it through the novel's famous party scenes where Gatsby's luxurious parties disguise a deeper feeling of loneliness and disillusionment. And as he says, "I adore big parties." They are very intrinsically mine! parties are where I feel I own it more. "That’s the key problem in small parties there isn’t any privacy" (F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great