Comparing Our Town And The Great Gatsby

In both the third act of the play Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, and in the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, two characters share a common interest. They both long to return to the past. Emily Webb was a girl that grew up in the small New Hampshire town, Grover’s Corners. She ends up getting to her highschool sweetheart, George Gibbs. In the end she dies in childbirth, and in the world of the dead decides to go back one day to the world of the living. Jay Gatsby was a poor man until bootlegging his way to riches. Through his journey, he meets a girl named Daisy Buchanan whom he falls head over heels for. These two individuals share a desire to revisit the past, and this is their outcome. When Emily fulfills her desire to go back to one day of her life, she is surprised when she learns it was not what she expected. After dying in childbirth, there is a scene where she walks from the living world into the realm of the dead. The dead start talking about everything relating to death in a very nonchalant way, and Emily wonders how long the sensation of feeling like she is alive will last, not wanting to become like the dead she is with, not wanting to

I feel a sentimental longing and wistful affection for the past. Something I have learned over the years is that nostalgia can be something that makes you feel like certains parts of your life were better than they actually were. My experience with trying to go back to the past comes from a place of wanting to ignore my current situation, and feel the way I felt (or the way I seem to remember feeling) in a past situation. Like Gatsby and Emily, it never ends well. I start to feel out of place in my current life and it feels wrong. Now, instead of dwelling in what used to be, if I feel a though I miss the way something was I just listen to a song I liked at that time, or look at old photos. It’s possible to carry these memories in a healthy