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Examples Of Nostalgia In The Great Gatsby

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No matter where someone decides to look, there is always some type of logging and wish for their childhood or older, happier times. Regardless of how many times Nintendo re-release their old consoles or Netflix releases a special showcasing an older comedian, no one seems to get sick of nostalgia. This nostalgia craze has always been present. Society shapes itself around keeping the original ways in tact and trying to shut out the new ways. This is seen in the 1800’s when people of a town try to teach “old ways,” in the 1920’s when a love is shown to be lost because of trying to reclaim the past, and today where everyone wants to have a piece of their childhood return to them. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving is a great showcase …show more content…

Scott Fitzgerald focuses on the past and trying to bring it back many times throughout the book. The sense of nostalgia is very present and seeps into the characters’ motivations. The story follows Nick Carraway as he tells how Jay Gatsby tries to recapture the love of his life he lost five years prior. The entire time Jay keeps talking about how he has to “...fix everything just the way it was before, (Fitzgerald)” as he said in the book. Daisy even falls under the influence of Jay’s nostalgic views. She sees all the clothes and the house he built with her in mind. Everything he has worked and done for the past five years was for her. Jay wants to bring that back. He wants the “good old days” in his hands again. Ultimately that sense of nostalgia is what brings him to his death. He tried too hard to take her away from Tom that she freaked out and ended up killing Myrtle. This led to Tom accusing Jay and Myrtle’s husband George to kill Jay a few days later. Nostalgia is what the whole book is based on. It shows the depressing effects of what it can do to …show more content…

The story is just about two couples drinking and talking about their past love and life experiences. The entire short story is about reminiscing about the old days. In a different light, Carver shows the inner demons that come out while facing nostalgia. As a character named Terri says “He beat me up one night. He dragged me around the living room by my ankles. He kept saying, 'I love you, I love you, you bitch.' He went on dragging me around the living room. My head kept knocking on things.(Carver 170)" Carver brilliantly explores how thinking of only the old times can bring back bad memories. It’s not always the “fun childhood memories” like people seem to

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The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book and almost universally considered his most impactful work. The novel follows the dialog of Nick Carraway throughout his time in New York, especially focusing on his neighbor, Jay Gatsby, who is trying to enter a relationship with Nick’s married cousin, Daisy Buchanan. Although the work is written from Nick’s point of view, occasionally obscured through influences such as alcohol, his descriptions of Gatsby seem to be mostly genuine and as unaltered from the truth as Nick can make them. Although Gatsby believes his ultimate goal is to create a new future for himself & Daisy, Gatsby is actually constantly trying to relive & change his past, especially in regards to Daisy. It is this unknown internal motivation that dictates much of Gatsby’s decisions &

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Although Gatsby cannot see it, Nick Carraway, Gatsby’s friend, can see the inalienable effect his past has on Daisy. Fitzgerald wrote, “He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to causal moths so that he could ‘come over’ some afternoon to a stranger’s garden” (Fitzgerald 78). After all these years without seeing Daisy, Gatsby concocts a perfect plan to reunite with her. As much as Gatsby wants Daisy, he cannot make her feel the way she once did. Fitzgerald wrote, “’You can’t repeat the past.’… ‘Can’t repeat the past?’

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Leaving the past behind is oftentimes an extremely large burden. While wanting what we once had is a desire of many, it can be very detrimental to future plans. In the book The Great Gatsby, a man named Jay Gatsby meets his love Daisy Fay. They instantly fell in love. Gatsby however, knew that he had no money to support a marriage.

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Jay Gatsby has longed to go back. He sees the past as his best days, and never wants to watch them go. He wishes for his one true love, Daisy to be his again, and for some of old friends to be back. Without his obsession of the past, Gatsby would have lead a completely life, unconsumed with his reawakened memories. Gatsby bases his whole life off one thing.

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The idea of being trapped in the past in The Great Gatsby Thinking about the past is something that many people do at some time in their life, but some people are more given to it than others. Time works differently for Gatsby in the novel "The Great Gatsby ", written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. An example of being imprisoned in the past can be found in the character Jay Gatsby. He doesn't have deep thoughts about his past occurrences but instead has a strong desire to return to them. The majority of people who live in the present day make plans for their future desires and goals.

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As Boym states in her Future of Nostalgia, Restorative nostalgia is the attempt to reconstruct a lost home but it does not think of itself as notalgia, but of truth and tradition (Boym, 18). In Never Let Me Go Kathy and the other clones never really had a sense of home or security. Hailsham was basically a group home with strict rules and an extreme lack of love. All throughout Kathy’s life she’s just gone to wherever the clones were supposed to go at that point in their lives. She had everything laid out for her and never had an opportunity to create a home for herself so she created one through nostalgia.

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