Examples Of Allusion In The Great Gatsby

Illusion of Gatsby v. Allusion to Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald’s greatest work, The Great Gatsby, is seen as an image representative of opulence, deception, and the period of the Roaring 20’s in America. The common themes allowed the novel to relate to the average reader’s life while also casting shade on the average American’s life. The viewing of Jay Gatsby’s convoluted life, shrouded past, and love affairs through Nicks Carraway’s narration caused The Great Gatsby to become an instant classic in the twenties, and to this day is still viewed in this way, resulting in Fitzgerald’s work to be read by almost every high school student in the United States. Due to The Great Gatsby’s vast array of readers, other sources have been able to utilize

The Fault in Our Stars, a novel by John Green, utilizes the image of “a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been at the end of a dock” (Fitzgerald 21) to create mood and foreshadow. Elizabeth Rowe from USA Today writes on this allusion explaining how “John Green writes about a green light in Amsterdam and a green car. He later conceded in an interview that these are, in fact, Great Gatsby references and that the green objects are analogous to the book's blinking green light.” The green light radiates a feeling of false hope and foreshadowing which ends with similar negative circumstances experienced by the main characters of both novels. This book was very popular and even became a movie later which shows how almost every reader or viewer could understand and decipher the familiar reference to The Great Gatsby. This adds not only to John Green’s work but also adds richness to Fitzgerald’s work by conveying a sense of honor by alluding to Fitzgerald’s work and elevating it as a great work of literary merit. Another work of literature that utilizes The Great Gatsby to elevate itself and obtain an aura of prestige is, a now classic, The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. In Salinger’s book he has the main character Holden mention his love of Fitzgerald’s work exclaiming, “I was crazy

This recognizable text allow Americans to identify key themes and images portrayed by sources in an attempt to convey their idea or message through the familiar allusion of Fitzgerald’s novel. A critical source of Fitzgerald’s American classic concludes, “It seems a wonder to them that Gatsby should cling to its lofty place on lists of Great American Novels, despite being so slender and so dated, and not withstanding its ham-handed symbolism, simplistic structure, clunky plot machinery, and flat characters” (Hahn), but then answers this question by giving the solution saying, “There is a solution to the mystery of Gatsby's lasting fame, and that solution is voice” (Hahn). Hahn states that this voice is the reason that The Great Gatsby has become an American classic and further become one of the most recognizable references used in pop culture in America. Hahn states that the slim book is turned into a masterpiece that all can enjoy and dissect because Nick Carraway’s narration creates the text into music with his unique speech that associates the work with American culture as a