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Religion and symbolism in the great gatsby
Religion and symbolism in the great gatsby
Religion and symbolism in the great gatsby
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Some people love something or someone so much that they are willing to do whatever it takes to obtain or keep that special thing or person? In the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the main character Jay Gatsby is willing to sacrifice his life in order to obtain the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan. Characters in this book play a major role in the events that occur in the writing. In fact, some character’s actions affect other character’s lives forever.
Fitzgerald used communion by showing the rowdiness of Gatsby’s parties. The main character Nick states, “I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited”(45). The guests weren’t invited to the party; they just came as they pleased. They didn’t have respect for Gatsby, when they should have because they are his guests. For example they spread rumors about his past and a man even went through his library.
love is a complex subject to understand, you have to find the balance between happiness and trust. In The Great Gatsby and Their Eyes Were Watching God, there are two protagonist who struggle finding love. Jay Gatsby, a guy who wants to find “the one”, where Janie, a woman who just wants to settle down with someone. Both, Jay and Janie, desired love and learned that love is hard and confusing.
The Analytical Gatsby Fitzgerald has countless themes in his novel The Great Gatsby. One of these many themes is that even when no one is around to witness your actions there is always a moral force that knows what you have done, this moral force keeps the actions of the community under a strict moral code. This theme has been amplified by the use of a Motif, a giant billboard of T.J. Eckleburg which only shows two large eyes behind a large pair of glasses. This Motif helps you visualize how the community associates the moral force into their lives, also it shows that even when no one is watching God is.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, there are many symbolic meanings that affect the characters in similar, and in different ways. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character Janie, struggles to find her identity and becoming a woman. She runs into problems with her marriages, and with herself. Unlike what her Nanny taught her, Janie’s real dream is to be free and be her own individual, which is described through the symbol of the horizon. In The Great Gatsby, the main character Jay Gatsby, struggles to reach the green light.
The first way Fitzgerald depicts religion being replaced by wealth in The Great Gatsby, is through the worship of the billboard of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. In the Bible, God is a grand and perfect being that watches over and protects mankind from harm. He is seen as kind and loving by those who follow Him. Even though the billboard is depicted gloriously as a God would be, it is not gracious towards those to who look to it, unlike the God in the Bible. This consumeristic billboard of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg watches over the dirtiest, poorest place in the book, the valley of ashes.
Love encompasses a variety of different emotional and mental states, typically strongly and positively experienced, ranging from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection and to the simplest pleasure. Love is the one thing every flesh and blood loves to enjoy unconditionally. Like Jay Gatsby, many components of the paragraph in that opens the blockbuster Their Eyes Were Watching God plays into Janie Crawford and how she positions the gender roles that the author narrates. Janie experiences different kinds of love throughout her life. Unlike Jay Gatsby who experiences love early on and eventually goes searching for the love of his life.
Much like Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, we see that Joe Starks also has a catchphrase of his own that he begins most of his sentences with, but instead of it being Old Sport, it is I,god. When Janie firsts meets Joe Starks, he dreams of getting to be a part of an all colored town and help build it up, and he doesn’t use the term I,god, but instead God. When they first arrive in Orange County he says “God, they call this a town? Why, ‘tain’t nothing but a raw place in de woods”(34), it’s not until later when Joe Starks has gained power in the town that he constantly uses the phrase, I,god in front of everything. The first time he says I,god is when he is wondering who is leading the town “I,god, where’s de Mayor?”(34),
The Roaring Twenties, a time of economic prosperity and modernity swept many Americans into an affluent but unfamiliar “consumer society.” But with every high, comes a low and at the turn of the decade came the stock market crash ending the luxurious era as we know it. Thus, began the completely contrasted age known as the Dirty Thirties. These twenty years brought forward new inventions such as radars, jazz music, movies with sound all while the Modernism movement continued to transpire and thrive. Great works such as The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, were famous modernist novels written thirteen years apart which showed the dreams and aspirations of different individuals in the
There are many bible references in the Great Gatsby. According to Thomas Foster, inhis book How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Biblical references include himtelling many stories from the bible and comparing them to today. Jay Gatsby andDaisy mostly fit these profiles because of their unfortunate love and the bad thingsthey have done. Even though Tom is cheating on Daisy for Myrtle, Daisy decides todo the same thing with Gatsby and call herself a better person and think its okaythat she does it just because Tom does. On page 121-123, Gatsby and Daisy followNick, Jordan, and Tom to town, which is quite fond of slavery, which sounds just likethe story Thomas told of 4 white men from a slave country riding up.
Chapter fourteen of How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster discusses Christ figures in American literature. Christ figures appear abundantly throughout American literature. A Christ figure reflects someone who has qualities similar to those of Christ, even though they may not be verbatim. Foster’s novel says, “No matter what your religious beliefs, to get the most out of your reading of American literatures, knowing something about the Old and New Testaments is essential” (125). Not everyone is a Christian or worships Christ.
Those who solely focus on wealth may have completely empty lives. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald highlights the fact that wealthy people have meaningless lives. He does this by using rhetoric that shows the carelessness, materialism, and ironies in their lives. In order to show this, Fitzgerald implements rhetoric and stylistic devices that show the emptiness of the characters throughout his novel that reinforces his theme that if materialism, not God, drives one, one’s dreams and hopes will eventually implode. To support his theme of emptiness, Fitzgerald facilitates ironic rhetoric to show the characters’ emptiness, weakness, and eventual destruction.
The most important way in which people perceive the world is through vision. Humanity’s reliance on vision has lead people to correlate specific colors with specific emotions or concepts. Authors have exploited people’s natural perception of colors to use them as powerful symbols in literary works. These symbols help convey profound ideas in a graceful and easily-interpretable way. Symbols are heavily employed by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the quintessential American novel: The Great Gatsby.
The Great Gatsby GEOGRAPHY Throughout the novel, places and settings symbolize the various aspects of the 1920s American society that Fitzgerald depicts. East Egg represents the old aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich, the valley of ashes the moral and social decay of America, and New York City the dissolute, amoral quest for money and pleasure. Additionally, the East is connected to the moral decay and social cynicism of New York, while the West is connected to more traditional social values and ideals. Themes: The American Dream "Whereas the American Dream was once equated with certain principles of freedom, it is now equated with things.
Jay 's Obsession in The Great Gatsby There is a fine line between love and lust. If love is only a will to possess, it is not love. To love someone is to hold them dear to one 's heart. In The Great Gatsby, the characters, Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan are said to be in love, but in reality, this seems to be a misconception.
