Voegeli’s criticism compares the similarities and differences of the American Dream, also known as the pursuit of happiness, and Jay Gatsby's life. He also shows how some of the other characters in the novel relate to this dream, starting with Nick. Later in the literary criticism he analyzes the duality of romances and the how many of the characters hold two different ideas in their minds at the same time. Then at the end stating that democracy is the cause of the main characters underlying loneliness.
This literary criticism is definitely the most diverse of all the sources. Vogeli explores many different points and relates them well to his main point of the pursuit of happiness and American values. As a scholar at the Henry Salvatori Center,
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He notes how Fitzgerald artfully uses the newly developed telephone to expand the witness point of view. The constant phone calls to Gatsby build the idea that's his business’s are not legit while Myrtles calls to Tom build the idea he is unfaithful to his wife. Even Gatsby's death is related to the telephone further pushing the idea that it is an important symbol.
Levitt's literary criticism, like many others, explores one of the various symbols in the novel. The author himself is a English teacher at the university of Colorado so his analysis is reliable as he is well educated on literature. This criticism is also unbiased and was only written to give a new viewpoint on a famous novel.
This article should be used to show students how to write about a certain symbol in a novel in ENGL 1302. An important lesson from the criticism is focusing on what the telephone represented in the time period instead of now and understanding the time period in which a piece was written. Students might not enjoy Levitt’s writing style as it is very cut and dry. But the article is very well written and a textbook example of how to write a literary criticism of a