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Literary analysis
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The power of literary analysis
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Literary analysis
The power of literary analysis
The power of literary analysis
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Great Gatsby Final essay “To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, that yacht represented all the beauty and glamor in the world”(100). During and shortly after the great depression, people's focus now fell on wealth and success in the economic world. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses symbols, colors, and specific imagery to convey the theme of wealth, showing the correlation between class and wealth and how it differs from what most believe to be true. Fitzgerald uses symbols such as west egg vs. east egg, the green light, different sports, and their cars to show the theme of wealth in The Great Gatsby.
Wealth is defined by a great quantity or store of money, valuable possessions, property, or other riches (dictionary.com). Many characters, in the novel, The Great Gatsby, displayed different forms of wealth. They each viewed and valued their wealth in distinct ways. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald intended to display a constant theme that wealth does not lead to true happiness.
“They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together…” (179). F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays the overwhelming of wealth and the sense of higher social status through many character relationships in The Great Gatsby. Jay Gatsby represents the wealthiest man in Long Island, who fell in love with the more affluent, Daisy Buchanan. Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, also depicts a wealthy man, but less classy as he has an affair with the unprosperous Myrtle Wilson, George Wilson’s wife. “Money is the root of all evil.”
The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the novel suggests that the pursuit of wealth and one's successes can lead to a person's downfall and destruction. The novel follows the story of Nick Carraway and his experience with a man known as Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is a man who was not born into wealth but instead climbed his way to the top with one goal in mind, to be with his Beloved named Daisy Buchanan. But as the story progresses, Gatsby’s goal to be with Daisy takes a very drastic turn for the worse. In the story, there are two characters, Jay Gatsby and Myrtle Wilson, whose lives are ruined by their pursuit of success and everything they want in life.
Research has shown that the wealthiest eighty-five people in the world have more money than the poorest three point five billion people combined (Jackson par. 3). The life styles and viewpoints of these two classes of people differ by enormous proportions. One class will never have to worry about their finances, while the other may struggle to even buy food. These different ways of life can produce extremely different personalities for better or for worse. The unique personalities of the upper class are observed in the novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, where the narrator, Nick Carraway, moves into a village called West Egg just outside New York.
How does having money lead to material gain? In the Roaring Twenties, people from all social classes suddenly became aware of the class differences. This awareness is a result of the jump on the Stock Market and the World War1. There were clear distinctions among social classes according to location, amount of material possessions and the way one acted. Fitzgerald explains these differences by giving the characters in his novel the Great Gatsby different social classes and he also shows these social divisions in the way the characters behave.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby describes the life of Jay Gatsby in the 1920’s. The novel shares his love story and his loneliness. A major question the author raises is how does wealth impact class structure and society? Fitzgerald answers this question through the distinction between “New rich” and “Old rich” and the significance of East and West Egg.
It represents all the money he had and the business that he is doing. Gatsby’s life revolves around that he made money throughout when he was growing up, and how he earned the money. He earned the money to impress the one he is in love with. Gatsby can be defined by his clothing, and Fitzgerald says, “An hour later the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, gold-colored tie, hurried in”(Fitzgerald 84). Gatsby has expensive clothing which shows that he can buy nice clothing, and have lots of it.
In the Great Gatsby money keeps the relationships together despite massive problems. The characters think that money will lead them to happiness. Not in this case money led a women to get a get married to an unfaithful man or a women to cheat on husband with another man. In this time it was wrong for women to divorce their husband and it didn’t help that the woman in the book was catholic in the religion it is wrong to divorce.
The Connection of Wealth and Personality in Fitzgerald’s Works In our society, money is seen as the most important factor in decision making and in our overall lives. This is shown throughout all of Fitzgerald’s works and in many of his characters. His stories continually mention the effect that money has on the community. In one of her criticisms, Mary Jo Tate explains that “[Fitzgerald] was not a simple worshiper of wealth or the wealthy, but rather he valued wealth for the freedom and possibilities it provided, and he criticized the rich primarily for wasting those opportunities.
True wealth is not measured in status or power. It is estimated in the legacy we leave behind for those we love and those we inspire. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the character Jay Gatsby to explore the American Dream and how its corrupting influence impacts the people who pursue it. Through the eyes of Nick Carraway, we see how Gatsby’s love for Daisy, Wealth, and social status ultimately leads to his downfall. And how other characters in the novel have similar experiences throughout the story.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone… just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had,”(5). Wealth, social status, and power, are all different advantages people are born with or without in this world. With that in mind one should consider, basically what they had to deal with when the wealthy criticizes them compared to what the wealthy had. The wealthy often criticizes the poor for not taking advantages of the work that they were providing during the time; however, the wealthy never really considered that they never had to have gone through as much as the common people do when they go about their miserable lives.
When Gatsby loses everything, we see that wealth not only fails as a means of fulfillment but actively participates in the destruction of this goal. Fitzgerald suggests that wealth cannot lead to happiness, rather it undermines the existing and potential good in life. It should therefore should not be used as means of attaining fulfillment. The first mentions of Gatsby’s character reveal a personality who has sacrificed morality to achieve a
Wealth identified how you lived to the people surrounding you in society. It was wealth that built you and destroyed you. Wealth overshadowed true love and beauty in The Great Gatsby. Those who had old money looked down upon those with new money, while those who were not rich was ignored by society. Wealth and the desire to be accepted by the society distracted the characters from making moral decisions.
The distressing inquiry “am I beautiful?” generates 228,300,000 more Google results than “am I intelligent?” and “am I a good person?” combined. Inevitably, people always search for traces of their superiority over others－counting among them, beauty.