In the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author uses many differnt retorical devices to add a personal flare to his work. He uses diction, symbolism, and irony to adress many different themes. These themes include Materialism, The American Dream, and includes a sharp and biting ridicule on American society in the 1920’s. The main point of Fitzgerald, arguement is one where he sharply criticizes the Society of the time.
Gatsby has spent his whole life trying to prove to Daisy and everyone around him that he is worthy of her. The only way to be on the same social level as her is to turn himself into new money. Since this is not possible, he has to try to convince to others that he truly is old money. To do this, he becomes rich, and lies about his past, but the only way for him to complete this idea is if he is with Daisy. She is the final piece in his American dream.
Although this figure, Gatsby, experiences an intensely intimate relationship with Daisy, his emotions reside on the side of extreme obsession rather than genuine affection. Desire plays a pivotal role in the development of the characters in the novel, showing Fitzgerald’s seminal message
Gatsby’s dreams and aspirations in life are rather interesting and amazing as he goes about his life in the book. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald helps highlight the social, moral, and political issue that were very present during the 1920’s and today. Gatsby is the focus of the book as before the book began, he was an ex-soldier who came to wealth by some rather illegal ways. Daisy a married woman is his person of interest, who was his ex-lover 5 years before the book started. Gatsby’s actions, and words demonstrate a clear obsession with Daisy that seems to have no end.
In today’s duplicitous society, men often pursue the “perfect woman”. This woman is construed to be; fit, provocative and ravishing. However, in greatly distinguished American novel, The Great Gatsby, the men have strayed from stalking women for their looks. Instead, Gatsby chases Daisy to achieve her as a prize of his bounty and any affection Gatsby demonstrates toward her, is simply to appease to her sense of status and wealth. The author F. Scott Fitzgerald, exhibits Gatsby’s these feelings for Daisy through the clever usage of connotation, symbolism and metaphors.
After the revelation of Gatsby’s background, he is dejected by the outcome of his plans, and his efforts to achieve them amount to nothing. He decides to place distance between himself and Daisy, persevering and enduring the long process it will take to revert to the past. Gatsby continues to be hopeful in reigniting his dream, “clutching at some last hope.” (158) By removing the pressure and his desperation to be with Daisy, Gatsby believes that she will come back and fulfill the dream she abandoned with Gatsby once more.
Gatsby does not reach out to Daisy in love and solidarity but rather hopes to attract her into his life through his wealth, further solidifying the sinister nature of his
Every nonchalant action of Gatsby’s links him to Daisy in some way, shape, or form. She is someone who he would go to extreme measures for; his house, his parties, and his lifestyle was all a cry for attention from Daisy. Gatsby was an extremely strategic person, more so than what is prevalent on the surface and hindsight is twenty twenty; he did it all for Daisy and trying to be a part of that forsaken Old
He even throws lavish parties with the aim of attracting Daisy to his house, but it does not materialize. Nevertheless, the illegal money inhibits the realization of his American dream as their relationship is not determined to last since the relationship cannot be more than an affair as Daisy is already, married to dream. Therefore, this scenario brings up another feature of the modernism in Gatsby’s character. Following the initial connection with Daisy, Gatsby cannot let go of the past, and thus he is determined to build a romantic relationship with Daisy despite being married to Tom. In the modern setting, most individuals fail to let go of their past as they feel it is safer.
Gatsby's character believes the only way to receive Daisy's love is through money before realizing how even money can not grant her affection. Gatsby makes his effects clear to Daisy, but his expectations of her to love him back are far too high. The broken clock upon their first meeting foreshadows the futile expectation of rekindling their love by retracing time. The only proof of his dedication and passion for Daisy was through his wealth as if wealth was a substitute for love itself. Not only does Gatsby strive to have wealth to please her, but he finds her affluence of money attractive, explaining how "Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.
Daisy’s supposed inferiority cannot be the case when she is described as the “king’s daughter [and] the golden girl”. As a whole, the treatment of women may have been unjust in the 1920’s but Daisy was surely an exception. Furthermore, her relationship with Gatsby, from an entirely character based perspective, is representative of the happiness. In gatsby’s eyes, this happiness can only be achieved through obtaining financial success, or in other words achieving the American Dream. Given that “[Daisy’s] voice [was] full of money” and that the American Dream was explicitly linked to wealth, Gatsby’s prominent pursuit of wealth was to achieve happiness through Daisy’s love.
Gatsby will do anything and everything to win over the heart of the truly materialistic Daisy Buchanan which leads to Gatsby’s demise. Daisy does not even confide in a person, she confides in materialistic items. Even with being with Gatsby for a long time she doesn’t value him more than she values her money. All Daisy does is take and take, but she gives nothing in return. As Daisy says when Gatsby asks Daisy to confess her love for her she replies with “Oh, you want to much”.
To many Americans, the hope is to wealth, but to Gatsby, his attraction is to Daisy, “It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy… he was at present a penniless young man without a past… he had no real right to touch her hand”(149). Gatsby, who is a poor man, is attracted to Daisy partly because he cannot have her, the social system keeps them apart from each other. Gatsby is poor in more ways than one. First, he is poor regarding material wealth, coming from a poor family. On the other hand, he is at a point where his relationship with Daisy is poor because he feels they are too separated from each other, that he does not deserve her.
Throughout this novel James Gatz, better known as Mr. Gatsby, has an ever changing character. This character goes from being a man who could only dream of one day seeing his long lost lover, Daisey, to severely damaging her marriage to a long time “old money” man with whom she has a child with. Gatsby is a mysteriously rich man in his thirties that lives in the biggest mansion in West Egg. Although no one knows where Gatsby’s wealth comes from, crowds of people still attend his avant garde parties every Saturday. He has everything from fresh fruit delivered every week to stunning furniture imported from around the world but when it comes to Daisy he can’t have her and that makes him want her even more.
Thereafter, I adopted a historical-biographical criticism. By recalling facts about the Roaring Twenties and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life after his participation in World War I , I understood the novel’s aesthetic characteristics on a wider context and was able to justify my conclusion that The Great Gatsby embodies a commentary on the degradation of an increasingly consumerist and liberal American society during the post-war decade of the 1920s.
