The Great Gatsby Essays

The Great Gatsby Essays The Great Gatsby Essay The Great Gatsby Essay The Great Gatsby as a description of the failure of the American dream. The Great Gatsby is a concentrated meditation on the American dream, understood as the faith that anyone, even of the most humble origins, can attain wealth and social standing in the United States through talent and individual initiative. Fitzgerald explores the compelling appeal of this dream, and the circumstances that render it as deceptive as it is enduring. Fitzgeralds protagonist is a young man from North Dakota, James Gatz, who changes his name to Jay Gatsby and manufactures a persona out of his own Platonic self-conception. While in his soldiers uniform just prior to service in World War I, Gatsby falls in love with Daisy, a beautiful, rich young woman whose voice has the sound of money. After the war, Gatsby pursues Daisy, even though she has by then married a gruff and tasteless man of her own class. Gatsby buys a huge, garish mansion on Long Island near Daisys home and tries t o impress her and her social set with lavish parties financed, as some of his guests rightly suspect, by the illegal sale of alcoholic beverages. But Daisy rejects Gatsbys suit, as her feelings and behavior are controlled by the conventions of her class in ways that the innocent American dreamer does not understand. In the end, it is inherited wealth and social standing that determine much more of ones destiny than is determined by talent and individual initiative, readers of The Great Gatsby are led to conclude. Much of the power of The Great Gatsby derives from Fitzgeralds having provided readers with an opportunity to simultaneously see through the pretenders illusions and identify deeply with his aspirations and even love him for having made the effort. Nelly, on the other hand, is considered to be far more worthy narrator because of her close association with Heathcliff having grown up with him and her honest, occasionally blunt opinion. An example is where Nelly asks Catherine Why do you love him? (referring to Edgar Linton) and then proceeding to say Bad! to her replies. This could be construed as a breach of etiquette in the nineteen hundreds for a servant to speak so to a lady of higher station and demonstrates Nellys ability to speak her mind which endears her to the reader. As a result of this fact it is Nelly who undertakes the conveying of the tale of Wuthering Heights and to whom we look for our opinions in other characters. She is, in fact, a narrator within a narrator due to her recounting of the tale of Wuthering Heights to Lockwood for entertainment and both tells the story and yet features heavily in its events. Fitzgeralds narrator, Nick Carraway is young, thoughtful and intelligent. He has moved from the West in favour of the fake and unproductive society of New York which he ultimately rejects. The landscape to which he moves is unproductive due to the fact that it grows or produces nothing dealing only in stocks and shares a world that Nick unsuccessfully immerses himself in. The world into which Nick ventures could be accurately captured by Fitzgeralds description of Daisys voice being full of money . He is also considered to be truthful in regard to his views on other characters. This impression is given to us by the words: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known. A self-confession giving vital information to us this being that what Nick says can be taken as an objective view or judgement. His actions throughout the novel, including his contempt towards Tom Buchanan and Daisy following their response to Gatsbys death, and his noble attempts to gather supposed friends and relatives to Gatsbys funeral, when they flocked to his parties, also add to Nicks honest nature and therefore Fitzgeralds presentation through him. Both Bronte and Fitzgerald share in the creation of their narrators as forming them as strangers discovering new and unfamiliar places; taking the reader with them as their knowledge and relationships develop. Both authors use the narrator in their novels for a variety of similar reasons. A narrator gives an added element of realism to the story, as if someone is actually telling something that happened. The use of precise dates and setting also add to this feeling of the novels being real. West Egg in Gatsby and 1801- in Wuthering Heights elucidating this point. The narrator also allows a detached character development that one is unable to achieve if the novels were written in the first person. Opinions can be posited and actions can be viewed externally to the actual character, making judgements more objective.