Flaws of Perception in Society: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Society nowadays can conform anyone, into whoever they want a person to be.Throughout The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Wife of Bath’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, there is an interconnecting theme of the flaws of perception in society. This theme is shown with various characters throughout The Great Gatsby such as characters having their own perception as to who the main character, Jay Gatsby is, in The Wife of Bath’s Tale it is shown in the way of how the knight judges his wife based off of her physical age and beauty within, and in Brave New World, Bernard, one of the main characters, is in shock of what the reality of this “utopian” society everyone believes they live in actually is, he sees how messed up everything and everyone is, yet people deem him as the crazy one.
In The Great Gatsby, readers can see evidence of society misperceiving somebody in the way that no person seems to really know who Jay Gatsby is. When Nick Carraway, his neighbor, comes to one of his house parties for the first time, he is told several different stories regarding the identity and personal history of the party host. At the first party Nick attends, Nick’s friend Jordan Baker, accompanied by two girls in yellow dresses, share how “they thought he killed a man once” (Fitzgerald 44). One of the two girls, Lucille, then interjects with a different side to the story. “I don’t think it’s so much that, it’s more that he was a German spy during the war” (Fitzgerald 44). Immediately following that interjection, another opposing idea is introduced of Jay Gatsby being in the American army during the war, not the German army like is previously thought. As Nick wanders throughout the party, he overhears many addi...

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...ht opinion to give. We are taught one idea of how to live but once we begin to live in that way we then are judged. Cast out for what we have acknowledged as a truth to our own individual self.
In conclusion throughout The Great Gatsby, The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and Brave New World, flaws of perception in society was a dominant theme found in the three literary texts. There were various flaws present in the texts, such as perception of a person’s identity and past, as found in The Great Gatsby; a person’s personal beauty, as examined in The Wife of Bath’s Tale; and

Works Cited

Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Wife of Bath's Tale." Canterbury Tales. McDougal Littell Literature British Literature, 2012. Print. 180-192.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1st ed. New York: Scribner, 1925. Print.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper Perenial, 1969. Print.

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