F. Scott Fitzgerald brilliantly wrote many novels as well as short stories. One of his best known works is The Great Gatsby. In the novel, the main character Jay Gatsby tries to obtain his lifetime dreams: wealth and Daisy Buchanan. Throughout the story, he works at achieving his goals while overcoming many obstacles. Fitzgerald’s plot line relies heavily on accidents, carelessness, and misconceptions, which ultimately reveal the basic themes in the story.
During the book, Fitzgerald is able to create a superior storyline by tying all the events in the story, directly or indirectly, together. Ernest Lockridge notes in his criticisms about the book:
Yet in a triumph of art, Fitzgerald makes even accidents seem unaccidental, he incorporates ‘real’ disorder within fictional order. He accomplishes this by repetition (in the ‘real’ world, repetition does not exist): the accident involving Tom and the chambermaid, the reference to both Nick and Jordan baker as ‘bad drivers,’ the wreck just outside Gatsby’s driveway after his party in which, as in Tom’s accident, a wheel is ripped off, the hit-and-run death of Myrtle Wilson, and finally the accidental conjunction of events which leads to Gatsby’s murder and Wilson’s suicide.
Lockridge, 7
Fitzgerald is capable of picking an event and referring back to it while still staying on topic. One of these events is accidents. Almost every character is related to an accident that occurs to another character:
You see, when we [Gatsby and Daisy] left New York she was very nervous and she thought it would steady her to drive—and this woman [Myrtle Wilson] rushed out at us just as we were passing a car coming the other way. It all happened in a minute, but it seemed to me that she wanted to speak to us, thought we were somebody she knew. Well, first Daisy turned away from the woman toward the other car, and then she lost her nerve and turned back. The second my hand reached the wheel I felt shock—it must have killed her instantly.
Gatsby; 151
As one of the main accidents in the story, Fitzgerald connects the death of Myrtle Wilson to Daisy. The connection is completely accidental, because Daisy does not know that Myrtle is her husband’s mistress. In this incident, Fitzgerald is able to create irony between the two characters to make one think that it was actually not an accident, when in reality it was.
During the course of the story, it is relevant that some of the characters in the book use careless actions.
Daisy's selfish nature is magnified a hundred times at the end of the novel. Driving home after an uncomfortable evening with Tom and Gatsby, she strikes and kills Tom's mistress in Gatsby's car. Daisy allows Gatsby to take all the blame for the accident. As a result, Myrtle's husband kills Gatsby. To add insult to injury, Daisy does not even show up at Gatsby's funeral, despite her role in his death. This uncarin...
To begin, the first part of just war theory states that the two types of just wars are morally permissible and morally obligatory. (McDonald, lecture.) The US’ actions against Japan were morally permissible as evidenced by Japan’s actions leading up to the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. Although Japan was not yet at war with the US, they were aggravated by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reluctant choice to stop exporting oil into Japan, which was due to the US’ frustration of the Japanese’s occupation of Indochina. On December 7, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii, which brought US into World War II. Several years later as the war began to wane, the Allied forces met in Germany and created the Potsdam Declaration that clearly stated that if Japan did not surrender, “the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction”. (“Potsdam Declaration,” web.) At this point in the war, the United States had two options, th...
The passage in which Myrtle Wilson is killed exemplifies the recklessness of Daisy and Tom. Daisy sees Myrtle running out into the road and at first swerves toward the other car and seems to change her mind and just collide with Myrtle and continue on. Afterwards, Tom and Daisy just pack up and leave, without even attending Gatsby’s funeral. Nick seems to think they used their position in society to escape any mess they had gotten themselves into. Later on in the book, Nick says, "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness." That quote supports the way Daisy and Tom acted with the Myrtle incident. In this passage they retreat back into both their money and carelessness by running away.
Fitzgerald shows the readers many forms of cheating, infidelity, and alcoholism, in order to gain
Dubbed the ‘roaring 20s’, because of the massive rise in America’s economy, this social and historical context is widely remembered for its impressive parties and sensationalist attitude. However, Fitzgerald also conveys a more sinister side to this culture through numerous affairs, poverty and a rampage of organised crime. By exposing this moral downfall, Fitzgerald reveals to the responder his value of the American dream and his belief of its decline. As a writer, Fitzgerald was always very much concerned with the present times, consequently, his writing style and plot reflects his own experiences of this era. So similar were the lives of Fitzgerald’s characters to his own that he once commented, “sometimes I don't know whether Zelda (his wife) and I are real or whether we are characters in one of my novels”. In 1924, Fitzgerald was affected by Zelda’s brief affair with a young French pilot, provoking him to lock her in their house. A construction of this experience can be seen in the way Fitzgerald depicts the 1290s context. For example in ‘The Great Gatsby’, there are numerous affairs and at one point, Mr Wilson locks up his wife to pre...
The first attempt that the Japanese sought for peace was when they sent out a secret memorandum to the United States. American officials knew about Japan’s leaders seeking for a way to end the war. As early on in September 1944, Japanese peace feelers had been sent out. Although, the real effort to end the war began in mid-April of 1945 when the Japanese leaders searched for a way to modify the surrender terms. Even though American officials knew about the Japanese’s attempts to end the war, the United States either way
Themes of violence and carelessness are found throughout the text of The Great Gatsby. A violent act is portrayed in every chapter of the novel but one; often, the episodes are the products of passion, but they are also frequently due to carelessness. Myrtle Wilson’s tragic death perfectly embodies the sort of negligence, passion, and power that hangs about calamity throughout the novel. The driver, Daisy, appears suddenly, kills Myrtle, and leaves suddenly, without taking responsibility for damage done. "The ‘death car,’ as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment and then disappeared around the next bend" (Fitzgerald 144). The accident that killed Myrtle Wilson was a senseless and reckless act- the result of frayed nerves and a distracted mind. Daisy did not watch out- nor did she stop, investigate, or try to explain herself. The fact that her confession could have saved Gatsby’s life is infuriating and typical of the character. This idea of carelessness seems common to women within the novel; Jordan Baker is another classic example of violence by negligence. She is breezy, carefree, and completely irresponsible, a striking impression made crystal clear in every situation, most notably when discussing her driving. When Nick scolds that she is a rotten driver, and that she should be careful, her blithe excuse for her negligence is that, "Well, other people are" (Fitzgerald 63). This flippant answer is an accurate glimpse into Jordan’s nature. Jordan Baker’s reckless abandon is just one example of the careless natures that contribute to violence within the novel. This thread of irresponsibility permeates throughout the novel. Tom and Daisy themselves are, in the end, deemed to be careless and dangerous. As Nick says, "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- 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, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…" (Fitzgerald 188).
Cruelty plays a major part in developing an author’s portrayal of different characters, as well as the connection between these characters and what they represent. As a young writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald grew up in Minnesota, and in many ways his life is paralleled by the background of Nick Carraway, the narrator and a character in his book The Great Gatsby. In this novel, Fitzgerald uses many strategies to develop each character - among these is the cruelty of one character towards another. The most significant act of cruelty in the book is Daisy Buchanan’s role in Myrtle’s death, and her actions following this death. By connecting her to the high class, the author articulates his outlook and attitude towards the ideologies and values of the
Scott Fitzgerald has created a depiction of irony that intensifies Gatsby’s character and is used as a basis of contradiction between how Gatsby appears to be and how he truly
In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby, a novel set in The Roaring Twenties, portraying a flamboyant and immortal society of the ‘20s where the economy booms, and prohibition leads to organized crimes. Readers follow the journey about a young man named Jay Gatsby, an extravagant mysterious neighbor of the narrator, Nick Carraway. As the novel evolves, Nick narrates his discoveries of Gatsby’s past and his love for Daisy, Nick’s married cousin to readers. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald develops the theme of the conflict which results from keeping secrets instead of telling the truth using the three characters – Tom Buchanan, Nick Carraway, and Jay Gatsby (James Gats).
...atsby’s shady background, she runs back into her equally shallow husband’s arms. Daisy is careless with people’s lives because she let Gatsby take the blame for her unintentional manslaughter of Myrtle Wilson. Her inconsiderate actions eventually lead to Gatsby’s death, which she shows no remorse for.
...Daisy ends up running over Myrtle, Gatsby feels obliged to take the blame to protect Daisy. To preserve the American Dream, to preserve what he fought for. He is eventually killed for this action by George, Myrtle’s husband.
E. Thompson, A. Bona (2004), “Audi's Three Steps to a Winning CRM Strategy”, Gartner Research.
Everyone has been bullied or encountered someone being bullied at some point of their life. Whether it would be physically or verbally both can be exceedingly traumatizing and can have a long-term psychological influence on children’s development. Majority people may define bullying in a more physical term; nevertheless that’s not always the case. The act of bullying can occur in several ways and in reality affect the individual in the same way. Bullying is generally defined as repeated, negative, and harmful actions focused at target throughout a course of time, exhibiting a sense of power difference between the bully and the victim (Olweus, 1993; Limber & Mihalic, 1999 as cited from Douglas J. Boyle, 2005). A survey was conducted in the United States estimating that over six million children, about 30% in grade six through ten have experienced frequent bullying in a school environment (Nansel, 2001 as cited from Douglas J. Boyle, 2005). Many people might debate that bullying is something that every child goes through and is simply a part of growing up, although there are several damaging consequences that happens to the child’s brain. Bullying causes the child to feel upset, isolated, frightened, anxious, and depressed. They feel like they reason they are being picked on is because there is something wrong with them and may even lose their confidence feel unsafe going to school (Frenette, 2013 as cited from Douglas J. Boyle, 2005) Anthropologically, sociologically, or psychologically, bullying can be analyzed through different perspectives and several questions can be asked based on the topic:
Bullying is something that is not something new and is actually something that society continues to face. Over the years, bullying has been looked at as being so ordinary in schools that it is continuously overlooked as an emanate threat to students and has been lowered to a belief that bullying is a part of the developmental stage that most young children will experience then overcome (Allebeck, 2005, p. 129). Not everyone gets over the extreme hurt that can come as an effect from bullying, for both the bully and the victim. Because of this, we now see bullying affecting places such as the workplace, social events and even the home. The issue of bullying is not only experienced in schools, but the school environment is one of the best places