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Use of Symbolism
Use of Symbolism
The use of symbolism in the novel
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Close Reading Analysis Why does Fitzgerald contrast “hard rock” with “wet marshes”? What does he mean? Fitzgerald contrast “hard rock” with “wet marshes” FItzgerald contrast “hard rock” with “wet marshes” because to show how everyone has their own beliefs and their own mindset. To emphasize that he doesn’t care even though some people has there head & life together. In the third sentence, note the metaphor and explain Fitzgerald’s choice of this particular metaphor. Fitzgerald’s choice of his particular metaphor because he wants the world to be like military; “in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever.” Explain the two conflicting attitudes the narrator has toward Gatsby. What is the effect of this paradox? The two conflicting attitudes the narrator has toward Gatsby is his wealth and his capability to get anything he wants which he hates but still love him. The effect of this paradox is that he hates him but also love him. …show more content…
Identify the three dependent clauses. What is the effect of these three clauses, one following the other? Gatsby turned out all right at the end what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short “winded elations of men” The effect of these three clauses are that it explains Gatsby; the first one represent failure, foul dreams, and his ambitions. Basically this paragraph contains two pairs of contrasting ideas. Identify them. What do they have in common? The narrator's likes Gatsby but doesn’t like the fact that he is very wealthy and capable of owning anything. Nick respects Gatsby while others have hatred towards him Both of the ideas shows how Nick looks up to Gatsby while others don’t like him and think he’s awful. Diction Colors Commentary
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby provides the reader with a unique outlook on the life of the newly rich. Gatsby is an enigma and a subject of great curiosity, furthermore, he is content with a lot in life until he strives too hard. His obsession with wealth, his lonely life and his delusion allow the reader to sympathize with him. Initially, Gatsby stirs up sympathetic feelings because of his obsession with wealth.
Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald uses many scenes to display imagery. “I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter faint and incessant from his garden and the cars going up and down his drive.” This quote displays how the narrator is still visualizing these images when he is not present at his house. The words “gleaming” and “dazzling” portray the parties as bright and remarkable. From the extract, the reader learns that the narrator is avoiding his neighbor’s house. “… when I left—the grass on his lawn had grown as long as mine.”
“Money can’t buy happiness” is a saying that is often used to make one understand that there is more to life than wealth and money. Jay Gatsby was a man of many qualities some of which are good and bad. Throughout the book of “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, we learn of his past and discover the true qualities of Jay Gatsby. Starting from the bottom, with little money, we learn of why Gatsby struggled so hard all his life to become wealthy and what his true goal in life was. When reading this story, the true reasons behind Gatsby’s illegal actions reveal themselves and readers can learn a great life lesson from this story and the actions the characters take. Readers can see through Gatsby’s contradictions of actions and thoughts that illustrate the theme of the story, along with his static characteristics, that all humans are complex beings and that humans cannot be defined as good or bad.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby many characters are not as they seem. The one character that intrigues me the most is James Gatsby. In the story Gatsby is always thought of as rich, confident, and very popular. However, when I paint a picture of him in my mind I see someone very different. In fact, I see the opposite of what everyone portrays him to be. I see someone who has very little confidence and who tries to fit in the best he can. There are several scenes in which this observation is very obvious to me. It is clear that Gatsby is not the man that everyone claims he is.
Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.
One of the traits of Gatsby that makes him truly great is his remarkable capacity for hope. He has faith that what he desires will come to him if he works hard enough. He does not comprehend the cruelty and danger that is the rest of the world. Gatsby, while a man of questionable morals, is as wide-eyed and innocent as a small child in his views of the world. These ideals are evident in Nick’s narration and in the words spoken by the other characters, including Gatsby himself.
Fitzgerald uses setting to criticise society’s loss of morality and the growth of consumerism after the Great War. The rise of the stock market in the 1920s enabled business to prosper in America. However, although the owners of industry found themselves better off wages didn’t rise equally, causing the gap between the rich and poor to grow markedly. Parkinson argues that the settings “represent [these] alternative worlds of success and failure in a modern capitalist society”. The valley of ashes symbolises this failure and moral decay, acting as a foil to the affluent “world of success”, East Egg, and highlighting that the lower classes must suffer to support its existence. This setting is introduced in Chapter 2 and is described as where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens”. The personification of the environment creates the sense that these failures are rooted in the land, suggesting that poverty is an inescapable part of American society. This is emphasised through the use of tripling which creates a sense of endlessness. By describing the men who live there as “crumbling through the pow...
Certain authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, wanted to reflect the horrors that the world had experienced not a decade ago. In 1914, one of the most destructive and pointless wars in history plagued the world: World War I. This war destroyed a whole generation of young men, something one would refer to as the “Lost Generation”. Modernism was a time that allowed the barbarity of the war to simmer down and eventually, disappear altogether. One such author that thrived in this period was F. Scott Fitzgerald, a young poet and author who considered himself the best of his time. One could say that this self-absorption was what fueled his drive to be the most famous modernist the world had seen. As The New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean mentions in her literary summary of Fitzgerald’s works, “I didn’t know till fifteen that there was anyone in the world except me, and it cost me plenty” (Orlean xi). One of the key factors that influenced and shaped Fitzgerald’s writing was World War I, with one of his most famous novels, This Side Of Paradise, being published directly after the war in 1920. Yet his most famous writing was the book, The Great Gatsby, a novel about striving to achieve the American dream, except finding out when succeeding that this dream was not a desire at all. Fitzgerald himself lived a life full of partying and traveling the world. According to the Norton Anthology of American Literature, “In the 1920’s and 1930’s F. Scott Fitzgerald was equally equally famous as a writer and as a celebrity author whose lifestyle seemed to symbolize the two decades; in the 1920’s he stood for all-night partying, drinking, and the pursuit of pleasure while in the 1930’s he stood for the gloomy aftermath of excess” (Baym 2124). A fur...
...Fitzgerald imitated in many of his novels. Incorporated in the text was also a lot of Fitzgerald’s own life and the problems he faced. “Alcoholism. Mental illness, and marital issues factor into nearly everyone of his novels, and they aggressively contrast with his glamorous public image”-Qwiklit Many people realized Fitzgerald’s private life came out through his novels not the one the public saw of him.
The novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, provides the reader with a character that possesses qualities both challenging to understand and difficult to endorse. These characteristics show themselves through the character’s desire and passion to pursue his dream. Jay Gatsby, an elusive, persuasive, and sometimes deceptive man displays such contrast in his moral foundation that leaves the reader questioning his true motives at nearly every action. There is an argument to be made that Gatsby is both great and not so great, making him the epitome of moral ambiguity. For example, Nick, another major character, who happens to be the narrator of the story, first describes Gatsby in the opening chapter of the novel as someone who he both
Fitzgerald's book at first overwhelms the reader with poetic descriptions of human feelings, of landscapes, buildings and colors. Everything seems to have a symbolic meaning, but it seems to be so strong that no one really tries to look what's happening behind those beautiful words. If you dig deeper you will discover that hidden beneath those near-lyrics are blatancies, at best.
As a romantic, Jay Gatsby does not understand how money actually works in American life. He believes that if he is rich, then Daisy can be his. This is displayed most powerfully and poignantly in the scene where Gatsby shows Daisy and ...
...his death that Fitzgerald "was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a generation ... He might have interpreted them and even guided them, as in their middle years they saw a different and nobler freedom threatened with destruction.".
The Great Gatsby shows the reader that the 1920’s was a vibrant time, almost too colorful to be real. In chapter one, Fitzgerald shows this when he reveals Tom and Daisy’s house for the first time. Fitzgerald characterizes the scene when he writes “The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does the sea”(8). Within the description, F. Fitzgerald employs imagery to help the reader conceptualize his ultimate goal of the bright and extremely “alive” feeling within the room. He proposed that the shadow of the curtains moves as if it was the sea, and that the grass was so green that it felt as if it was in the room rather than outside. Just as The Great Gatsby shows that the 1920’s were a vibrant time, it also shows that they were surreal in nature.
Fitzgerald uses the life and death of Gatsby to illustrate that the new American dream is unobtainable and that no matter how far a person gets in life the dream of satisfaction through materialism is impossible. Daisy and Tom’s marriage was used to demonstrate that even those who are thought to have reached the American dream really still have no true happiness as they each had to search for it in others. These concepts brought forth by Fitzgerald are not to totally bash the human craving for happiness, but to inform them that the new ideas presented by society that they think will bring them happiness are lies. Thus those who go in search of happiness through materialism will always come up empty handed.