Born September 24, 1896, F Scott Fitzgerald was raised in a poor family, getting his ambition from his mother who fostered societal expectations within her son. Educated at Princeton with the money of a wealthy, elderly aunt, Fitzgerald could go through and participate in the training ground for young upper-class Americans at the time. It was there that Fitzgerald started to develop his fascination with the rich, which would fuel his future endeavors. However, it was here that his self-consciousness started to grow, surrounded by the wealthiest of the elite, jealousy started to grow within Fitzgerald, and the expectations of wealth placed upon him from not only Princeton but the very Jazz Age itself started to weigh him down. This very nature …show more content…
The continued use of polysyndeton back to back shoots an element of style shotgun at the audience, ensuring that if by chance the first usage fails to disrupt the reader, the second and third guarantee the reader will become overwhelmed or seep further into the feeling of being out of their element. The feeling of restlessness grows alongside the expression of wealth. In summary, Fitzgerald uses polysyndeton to overwhelm the reader and paint a restless tone and mood due to the Jazz Age's need to express their wealth. Besides filling sentences with polysyndeton, F. Scott Fitzgerald loves to bury evocative diction within sentences to elicit various tones and moods throughout The Great Gatsby. While diction takes various forms, when Fitzgerald is trying to fill the mood with envy and resentment he uses informal diction unbecoming of his wealthy characters. One example of this can be seen through Tom’s attempt to call Daisy to Gatsby’s car, “come on …show more content…
Along with polysyndeton, Fitzgerald uses figurative language to create a restless image of the Jazz Age and its need to express wealth. Similes and metaphors are the tools of the trade that Fitzgerald uses to create this image in the reader’s mind. One example of Fitzgerald using a simile in this way comes from Nick’s sentiment: The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into that room eludes me, though I have a sharp physical memory that, in the course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around my legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back. Fitzgerald’s meaning at this moment is to use this simile to call to the reader’s mind a mood filled with Nick’s feeling of discomfort, restlessness, and feeling of being overwhelmed due to being in the presence of Tom and Gatsby’s argument. These serve as parallels to the figureheads of the Jazz Age and Nick. But an average man caught in the middle of these two elites butting heads; head-butting birthed from these men’s need to express themselves and their
F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in a nice neighborhood, but growing up he wasn’t privileged. He was raised in the upper-crest Summit Ave. neighborhood
F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, captures a fine description of how life was in America during the Jazz Age. The Jazz Age signaled an end to traditional American values and a movement towards new ones. The purpose of The Great Gatsby was to show how traditional American values were abandoned and how the pursuit and desire for wealth could lead to the downfall of one’s dreams and goals in life. Happiness obtained from money is only an illusion, money has the power to corrupt and obscure one’s mind and lead one down the path of failure and misery. By using symbolism, imagery, and character personalities and traits, F. Scott Fitzgerald manipulates language to fulfill the purpose of The Great Gatsby.
Considering that many authors use figurative language techniques in their writing to help convey a specific message; there is no wonder why Fitzgerald and Twain both use the tools for the purpose of criticising people in more of a low key fashion. Fitzgerald uses many different figurative language devices in The Great Gatsby, like similes. Because it is set in the roaring 20s, partying is a big element to the storyline. When Gatsby throws extravagant parties, Nick thinks to himself “...men and women came and went like moths among the whispering and the champagne and the stars.” (Fitzgerald 44). Nick refers to the social statuses of the young people in the 1920s. It proves that they really just want to party, get wasted, and that they absolutely
The evolving character of an interactive narrator can help discern key themes in a novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald's social examination of life in America's Jazz Age relies heavily on Nick Carraway, the narrator, acting as a 'Trojan horse' for Fitzgerald to smuggle his own ideologies into The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald endorses realist class relations as power relations over the romantic and archaic 'Jeffersonian dream of simple agrarian value'. He also favours the view that the American upper class's 'carpe diem' approach to life placed capitalist society in a moral downwards spiral, instead of conforming to mainstream ideas of the Age such as 'money can buy happiness'.
...onsequently results from the relentless quest of the so desired American Dream. In the end, wealth and status take the place of genuine and authentic connections with people, diminishing the likelihood of true pleasure and self-fulfillment. As a result, Dexter is forced to accept that money does not buy happiness, regardless of his vigorous efforts and hard work in obtaining such success. Similar to Dexter Green, Fitzgerald is remembered as a self-made man, eager to rise above his hereditary placement in life. Reflective of his personal life, Fitzgerald's conflicted characters are a true representation of modernist's shallow nature, making his work definitive of the social history of the Jazz Age.
Throughout his life, F. Scott Fitzgerald, a prestigious writer of the Jazz age, experienced many battles during his unsatisfactory life. Many of his disturbed endeavors lead to his creation of many marvelous novels including his exquisite novel The Great Gatsby. From beginning to end, Fitzgerald’s notable use of paradox and metaphorical language creates phenomenal and modernistic symbols. Whether distinguishing relationships between characters and morality, Fitzgerald continuously uses symbols to express the adequate meaning of what is behind the true theme of The Great Gatsby-the power of hope cannot determine a dream.
In Nick’s unavailing attempts to become disengaged in the prattle of his intoxicated company, Fitzgerald uses imagery of the internal struggle of Nick ultimately to manifest the underlying endeavor that the American society was dealing with. Fitzgerald describes Nick’s failure to become unattached from the group as a result of ropes, tying him down to his chair. In reality, Nick himself is the only ropes that are holding him down to the group. Unlike the rest of the town, Nick has the ability to look through the glamour of the aristocracy and understand that although these people had almost all the luxuries of life, they were rather naïve and impoverished in the riches of the ideals and values that should have existed in a town filled with such “sophisticated” people. Yet, Nick longs for acceptance from the aristocratic and wealthy groups of society even though he realizes that the wealthy were only wasting away in their greed and self-absorption. Rather than elude this tainted society, Nick attempts to satisfy and gain popularity from those in it. Nick describes himself as a bystander in the streets lurking in darkness casually watching those above him while also being in the group of these people that was being curiously watched by the bystander below. Fitzgerald portrays this struggle of Nick in a high-class society to express his own views and opinions of the society he lived in. While Fitzgerald lived in the 1920’s, a time of an American dream of discovery and the pursuit of happiness, he destroys the concept of the American dream in the end of the novel. Rather than boost the moral of the American dream, Fitzgerald seems to mock this concept of individualism entering the Jazz Age.
...m that was based more on wealth and possessions and less on hard work and achievement. The fact that he later rebelled against the material 1920s culture shows that he was in fact cautioning against this lifestyle rather than encouraging it.” This more than anything proves Fitzgerald is making a commentary on the corruption of the American Dream rather than simply the tale of wealthy lovers.
In the novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses tone, diction, syntax and imagery to voice Nick's perception of the world around him. In this passage his use of language is used repetitively to convey Jordan Baker, Daisy and Tom Buchanan's lives. On the outside it may look like they all are living a perfect and ideal life, however Fitzgerald's illuminating use of language highlights how far from perfect their lives truly are.
Through Fitzgerald's use of symbolism, expectations, and relationships, he explores the American dream, and how it is an illusion that corrupts and destroys lives. Through Fitzgerald’s symbolic description of Gatsby, he explores the extent of the American Dream’s deceptive nature that slowly destroys a person and his/her morals. During the Roaring 20s it was very common for people to project illusions to mask who they truly were; to fit in, it was almost essential to have one to survive in the highly materialistic and deceitful society. Nick is introduced as the objective narrator of the novel.... ...
The materialism of the upper-class is particularly shown through Daisy and Gatsby. Fitzgerald uses the...
Fitzgerald’s use of connotative diction highlights important difference in how Nick views Tom and Gatsby. Tom is described as “enormous” and “cruel” whereas Gatsby is described as “an elegant young roughneck”delineating clear contrasts in their character. Tom is described as enormous to give the impression that he is intimidating and large. Gatsby, on the other hand is described as “young” implying that gatsby is inexperienced and small. Old money has more power than new money, this is portrayed by the connotative diction used to describe tom and Gatsby.
...at characters create for themselves and the means by which they solve them serve as a way for Fitzgerald to exemplify the decade’s signature qualities while simultaneously criticizing them. Although it was a time of improvements in the way of life for all Americans, along with that came a certain moral decadence. In a new sense of comfort and thoughtlessness, a contempt for law and order, and a desire for wealth, the Jazz Age marked a crucial turning point in America, captured precisely by Fitzgerald.
...al 1922. F. Scott Fitzgerald was not biased for or against the rich in writing this book, he was simply trying to chronicle the lives and times of the early part of the 20’s. His lack of a bias is what makes his book such an accurate description of the era that he wrote about. This book should be considered “required reading” because it introduces the reader to what life was like for the rich at that time, as well as the general mood that pervaded the decade. It speaks of concepts such as bootlegging, gambling, and “new money”, ideas that previously were not commonly written of. F. Scott Fitzgerald can be considered an authority on the twenties because he lived in the twenties with the type of people that were described in his book.
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, one of the many thinkers involved in the Enlightenment period, who was against republicanism and disliked democracy also including his opposition toward the monarchy in his time; Louis XIV. He was a well-known French political and social philosopher, jurist, writer and satirist who contributed towards the American constitution. Charles de Secondat was born on the 18th of January 1689 at Chateau La Brede near Bordeaux in France and he died on the tenth of February 1755. He came from a descent of noble roots through his father, Jacques de Secondat, who was a soldier with a long line of noble ancestry and his mother Marie Francoise, who was an heiress that brought the Barony of La Brede to The Secondat family, which was a wine-producing property that was very valuable. Although Charles was of a noble standing, he was sent into the village to be educated and live among peasants in the village, this experience left a big impact in who he came to be.