The Great Gatsby Comparison Essay

Socialite parties are extravagant, as they are often full of famous people, dancing, drinking, and a lack of worries. This is why the attendees of Jay Gatsby’s parties always had fun, because they could live larger than life without the fear of consequence. This theme is greatly explored in the movie adaptation of The Great Gatsby. But this was not the intended theme in the novel The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Due to the different capabilities of film and literature, the themes of the novel and movie versions of The Great Gatsby differ.

The American Dream, this is the idea that through hard work it is possible to achieve one’s goal, whether it is wealth, getting a girl, or buying a fancy house; for Gatsby it was all of

these. Gatsby was born poor, but he believed in the American Dream and worked hard to attain it, which he almost did. Gatsby became wealthy and bought a huge mansion, but the one thing he was missing was the girl, Daisy, who so narrowly eluded his grasp. At the end of the novel, Gatsby died knowing he did not achieve his American Dream, as he did not get the girl. If the Great Gatsby could not achieve the American Dream, then how could anybody; with Gatsby’s death, came the death of the American Dream. The movie has a different message though. When Gatsby is shot, he had just heard the ring of a telephone, and believing it was Daisy, he believed he had gotten the girl; he still achieved the American Dream. This slight difference completely changes the theme of the movie, and rather than the death of the American Dream, like the novel, it is now more about the carelessness of the rich.
This new theme, the carelessness of the rich, is emphasized through various extravagant lifestyles. People drink, dance, and live without a care in the world, living believing that “a little party never hurt nobody”. What they are oblivious to is that their partying does hurt people; it hurts the poor who are left to clean up their mess. After the parties, it is the servants who must clean up the mess, and it is the poor who must live in the valley of ashes, where all the decorations and objects that the rich entertain themselves are made. Gatsby is the only one of wealth who is hurt by this lifestyle, but everyone else is able to continue their lives as normal after the death of Gatsby.
A device that the movie uses to strengthen this theme is music.

Each song in the movie has lyrics that help to further add to the overall theme. An example of this is the song “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)” by Fergie, Q-Tip, and GoonRock. This song greatly shows the carelessness of the rich, and how they believe they can just party and live without consequences. Another example is “100$ Bills” by Jay-Z, stating “Decade of decadence, ill reverence, irreverence.” This line states how the rich had little respect for American values, instead caring about wealth and doing anything to achieve it. A final example of this is “No Church in the Wild” by Kanye West, Frank Ocean, and Jay-Z which states “Human beings in a mob. What’s a mob to a king? What’s a king to a god...Will he make it out alive?” In the context of the movie, the mob is the poor, the king is the wealthy, and the god is Gatsby. The wealthy do not care about the poor. Through their parties, they live their lives without ever thinking about what happens. Gatsby does not care about the rich; he throws his parties not for their attention, but for Daisy’s. Finally it foreshadows the death of Gatsby, asking if he will make it to his American Dream alive, or if he will just fall short. Combined, these lyrics depict the carelessness of the rich, and how they live having actions without consequences and a lack of moral

values.
The roaring twenties was a period of excess and economic prosperity, and this is seen in both the novel and movie versions of The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald used this time of prosperity to write about the death of the American Dream, because he felt that at the time it was no longer attainable. But in the making of the movie, this theme got lost and replaced with another; the carelessness of the rich. The director changed this for a purpose, possibly to provide a critique of this problem, in hopes of making a change. Through the modernization of Gatsby and the use of cinematic techniques, the director was able to tell the same story, but leave the audience with a different message.