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Great gatsby character essay
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The Fall of Christ - Culminating
Since the first storytellers, religion has played an important part in developing both character and plot. From Ancient Greece to Egypt to Judaism to Christianity, the basic stories of human origins have stood the test of time. Classic books such as The Great Gatsby, The Stranger, and Lord of the Flies are full of religious parallels and imagery. Conceptually, main characters of each work--Gatsby, The Stranger’s Meursault, and Lord of the Flies’ schoolboys attempt to be Christ-like figures, but whose demise is ironically brought about by their own sins.
Central characters in each novel display Christ-like characteristics. In The Great Gatsby, title character Jay Gatsby shares many similarities with Christ.
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Like Christ, Meursault is silent in the face of his accusers during his trial. "The court scene evokes many aspects of the last judgment of Christ as Meursault can find nothing to say to defend himself" (Maher 279). Meursault exhibits "his identification with the sacrificial offering" (Ohayon 201) when he says (like Jesus's "It is finished"), "For everything to be consummated… I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate" (Camus 123). Like Gatsby, he lived hedonistically but met a very Christ-like end. In contrast, Lord of the Flies includes a more traditional Christ-like character in Simon, who “embodies a kind of innate, spiritual human goodness that is deeply connected with nature and, in its own way, as primal as Jack’s evil” (CCSE). His confrontation with the Lord of the Flies is often compared to Jesus' with the devil during his 40 day exile. First, it is worth noting that Beelzebub--the devil's name in the Bible--literally means "Lord of the Flies" (Catholic Encyclopedia). The pig-head harasses Simon, claiming he is, "just an ignorant, silly little boy," and that, "there isn't anyone to help [him]. Only [the Lord of the Flies himself]" (Golding 128). Just as Jesus had rejected Satan (Matthew 4:1-11), Simon also rejects …show more content…
The “green light” (Fitzgerald 180) Gatsby sees from his house can be interpreted as representing envy. The term “green-eyed monster” refers to the sin of envy, as does "green with envy" (Bourn Creative), which makes sense given Gatsby’s major motivation is envy. While he is still James Gatz, his jealousy of the opulent lifestyles of the rich drives him to succeed. He is jealous of Tom for marrying Daisy, and spends his whole life throwing extravagant parties in hopes that Daisy will "walk through the door" (Fitzgerald 63). In pursuing a married woman, Gatsby is "coveting his neighbour's wife" and attempting to commit "adultery" (Exodus 20:1-17). In addition, other sinful activity definitely occurs during these parties. Chief among them is gluttony, "the excessive indulgence in food and drink" (Christianity Today). The parties are full of "hard-drinking people" (Fitzgerald 77) during the prohibition era. Sin is everywhere in the Great Gatsby, mirroring contemporary culture of the time. In the same way, the deadly sins abound in Lord of the Flies. While Jack has been out hunting, Ralph and Simon were the only two working to construct the shelters. Ralph argues the importance of finishing the shelters before anything else, including hunting. Jack rebuffs him, saying "'We need meat,'" as he "tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up” (Golding 47). Here the reader sees the sin of sloth (or
Thomas C. Foster in his work How to Read Literature Like a Professor argues that even though characters may display evil characteristics, their religious values overpower and express “themselves in connection with the [character’s] role within society” (Foster 125). Literary characters may display some of the same characteristics as Christ while accomplishing actions with “redemption, hope, or miracle” (132). Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby symbolically resembles a Christ figure—sacrificing himself to save Daisy from the law, outstretching his arms towards hope, and coming to West Egg to retrieve Daisy’s unworthy world.
Christensen, Bryce J. "The Mystery of Godliness." Major Literary Characters: Gatsby. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.
In his critical essay, “The Mystery of Ungodliness”, Bryce J. Christensen writes about the parallel that F. Scott Fitzgerald creates between Jay Gatsby and Jesus of Nazareth from the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Christensen explains that Fitzgerald once wrote a letter to his friend, John Jamieson, explaining that he was going to write the story of Jay Gatsby’s youth, but he did not because he wanted to maintain the element of mystery that goes along with the novel. Christensen parallels this to the absence of any detail about the childhood and adolescence of Jesus in the New Testament. Other parallels that Christensen describes include the description of Gatsby by Nick Carraway:
Themes of hope, success, and wealth overpower The Great Gatsby, leaving the reader with a new way to look at the roaring twenties, showing that not everything was good in this era. F. Scott Fitzgerald creates the characters in this book to live and recreate past memories and relationships. This was evident with Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship, Tom and Daisy’s struggling marriage, and Gatsby expecting so much of Daisy and wanting her to be the person she once was. The theme of this novel is to acknowledge the past, but do not recreate and live in the past because then you will not be living in the present, taking advantage of new opportunities.
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man 's needs, but not every man 's greed.” As humans, we work countless hours in order to have a greater opportunity to succeed in life to fulfill our wants. F Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, utilizes effective language and punctuation in the text in order to accomplish his purpose: Illustrate what material goods does to a society. From a rhetorical standpoint, examining logos, ethos, and pathos, this novel serves as a social commentary on how pursuing the “The American Dream” causes people in society to transform into greedy and heartless individuals.
"The Passion Of Gatsby: Evocation Of Jesus In Fitzgerald's THE GREAT GATSBY. " Explicator 68.2 (2010): 119–121. Literary Reference Center. Web.
Jay Gatsby and F. Scott Fitzgerald, two different beings, one a book character, the other a human being but both are the same person. Jay Gatsby, as evinced by the the title, is the main character in The Great Gatsby. His goals and achievements is what the novel revolves around. Gatsby is the most interesting character which is why he leaves something to think about in everything he does in the book, but what makes him amazing are the parallels between him and Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald uses Gatsby as a catalyst of his life in the novel.
show how to use that in order to “get rich”. Gatsby was in the bootlegging business and wants to
A fantasy world is a personality trait in which a person experiences a lifelong extensive and deep involvement in fantasy. This is what Scott Fitzgerald attempted to portray about people living in the 1920’s in his novel, the Great Gatsby. This book takes place in the 1920’s, shortly after WWI, a period of time where people were trying to block out the bad memories associated with war and embrace happiness. Embracing happiness meant creating fantasy worlds filled with money and materialistic items, blocking out reality and attempting to relive old memories. In the Great Gatsby, reality clouded by fantasy illustrates that people are not capable of living their lives in a rational way, because their mind has blocked out the harsh reality in which
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story of a world lost to superficiality and greed. Falsehood and deception are the currency which fuels the characters in the novel. Dwelling in this fallen world, Fitzgerald has placed a fallen god. Gatsby is bathed in descriptions that identify him as the Son of God. Fitzgerald makes a conscious effort to clothe this character with imagery and actions to make him the patron deity of this fallen world, but Gatsby is too much enveloped by his surroundings to save them and is consumed in the attempt. Despite the biblical allusions, strong images and explicit statements identifying Gatsby with Christ, the prevailing tone of the novel prevents him from being a Christ-figure.
There lies a child within every human being. No matter how small, some sense of freedom and hope tends to endure in adults, as they once experienced youth. While Tom, Daisy and Jordan exhibit how they share this feeling in the novel, this youthful instinct most evidently appears in the behaviors of Jay Gatsby and Myrtle Wilson. Because they never learn how to survive in the real, adult world, their uncontrollable attitudes catalyze their early deaths. In F. Scott Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson and Jay Gatsby represent childlike desire and the corruption of maturity in the 1920s. Their deaths signify the actuality that childhood terminates, exposing the inevitable reality of adulthood.
The character of Simon in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies has often been viewed as the Christ figure of the novel. If you were to examine the actions of both Simon and Jesus, you would find a number of incidents that parallel each other.
Book Analysis F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of "The Great Gatsby," reveals many principles about today's society and the "American dream. " One of the biggest fears in today's world is the fear of not fitting into society. People of all age groups and backgrounds share this fear. Many individuals believe that to receive somebody's affection, they must assimilate into that person's society. In the story, Jay Gatsby pursues the American dream and his passion for being happy only to come to a tragedy and total loss.
The recurring themes of society, class, and self identity can be seen throughout many different writings of the 20th century. Two of these writings include, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston. Both novels focus on the protagonist's goal of achieving equal rights in their own environment while at the same time trying to figure out who they are in the world. In the early 1900s, when “Their Eyes Were Watching God” takes place, slavery had very recently been abolished (relatively speaking) and the lasting effects of segregation take a toll on Janie, the protagonist. In the Great Gatsby, although Jay Gatsby is white, and thus does not have to deal with the factor of race, he struggles with many different aspects of American Society, mainly the class system and the American Dream. The American dream depicted by F.Scott Fitzgerald is a desire to gain wealth and prosperity. However, at the same time the book does not suggest that wealth equates to success. Even though Gatsby does have material wealth, he is not successful in gaining what he wants to be happy. Despite his material wealth, Gatsby is never united with the love of his life, Daisy. This shows that even though Gatsby has achieved the dream of wealth and prosperity, he has not achieved his final goal. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie too believes in the American Dream, and similarly to Gatsby, it is not a dream of wealth and prosperity. For her, it’s a dream of Freedom in all aspects of life. Both characters however, spend much of their time trying to conform to the rest of the world and essentially be like “everyone” else instead of trying to be distinct individuals. Societal norms of the early 1900s tak...
"The Great Gatsby" is a book full of passion. There is Gatsby 's passionate love for Daisy. There is Tom 's passion for money. When reading this book I realized that these people broke the American dream in their time. They couldn 't be happy when all they did was chase money. The Great Gatsby was full of themes, motif 's, and symbolism and the way that fitzgerald used his characters to get his point across of what it was like back them was marvelous. Gatsby just wanted the love of his life back, so he did everything he could so that he could support her. I think that out of every single character, Gatsby 's choices were the most pure. The only reason he wanted all of the money that he got was because he wanted to make the woman he loved happy,