The Great Gatsby Essay Research Paper Brian

The Great Gatsby Essay, Research Paper

Brian Olson OLSON 1

Professor John Hughes

ENC 1102

December 3, 1996

Life, like The great Gatsby

Imagine that you live in the nineteen twenties, and that you are a very wealthy man

that lives by himself in a manchine, on a lake and who throws parties every weekend. This

is just the beginning of how to explain the way Jay Gatsby lived his life. This novel, by F.

Scott, Fitzgerald is one that is very deep in thought. Fitzgerald releases little clues along

the way of the novel that will be crusual to understand the ending. For instance, he

makes the blue coupe a very important clue, as well as the Dr. T. J. Eckleburg eyes on the

billboard that Mr. Wilson (the gas station attendant ) refers to as the eyes of god. There

are also other little things that relate to the reason of gatsby.s death. The main

character.s of this novel each have their part to do with the ending, Nick Caraway is

probably the main character of this novel, as he comes down from New Jersey to new

York to visit his cousin Daisy, who is married to Tom Buchannan. These are some of the

incidents that are included in the novel as you will read further I will relate some issues of

the novel, as well as other critics have included their views on The Great Gatsby.

F. Scott, Fitsgerald was an American short story writer and novelist famous for

his depictions of the Jazz Age(the 1920.s), his most brilliant novel work being The Great

Gatsby(1925). He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on sept. 24, 1896 and died in

Hollywood, California on December 21, 1940. His private life, with his wife, Zelda, in

both America and France, became almost as celebrated as his novels. Fitsgerald was the

only son of an aristocrat father, who was the author of the star spangle banner. Fitzgerald

spent most of time with his wife, latter in their relationship they moved to france where he

began to write his most brilliant novel, The Great Gatsby. All of his divided nature is in

this novel, the native midwestener afir with the possibilities of every Americans dream in

OLSON 2

it.s hero, Jay Gatsby, and the compassionate princeton gentlemen in it.s narrator, Nick

Carraway. The Great Gatsby is the most profoundly American novel of it.s time

(Houghton). Fitzgerald had an intensely romantic imagination, what he once called .a

heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,. and he rushed into experience determined to

realize those promises. Latter on in Fitzgeralds life, he started to drink very heavily and

became very unhappy. In 1930 his wife had a mental breakdown and in 1932 another,

from which she never recovered. With it.s failure and his despair over Zelda, Fitzgerald

was close to becoming an incurable alcoholic. He surpassed becoming an alcoholic

though, and moved out west to become a Hollywood screenwriter were he met his new

wife Sheilah Graham, but he never forgot about Zelda and his daughter Scotti.

(Johnson, 384).

The Great Gatsby is an excellent review on how fitzgerald preceived his life to be,

in the same sense that he also was very wealthy. Gatsby, in this novel is the mistiries

wealthy man that lives in the big house across the lake from Tom and Daisy Buchanann.

There would always be some type of party going on at his house, but for some reason he

never attended to them, he would always watch from his window. Nick Caraway is

Daisy.s cousin who comes to visit, Nick needs a place to stay, so he finds an ad for a

guest cottage that Mr. Jay Gatsby owns. After Nick has moved in Jay and Nick become

pretty close friends. Jordan has always wondered who The Great Gatsby was, so she

uses Nick to find out more about him. As the story goes on, there are some odd things

that Fitsgerald relates to the story as important things. These important things make you

really think about what it means to the story. The Automobile in The Great Gatsby is a

very big topic for the conclution of the story. What we have in The Great Gatsby is a

creative manipulation of the automobile as symbol and image to accomplish a variety of

ends (O.Meara, 74). O.Meara goes on to say that when Fitzgerald accentuates

mechanism and minimizes aesthetics, he depersonalizes vehicles and underscores the

OLSON 3

behavior of their drivers. The existing criticism on automobiles in The Great Gatsby

usually centers on one or the other of these two functions.(O.Meara, 75). The result of

the car is that it ends up killing Myrtle. Kenneth and Irving Saposnik discuss the

automobile imagery from a technological standpoint. Knodt asserts that all of the novel

symbol.s of technology – automobiles, trains, and telephones are connected with

destruction and evil (Saposnik, 131). I believe in this theory, that vehicles are a result evil

in almost every movie. In this case the evil is the Blue Coupe sedan that ends up killing

Myrtle. The other thing that sticks out to me is the billboard that has the two eyes on it

<

Внимание, отключите Adblock

Вы посетили наш сайт со включенным блокировщиком рекламы!
Ссылка для скачивания станет доступной сразу после отключения Adblock!

Скачать