The Great Gatsby And The Critique Of Modernism

In the text, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses a wide range of literary techniques to convey a lack of spirituality, and immorality. Techniques such as characterisation, symbolism, and metaphors help to cement the ideas Fitzgerald explores. However, there are some features to this world that redeem it. Which are displayed through expert execution of techniques like characterisation, contrast, and repetition. The world of The Great Gatsby is home to many morally corrupt and spiritually empty characters however, the world itself is not a spiritual and moral wasteland.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, the icon of beautiful lyricism, uses many intriguing patterns within his novel, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald, in his writing of the 1920s, introduces the reader to the world after the Great War; a world of overindulged wealth, unrealistic dreams, and undeniable poverty. Where there is wealth it is not used in an honorable way; where dreams may form, they are impossible to accomplish due to their exorbitant standards; and where dust accumulates, there poverty gathers as well. Throughout his novel, Fitzgerald uses the pattern of dust and ashes to display his essential themes of immorality, poverty, and death.

In life, what is perceived tends to show misconception in how thoughts play out. One prime character in the novel is, Jay Gatsby, he was not capable to decide between the love he felt for Daisy and the illusion that he could recapture her love by inventing a false past. Jay believed he could repeat the past. In the novel, Jay Gatsby refuses to establish the differences in the reality of his life and his illusions for his love for Daisy. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American classic: “The Great Gatsby,” displays how deception effects when one falls in love and when one realizes reality.

Imagination, it cures desires and provides satisfaction to some people who can not have everything they want. Although providing a temporary positive effect, it also can distort the reality. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby spends five years watching Daisy from across the lake, creating an imaginary future for them in his head. Gatsby ultimately dooms their relationship by creating this abstract world and standards that they simply can not meet. The world in which Gatsby believed in, required the past to be repeated, something in which Daisy had moved far away from.

She’s consistently on his mind and he focuses on every aspect of her life that she desired to win her over again just like in the past. Gatsby longed for Daisy for many years that it consumed everything about his lifestyle. He feels that he must live up to the American Dream to achieve his dream of rekindling his relationship with Daisy. Gatsby says, “’Can't repeat the past?’” he cried incredulously.

Scott Fitzgerald, T.S Eliot , Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound. They used to talk and discuss ideas with each other. They were concerned about the social changes which they were undergoing. They had a modernist approach in their writings and only wrote from what they have gone through. The novel The Great Gatsby is a modernist work by Fitzgerald.

Scott Fitzgerald shows many points in Gatsby’s actions and words that the reader can decide how he really felt for Daisy. It’s up to the reader’s imagination to see what mindset Gatsby has and whether his love for Daisy was either obsession, affection, or objectification. The Great Gatsby is a perfect example of how love and lust can drive a man crazy, whether it’s Tom, Gatsby, or Wilson. When Nick ends with, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (189). Showed that no matter how hard Gatsby fought for Daisy’s heart and his American Dream, he was pushed back and had to start over, getting closer and closer, but he never got to fulfill his dream, and that’s the way life goes for many

[Gatsby] cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”(110) As Gatsby truly believed that he was no longer James Gatz, he believed that Daisy still loved him and was the same from five years ago. But the truth of the matter is that Daisy had once truly loved him and she isn't the same as she was the years before, and there is nothing Gatsby can do to repeat the past and end up with the happy ending he dreamed of where “after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house—just as if it were five years ago.”

Gatsby falls in love with Daisy the first minute he meets her and never stops loving her even though she has obviously moved on. Gatsby does everything he can to be closer to her like buying “that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay” (78). Gatsby knows that if he can get the girl of his dreams he will not feel lonely anymore. " He talked a lot about the past… he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was” (87).

In the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby takes his chances at the American dream in the twentieth century and ends up falling drastically short. Gatsby throws extravagant parties and tries to live a lavish lifestyle hoping to keep up and eventually fall in love with a rich girl named Daisy. Daisy and Gatsby have everything they want in each other pre-war, but once Gatsby comes home his expectations of Daisy fall short. Gatsby spends all of his waking hours pursuing his dream to be with Daisy, however, she does not live up to his standard he had of her before. Both Gatsby and Daisy have changed from when they felt a connection before, and maintaining that connection may not be meant to be.

Finally, a bit later into the book, we get more on Gatsby’s weird way of thought. Through the quote, “After she had obliterated four years with that sentence they could decide-”, we see Gatsby not really having a grip on reality. He thinks he hasn’t aged (or changed with age) and nothing has happened between those four years that would be significant enough to change Daisy. One month can change someone, so thinking Daisy would be the same person and in love with him is just something a child would think. He goes on to further confirm his childish thought process by saying, almost like a kid who hasn’t gotten their way, “‘Can’t repeat the past?’

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway are among the most prominent exponents of literature of the twentieth century. Forming part of the Lost Generation, these authors not only develop similar themes throughout their works, but heavily influenced each other. The Great Gatsby being Fitzgerald’s magnum opus, serves as a prime illustration of the staples of contemporary literature. In the novel The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald, the author depicts himself through a character, Nick Carraway, conforming to other self depiction common in the Lost Generation, such as Hemingway in the Nick Adams stories. Nick Carraway and Nick Adams represent Fitzgerald and Hemingway, both serving as apertures into Fitzgerald’s and Hemingway’s view of the world.

Gatsby had known Daisy for a long period of time. Gatsby realized when he first met Daisy that she was the love of his life. Though they were separated for a lengthy interim, Gatsby had devoted his entire life to gaining the love of Daisy. In fact, his mind was "full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity” (Fitzgerald 88). Gatsby's only goal in life was to achieve Daisy's love; therefore, he was filled with excitement when his chance came to prove his love to Daisy.

This lead to him thinking everything was perfect and heading off to war, leaving Daisy behind. When he returned, he still had the same dream that he had once accomplished, but it had become unrealistic because Daisy was married. Gatsby’s dream began to cloud his reality and he didn’t give up on it. Despite it being unreachable, Gatsby’s dream continued to be very important to him, as he felt “that if he had searched harder, he might have found her” (152-153). He didn’t know how to win Daisy over, but that didn’t stop him from trying and searching.

Once Daisy begins to see Gatsby on a regular basis, Gatsby begins to encourage Daisy to leave Tom and create a life with him. In the novel, Nick observes, “He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: "I never loved you." After she had obliterated four years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken. One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house—just as if it were five years ago.” Gatsby believes he can provide Daisy with a lavish and happy life that her unfaithful husband could never give