The Great Gatsby Close Reading Analysis

Arguably the most profound effect of World War I on African Americans was the acceleration of the multi-decade mass movement of black, southern rural farm laborers northward and westward in search of higher wages in industrial jobs and better social and political opportunities. This Great Migration led to the rapid growth of black urban communities in cities like New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Los Angeles.117 While relatively small groups of southern African Americans migrated after Reconstruction to border states such as Kansas and into the Appalachians, it was not until the imposition of Jim Crow segregation and disfranchisement in the South that large numbers of blacks left their homes and families to search elsewhere for a better life. Still, in 1910, nearly 90 percent of American blacks lived in the South, four-fifths of them in rural

The American Dream. This mentality of individualism and dicovery has always been and continues to be a staple of American culture. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his novel The Great Gatsby, explores the disintegration of the American Dream in the 1920s in an era of unparalleled prosperity and material excess through characters, such as Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson, and Daisy Buchanan, who are all seeking the happiness they desire. In order to obtain such happiness, these characters fall into the trap of materialism and decayed moral values. By depicting characters’ emotional isolation as a means of coping with the empty pursuit of pleasure, Fitzgerald criticizes the superficial effect of the unattainable opportunity for prosperity and success.

Shepard was always looking for a job and always polite that's why he was so successful and got a job. In the book Shepard says “Get out and do something. After all, what is the alternative? Scrape by forever, complaining the whole time about how we've been done wrong? I'm telling you, it doesn't have to be that way (Shepard 220).”

Scott Fitzgerald also used them to impact his readers. The most common and the most heavily used theme you encounter throughout “Babylon Revisited” is change and transformation. This theme is the most important one encountered throughout this story. For example, in the criticism passage, Paul Bodine states, “ On the surface, the story is about a father’s attempt to regain custody of his daughter after a series of personal disasters” (Bodine 17). This statement shows both themes of change and transformation in one sentence.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ is a novel that illustrates the ideologies of the ‘American Dream’: a fundamental of American identity since the inception of the country. The term was coined in 1931, and certainly ‘The Great Gatsby’, set during the Roaring Twenties, is a seminal exploration of this. F Scott Fitzgerald attempts to portray the two sides of the ‘American Dream’: its materialistic goals that gave individuals hope and the corrupt mindsets that shattered this hope and led to a decade of deceit. Therefore, these sides which Fitzgerald explores can be seen through the symbols used within the novel, such as the ‘green light’ that comes from Daisy’s dock, the divided setting of the novel between East Egg and West Egg, and through Gatsby himself.

Johnathan Haidt and Gregg Lukianoff are vastly recognized as some of the most important stylists in modern American literary writing. Their work is characterized by colloquial language and a disciplined approach that gives their writing a dramatic feel. In their article, The Coddling of The American Mind”, authors Gregg Lukianoff and Johnathan Haidt claim that protecting children from offences will hinder them to the point where they are not able to handle any sort of discussions that may contain “trigger words”. From generation to generation, technology is constantly improving.

The novel The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald was published in 1925, it is one of the best known classics of literature in the world, and is considered to be the Great American Novel and it is also one of the most radical books in the American canon a story of love and dream, the pain of unfulfilled dream, greed, corruption, money, ambition, revenge and lies in the period that is sometimes called the Roaring 20s or the Jazz Age. The attempt to capture the American Dream is the central of this novel. The outstanding characters of this novel lie, cheat and steal. Gatsby himself was dishonest, and liar.

The Great Gatsby is a great American novel as the statements it made clear in the 1920’s of the ruin of America and the American Dream still resonates with readers today. In The Guardian article, “What Makes the Great Gatsby Great?” author Sarah Churchwell states, “Gatsby is a fable about betrayal – of others, and of our own ideals. The concept that a New World in America is even possible, that it won't simply reproduce the follies and vices of the Old World, is already an illusion, a paradise lost before it has even been conceived... The materialistic world of Gatsby is defined by social politics in a metropolitan America.

Throughout this time period American literature shifts from American foundation into American development. Following the Revolutionary War, America saw a huge population increase; migration westward; and many technological advances. These events thus initiate the Romantic Era. Within this era society held the values of individual importance; close association with nature; and humanism. In the romanticism poem The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls the reader can obtain a glimpse of these nature focused beliefs.

Consequentially The Great Gatsby is the most controversial American novel of its time; at its conclusion, Fitzgerald connects the dream of Jay Gatsby,  with the dream of the discoverers of America (Mizener).

F. Scott Fitzgerald is an author who is acclaimed for using a great deal of symbolism in his literature to illustrate and help readers understand the meanings of his work. Fitzgerald used many symbols in his novel The Great Gatsby which gave the story a whole new meaning in the sense that it has many underlying interpretations of the symbols. The story follows Jay Gatsby, a man who has one desire in life: to be reunited with his “golden girl” Daisy Buchanan, the love that he had lost five years earlier. Gatsby’s journey takes him from aridity to prosperity, into the arms of his treasured Daisy, and eventually his death. Fitzgerald’s use of the similarity in the colors gold and yellow in The Great Gatsby emphasize how wealth, social class, and the people in them are not as different as they may seem.

The novel The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald is an example of failure of the American dream. The American dream is the belief that anyone regardless of race, class, gender, or nationality, can be successful in America (Blog Prep Scholar). Jay Gatsby is a character in the novel who does not come from old money; he comes from humble backgrounds and strives for a dream he never gets. In despite Daisy Buchanan does come from old money, therefore she is like the barrier Fitzgerald adds to the novel to portray an example of how wealth and unrealistic dreams will always end up in failure.