“The Great Gatsby” is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published in 1925. When referring to the relationship between money, love, and happiness, it can be said that there is no better example illustrating such relation than Fitzgerald’s novel. The novel main idea can be described as the portrayal of the destruction of norms and values going up, through the social ladder’s hierarchy. Nevertheless, the characters of the novel can not be described as weak-willed, where the destiny of each of them was determined through their personal distinctive characteristics, as well as tragic events.
In that regard, this paper compares and contrasts two characters from “The Great Gatsby”, which are Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway, who represent the novel’s protagonist and narrator respectively.
Describing Jay Gatsby, the question that should be answered is what is so distinctive about him, that Fitzgerald named his novel “The Great Gatsby”. This factor can explain through the dual nature of Gatsby’s character. On the one hand, he is tawdry great in his role of the wealthy man with a mysterious reputation, and the host of absurdly-pompous parties, which he arranges in order to bring Daisy’s attention. Such characteristics give rise to the irony of the moralist narrator – Nick Carraway.
On the other hand, Gatsby is definitely great in the power of his feelings, in his loyalty to his dream, and “extraordinary gift for hope”, which as stated by Carraway, he had never found in any other person. (3) The significance of such attributes in Gatsby, who matured in the art of making money, can be seen in that as soon as he realizes that Daisy, for whom he entered this path, rejected him, loses interest in his wealth and everything related to it, and practically gave up his life before the bullet of the George Wilson reach him. (103)
Nick Carraway’s character can be described from the moment that he met Gatsby, as their friendship produced a moral shift in his moral values’ assessments. Meeting with Gatsby, Carraway said that he represented everything for which he had unaffected scorn (3), while the Buchanans, Jordan were more appealing to him. At the end of the novel, the change in perception can be seen through his statement to Gatsby that “They’re a rotten crowd “and that he is “worth the whole damn bunch put together” (98).
The contrast between the characters can be seen in that Gatsby could not divide between the ideal of love and wealth, where such position was firm throughout the novel, while Nick’s position after witnessing the tragedy made him reject moral compromises, and considered that it was of his moral responsibility to honestly retell what he saw without coloring the truth.
It can be concluded that the main differences were through the rejection of Fitzgerald to moralize Gatsby in the novel, giving the role to the moral counter-part to Nick. The closeness in the friendship, however, can be perceived as a reflection of the same position or as a justification of the events and positions. Both characters acknowledged that as soon as real emotions come to power, the illusion of shine and all this sham are destroyed.
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, Francis S. The Great Gatsby. Wordsworth Editions, 1993.
Wuthering Heights As A Gothic Novel
Wuthering Heights is an eminent work by Emily Bronte which was written in the Victorian epoch of British literature. The concept of the novel is widely discussed until now. A huge range of writers who were contemporary to E. Bronte and lived after her admit that the novel is full of details and the ideas in it seem to predict the next period of world literature in the twentieth century. The novel is rich in particular themes for the discussion. However, among suggested themes, the gothic coloring of the novel is predominant in the paper. The thing is that the versatile manner of narrative in the novel is used by the author with the applicable mastership as of the characterization of it and peculiar approach of Emily Bronte in making a background for relationships between the characters more colored with dark and mysterious features of the gothic romance. However, the themes of love and conflict are imposed in the novel with particular points on the impeccable depiction of the details in it. Gothic motives in the novel Wuthering Heights make it more related to the Romantic rather than to the Victorian manner of writing.
From first sight, the novel seems to maintain the features of the particular way of life widely shared by the aristocratic top of British people. The idea of it manifests the life of people in terms of the locality in Yorkshire County with its moors and peculiar climate full of constant rains and fog. A reader understands the description of this place as the picture of a late medieval castle among forbidding terrain. The gothic or even neo-gothic elements are apparent in Bronte’s featuring of the story and its peculiar way of description of the characters’ behaviors living in that place. The pressure of the walls and the urge for freedom in feelings are depicted in the story. Thereupon, the depiction of the protagonist, Heathcliff, is concerned with his desire to share the high feeling of love and understanding within the family of Earnshaw.
The author provides a wide scope of details about the characters and she masterly uses the stylistic devices for the abbreviation of the characters’ fates and their inner struggles. In this respect, the gothic elements are concerned widely with the notion of the moors surrounding the mansion where Earnshaws live. The central role of this element can be referred to as the dark features of the novel. The protagonist is fully concerned in the novel with the coldness and mysteriousness of the moors throughout Wuthering Heights. In fact, his relations with Catherine, Mr. Earnshow, and even with Hindley are associated with this element in the novel. Catherine in the very beginning of the story made some precaution remarks for Heathcliff, namely:
Do you know that you run a risk of being lost in the marshes? People familiar with these moors often miss their road on such evenings, and, I can tell you, there is no chance of a change at present (Bronte 16).
Nonetheless, even the name of the protagonist speaks about the darkness of the story and about his life doomed to be within moors, meaning the first part of his name heath. The gothic shape of the novel is also incorporated with the house where Earnshows live and the ghost-like character of it. Thus, the discussion between characters is provided on grounds of the so-called legend of Wuthering Heights and its pressure on the main motives of love, hatred, indifference, and priority of family values. Moreover, it is seen in the apt use of antonomasia, as a stylistic device for making more emphasis on the primordial role of characters in the novel. Heathcliff is the character that comprises in his name own destiny and the evaluation of his place among his related enemies.
Looking at the structure of the novel the development of actions is actually supposed from the very beginning with Catherine’s imprisonment by Mr. Heathcliff. This idea drives a reader to understand the same features in the gothic romance, when imprisonment, castles, and particular characters serve for the idea of making the whole concept of the story seem like it is supposed to be according to the gothic style.
One more thing which makes the story similar to the gothic romance is the terror which is indicated in it. First of all, terror is implied in the novel physically as well as psychologically. The imprisonment of Catherine is one side of the discussion. In this respect, a reader discovers her sufferings about the situation. Moreover, the theme is emphasized with the proper feelings of the characters according to this situation. Second, Catherine feels constant terror from the side of her father due to his detrimental attitude toward her. In this respect, there emerges the “generation gap” situation which is entirely unsolved among different generations in a definite family. Mr. Earnshaw and Catherine are diametrically opposite according to their views about life and people. The romantic nature of Catherine is limited by the family traditions and the supremacy of the father’s opinion. Thus, she is able solely to endure this negative feature of her life.
Another detail related to the gothic style in the novel is the mystery. The mystery is seen everywhere throughout the novel. A reader may be excited by the facts which make the story so exciting. First of all, it concerns the structure of it, because the narration is composed in a circle of events which begin with present observation, past problems, and again features take place in the present. The difficult in some respects representation of characters’ relationships are also supposed with the mystery of Wuthering Heights:
I was cogitating what the mystery might be and determined Catherine should never suffer to benefit him or anyone else, by my goodwill; when hearing a rustle among the ling, I looked up and saw Mr. Heathcliff almost close upon us, descending the Heights (Brontė 289).
Mystery provides in a reader a piece of supposed from the very beginning hidden facts about the psyche of Heathcliff and other characters in relation to the place full of moors and fog. Thus, a horrific performance in the dark sceneries described by the author leads to concrete features of the novel. The mystery seems to make the conceptual performance of the story more applied to the outrageous reality of the intentions being incorporated in the main characters of the story. It is seen in the way of how Catherine seeks the place where she lived before, meaning her home. The tentative and too patterned with particular details and facts description of her barriers on the pathway to the silence and happiness of life promotes an additional outlook on the mysterious framework of the novel.
The ominous character of Mr. Heathcliff’s passion for Catherine is one of the features which support the idea of the gothic coloring of Wuthering Heights. Constant reasoning about possible escape does not leave Catherine when she is imprisoned. In this respect, the novel is full of evil and vices. It can be estimated as the description of how peoples’ passion or desires turn into extremes. This feature leaves a place for a reader to think and imagine over the picture of Catherine’s conditions for life while being imprisoned and her struggle due to the impacts of evil destiny. It all seems like madness to her, because she feels helpless about the situation with Mr. Heathcliff. On the other hand, a reader may feel the decay which is considered with the place of Wuthering Heights and its affection on people living there. A glimpse at the destination of this particular locality may be unintentionally supposed in a negative evaluation.
To sum up, Wuthering Heights is an outstanding work by one of the sisters Bronte, Emily, which is organized with features of the gothic romance. This idea is estimated and closely analyzed in the paper according to several points which maintain the concept of gothic novels. Particular sceneries, observation of characters’ destination from their names, terror, mystery, and evil are imposed in the plot of the story. Due to these details outlined in the story, a reader may simply compare it as the gothic narrative with an exciting description of somehow darkened and vague episodes in Wuthering Heights.
Works cited
Brontė, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Ed. 2. (Edited by Pearce, Joseph). San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2008.
Nick Carraway And Tom Buchanan: Character Analysis
“The Great Gatsby” is a novel written by a famous American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. This piece of literature is believed to be a critique of the idea of the American Dream. It is a lyrical image of American lifestyle, values, an extremely romantic practicalness in which people tend to persuade themselves that movement can distinguish action, that longing can characterize reality, and that feeling can stand for emotion (Rozakis 255). “The Great Gatsby” of F. Scott Fitzgerald is very carefully organized, thus, the novel’s composition seems to attract itself. The narration rotates around Jay Gatsby’s striving, achievements, acquirements, and loss of Daisy Buchanan. Flashbacks let us know that this search had neither success, it is an answer of the same striving, achievements, acquirements, and loss of the same person beloved that took place in Gatsby’s youth, before the beginning of the novel (Tyson 234). “The Great Gatsby” is a novel that represents controversies and ambivalences between two classes of people, the upper class and the middle class, over what depicts America in the best way (McDonald 111).
Nick Carraway is the moral guideline and the narrator of the novel (Rozakis 255). In this piece of literature Nick stands for traditional moral values, he is attracted by the wealth and beauty of the Wasteland, which is denoted by New York. Furthermore, Nick comes to comprehension of flashy emptiness (Rozakis 256). From the very beginning of the novel Nick enjoys the reader’s trust. He is the veteran of the war, who wants to enter the bond business, who leaves the native surroundings and starts for some adventure. He rents a bungalow, which is sandwiched between two colossal mansions. Then Nick comes to visit his cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom, whom Nick had known since college years. At dinner Nick meets a friend of Daisy, a female golfer, Jordan Baker, who tells him that Tom has a mistress. This affaire characterizes Tom as immoral man without scruples. At the beginning of the novel Nick admits that Gatsby denotes everything for which he had a genuine disrespect; it is strange, but he finds in this man something beautiful, a reverie characteristic with certain exaggerated susceptibility to the paroles of life (Dillard 10-12). Jay Gatsby is a neighbor of Nick, who lives in a huge mansion. “While conversing privately with Nick in chapter four of “The Great Gatsby”, Jay Gatsby makes an offer to clear up some of the stories which, as Nick has already discovered, were being spread concerning Gatsby’s rise to fortune” (McDonald 111).
Tom is a person extremely polar to Nick. He is immoral, he cheats his wife, and he induces about the last five years of his life, about his lifestyle, about his wife Daisy. The basic focus is on movement from one sphere to another, on the deformations of the matter and shape which happens when Gatsby’s magic and Tom Buchanan’s rage conflict. “This process is evident in the first description of the valley of ashes in which, by the imaginative modes of transfiguration transubstantiation, the fantastic forms of the ashes themselves and of the men and cars working there mingle in a total ambiguity of perception” (Rogers 254).
Thus, comes a conclusion on the issue of the personality of Nick Carraway and Tom Buchanan in the novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald. After having compared the styles and images of these two main characters of “The Great Gatsby” as they are
portrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the first chapter of the novel, I would like to point my attitude towards the protagonist and minor characters, who influenced his life and his attitude to life. I have examined the similarities and contrasts between the two men who play a crucial role in our understanding of the complexities of Jay Gatsby’s actions in the novel. The characters are not just extremely opposite but polar. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” seems, to be a simple work, and the plot, and the essential ideas can be summarized in one or two paragraphs. Next door to Nick in an enormous mansion lives Jay Gatsby, rich but rootless as air, mysterious as his rare smile “with a quality of eternal reassurance in it.” While visiting his cousin he meets Jordan Baker, a charming girl, who tells about Tom being dishonest. At Gatsby’s request, Nick arranges a meeting between Gatsby and Daisy, the first of several. But Daisy cannot break away fromTom, particularly after she learns that Gatsby’s wealth comes from racketeering. As Daisy and Gatsby are driving back to Long Island from a party in New York, they run down Myrtle Wilson and do not stop. Though Gatsby unintentionally reveals to Nick that it was Daisy at the wheel, Daisy allows Tom to tell Myrtle Wilson’s husband George (who already thinks that Gatsby was his wife’s lover) that Gatsby is responsible for Myrtle’s death. George Wilson shoots Gatsby and then himself, and that is that.
Works Cited
McDonald, Lyle Jarom. Sports, narrative, and nation in the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Studies in major literary authors. Routledge, 2007.
Rogers, R. Franklin. Occidental ideographs: image, sequence, and literary history. Bucknell University Press, 1991.
Rozakis, Laurie. The complete idiot’s guide to American literature. Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 1999.
Tyson, Lois. Critical theory today: a user-friendly guide. CRC Press, 2006.