The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald - Essay Example

The Great Gatsby Scott’s novel offers a damning and insightful view of the y status of the 1920s. Scotthad a brilliant understanding of the lives, which were very tainted by ravenousness and unbelievably sad and unfulfilled (Fitzgerald 78). It helps capture the American dream in a time when it had tumbled down into dissipation. The assertion by Scott’s narrator that “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past’’ is an exact extension of the realities that had dawned in those times (Fitzgerald 170). This is vivid through the novels pulsating and tragedy of the turn of events. The line serves as an epitaph of the American history and literature (Reaves 82). The philosophical perspective of this line helps to highlight the crisis of Gatsby’s life long struggle to transcend his past and the futility of his task. It helps reveal the weight of a warning carefully embodied in the novel pages (Shapiro 135). Scott seems to argue that each of us carries his past along with himself. As this fact is, the actions of Scott are a foolproof that in trying to change the past comes as unrealistic venture. For example, one can observe how the novel's narrator, Nick, gives Scott voice a warning that ‘You can’t repeat the past…’ and Gatsby replies by saying ‘Why of course you can!’ (Fitzgerald 156) The two characters have opposing arguments. Despite Nick’s assumption, the past exerts a powerful force to the two character’s current situations. It is in this scenario that Scott introduces the idea of hope. The message shared by the above line carries the same presumption. Gatsby passed features in his romantic hope when actually he denotes that they had to beat on for the future. Fitzgerald’s move is a blind paint of optimism that he attaches in his self-belief of reinvention. This is contrary to what Nick banks his hope on, instead, having his roots in sensible Midwestern upbringing, he fixes his hope for those around him rather than the material fantasies Gatsby values (Pa?tea and Sa?nchez 45). The line highlights some sense of comparison in which the narrator takes equates this backward driving force to the current of the river. According to Fitzgerald, this is inexorable, and a seemingly determined fate. In another sense, what Fitzgerald highlights are the indisputable lot of human races to paddle back. This therefore makes some slight attempt of moving a progress, as espoused by Fitzgerald, a result of hubris and bulky purpose (Fitzgerald 94). The line reflects on America as a whole by linking its fate to Gatsby. He paints the land of America as standing on the fortune path of progress and equality (Fitzgerald 120). Gatsby sees himself as the right man that the father founders of America would applause. This is because he sees himself as a dreamer as compared to Tom and Daisy Buchanan. The latter has rebuilt the extremes of European nobility in their new world. A close look at Gatsby, he could be parcel of Tom’s world despite his wealth. He is like a boat in an opposing current (Fitzgerald 60). He engages in gracious trials to engineer his own self-acclaimed destiny, which in turn faces an head down as it is sabotaged by their cruelty and the stagnant quality of their imagination. As this seems to go through Fitzgerald’s action, his America creed does not seem to be feasible. In his realization, America is not a place where everything is possible (Tynan and John 98). He associates this idealization with, just the way America fails to surpass its European origins. The same fact is that Gatsby seems unable to overcome his conditions of his rearing. This helps to highlight the proposition of the statement on discussion as everything is a struggle and fruits seem not to come by not only to the actor’s favour but also to the American history (Pa?tea and Sa?nchez 73). There is the presentation of Nick as he comes out to praise Gatsby’s courage and his ability for self re-invention. This though comes from his statements, he cannot approve of his dishonesty mandarins or his criminal involvements. The fact is Gatsby rises above Nick’s, Tom’s, and Daisy’s customary ways reasoning, which is practically westernized. As for Nick, the past shapes who we are and becomes. The novel highlights the west as the seat of traditional morality, an idyllic heartland. This is in stark contrast the greed and depravity of the east, where the Buchanans lived and Nick abhors. There is some symbolic representation and reference to the earlier novels statement as Gatsby lived in West Egg (Fitzgerald 65). When he gazes at the green light on Daisy’s dock, Gatsby is looking at the east. In this sense, the green light, as kit features in America’s green land philosophy, symbolizes the hope and anticipations. In this understanding, the narrator tries to show the readers how the ideals of the green American dream worsened into the futile pursuit of wealth (Reaves 70). This is zeal once Gatsby ventured into, the desire for material gain. He does not only ruin himself but also the America itself hence the statement ‘borne back ceaselessly into the past’. The statement also embodies Nick’s surprise on seeing Daisy’s child. According to Nick, the child is a concrete manifestation of the present. He stills lingers in his clouded hope for things. Gatsby sidelines that and goes on to place his hope in the trap of his possessions (Fitzgerald 142). This helps readers to realize the exactness of Fitzgerald’s warning that they were indeed borne back into the past but only through the sense of what they had learned from the past. The last line is a great one, a melancholic statement, which tries to wrap up the human condition within the symbolism of the small little boat, in which it bumps, laps, a representation of the life in east world. This makes a reader try to fantasize what past one is up to be borne into (Fitzgerald 112)? It is an inclination that you ought to have, some sort of experiences, life behind you in order to reflect on the things that could not simply work out at the time, all the elusive dreams. The uncontrollable circumstances in Gatsby’s world had to happen. The novel thus highlights the ever-unending human conditions (Tynan and John 104). The human race would march forward against the march of time usually longing to return to the safe bastion of the past, which proofs completely unacceptable. This actually can ascertain the proposition that absence in human nature makes the heart grow fonder. The realization is that there is no something that is more absent than a place where people would least return to, like the case of Gatsby. The statement in question can thus summarize that the human condition dictates in some sense one’s acts of contingency, of passion and of purity, all rounded by the whims of fate (Shapiro 101). There are fundermental concerns that Gatsby explores in this novel. Some of the perspective one encounters is the continual reference to the decline of the American dream in 1920s. In his literal jinx, the narrator portrays the era of decayed social and moral values. This is an evidence through the way there is an overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit for pleasure. Gatsby wanted also to portray the hollowness of the upper class in 1920s. he explores through the sociology of wealth, especially how the new millionaires of 1920s could differ from the old aristocracy ,of the counntry’s richest families. Gatsby highlights such concepts even though the nove does not fully succeed to create a critique od American materialism at what seemed to be the desire and the high-water mark in those years. Work cited Fitzgerald, F S. The Great Gatsby. London: Urban Romantics, 2012. Print. Pa?tea, Viorica, and Sa?nchez M. E. Di?az. Critical Essays on the Myth of the American Adam. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2001. Print. Pa?tea, Viorica, and Sa?nchez M. E. Di?az. Critical Essays on the Myth of the American Adam. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2001. Print. Reaves, Gerri. Mapping the Private Geography: Autobiography, Identity, and America. Jefferson, NC [u.a.: McFarland, 2001. Print. Shapiro, Fred R. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Internet resource. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sunnyvale, Calif.: Shmoop University, 2010. Internet resource. Tynan, Kenneth, and John Lahr. The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan. London: Bloomsbury, 2002. Print. Read More