...Analysis of “Materialistic Perception” in F. Scot Fitzgerald Using Marxist Literary Criticism Chapter I 1.1 Introduction The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream. 1.2 State of Problem The Great Gatsby provides a critical social history of America during the Roaring Twenties within its narrative. That era, known for unprecedented economic prosperity, the evolution of jazz music, flapper culture, and bootlegging and other economy struggle that was the result of the materialism and capitalism damaging on social behavior, led to the widespread social distress. 1.3 Theoretical Framework Using literary criticism to interpret what is the ideal life of America in 19th century and what is the dream of American people after World War I. as a Marxist interpretation of the novel makes especially clear, reveals its dark underbelly instead. Through its unflattering characterization of those at the top of the...
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...Harvey by Mary Chase SCRIPT ANALYSIS Who are they? * Elwood P. Dowd - forty-seven-year-old, an independently wealthy man. He is a charmer, always pleasant when talking to people, even those who address him gruffly. His best friend is Harvey, an invisible six and a half-foot-tall rabbit. (protagonist - lead) * Veta Louise Simmons – Elwood’s sister, very concerned about her social position and terrified that she will be subject to ridicule or scandal because of Elwood's embarrassing behavior (antagonist - lead) * Myrtle Mae Simmons - A young woman, the daughter of Veta. She is also concerned about the family’s standing in the community because she wants to find a man to marry. (antagonist - supporting) * Dr. William B. Chumley - An esteemed psychiatrist and the head of the sanitarium, “chumley’s rest,” to which veta has Elwood taken. He is a difficult, exacting man, feared by his subordinates. (supporting) * Dr. Lyman Sanderson - Young, for a psychiatrist, but very qualified. He was hand-picked by Dr. Chumley to be his assistant. He is just as infatuated with nurse Kelly as she is with him, but he only reveals his concern indirectly. (supporting) * Nurse Ruth Kelly - A pretty young woman and a sympathetic character. She works at chumley’s rest and appears to have some sort of love/hate relationship with dr. Sanderson * Duane Wilson - the muscle of chumley’s rest, a devoted orderly responsible for handling the patients who will not cooperate voluntarily...
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...Application of Marxism on The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald Marxist literary critics tend to look for tensions and contradictions within literary works. This is appropriate because Marxism was originally formulated to analyze just such tensions and contradictions within society. Marxist literary critics also see literature as intimately linked to social power, and thus their analysis of literature is linked to larger social questions. Since Marxism is a belief system which can be used to analyze society at the grandest or most detailed level, Marxist literary criticism is ultimately part of a much larger effort to uncover the inner workings of society 1. Title of the Book – The Great Gatsby: Gatsby became rich because, most probably Cody – the owner of the yatch, left him money but at the same time he is was committed to earning money at an early stage in his life. And the adjective Great added to the word noun, accounts for Fitzgerald reason why a man could be called a great that is he struggled hard to achieve the love of his life by trying to raise his stature. The word “Great” is added to emphasize the fact that he rose from rags to riches, and this fact should be respected and valued. Nick: “I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people--his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception...
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...English Task 9(western australia 2cd) Analysis of “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby is a comment on society in what was supposed to be the greatest period of American history, the 1920's. Its comment is on our perceptions on wealth, and how people go about gaining and receiving said wealth. It is a critique on the class system and the oppression and misrepresentation of the working class. It is a demonstration of the full spectrum of human relationships and the best and worst parts of America. It’s not just about the love story between the novels central characters, Daisy and Gatsby, but more about the social decay of their society. In the Great Gatsby the story is told from a character voice. The novel is read from Nick Carraway perspective. He is a young man we meet at the beginning in the Great Gatsby novel. Nick moves to New York in 1922 to learn about the bond business, he acquires a house on West Egg early in the novel. This is also where he meets his neighbour Jay Gatsby. Jay Gatsby is a mysterious man who is also filthy rich, the method by he acquired his wealth is questionable. Gatsby is represented in the novel as a symbol for new money and the pursuit of the American dream in the roaring twenties. The roaring twenties was a period of great economic prosperity in the US, there where a lot of individuals who gained their massive wealth during this economic period. Jay Gatsby’s primary goal in the novel is to “own” Daisy Buchanan. She is...
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...: An Analysis of the Damaging Properties of Greed Within F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby In The Great Gatsby, greed is the root of all evil that people in the American 1920’s society that weaves its ways through the lives of many. Gatsby’s greed is evident over his obsession over Daisy which leads to them to several rash decisions. Tom Buchanan cheats his lovers because of his desire for power. And Meyer Wolfsheim pulls Gatsby down with him over his criminal organization. From this, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, greed plays a prominent and dangerous role through Gatsby’s obsessive desire for Daisy Buchanan, Tom Buchanan’s affair with Myrtle Wilson, and Meyer Wolfsheim’s obsession with crime. During The Great Gatsby,...
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...consequences for Daisy’s recklessness. Daisy doesn’t even attempt to take any responsibility for herself. When he is killed by Myrtle's husband, Wilson, she doesn’t bother to even make an appearance at her former lover’s funeral, something that she causes. Instead, she flees from the city with her family and deserts the event. This was her final act of deceit. She continues to preserve herself no matter what. As said in Robert Ornstein’s analysis, ““In Daisy’s case the answer is simple. We remember that Nick Carraway has described Gatsby’s personality as an “unbroken series of successful gestures.” Superficially, Daisy finds in Gatsby, or thinks she finds, that safety from human reality which the empty gesture implies.” (Scott Fitzgerald’s Fable of East and West.” 2016) Daisy was never truly in love with Gatsby. Similar to him, she was in love with the idea of a man who would grant her freedom and an escape from the rest of her life. She couldn’t love him forever, as much as she or Gatsby may have wanted her...
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...Themes Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained...
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...novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed “the Jazz Age.” Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1919), made millionaires out of bootleggers, and an underground culture of revelry sprang up. The chaos and violence of World War I left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the war turned to wild and extravagant living to compensate. The Great Gatsby is highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. So, choosing The Great Gatsby and had the characters as its focus in this paper because it covers Marxism where each character’s purpose in life is money, and the essence of desire is wealth. It is clear within the text that the characters feel as if they are totally limited by the amount of money they make, therefore...
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...Critical Analysis Essay of The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby The novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, demonstrates the destructive quality that money has on people. Money makes people do things that they wouldn’t imagine doing because it’s not who they are. Money makes people be deceitful, untrustworthy, and pompous. It corrupts the honest people, and preys on the meek. This is something Nick Carraway realizes after his living experience in West Egg, Long Island. Relocating to a different region of the world is a scary but an exciting experience. Seeing how the other half lives, and becoming affiliated with those who are the opposite of you is something that everyone should experience. Any experience, negative or positive, should be considered a life learning lesson. Although money has been known to bring joy to people, it can also cause people to be deceitful. This deceit comes in the form of greed. James Gatz, also known as Jay Gatsby, was a victim of deceit; His preparatory, Daisy Buchanan. No matter how much Jay loved Daisy or how devoted he was to her through all those years, five years to be exact, Daisy’s love for Gatsby was a facade. She saw how different he was and how much he had changed substantially but she couldn’t let go of how poor he use to be. Her greed for wealth and security was understandable especially during that specific time period. But why use Jay? Just to get revenge on her husband for cheating? Just to prove a point? ABSOLUTELY! It...
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...Name: Nikita Kuzin Class: E44 Course: 420 Critical Reading of Literature in English Faculty responsible: Ms. Anna Born Institution: Glion Institute of Higher Education Date: May 14th 2013 Project Title: Critical Analysis of Great Gatsby novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald Introduction The Great Gatsby is may be the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s greatest novel. This novel offers damning and insightful views of the American nouveau riche in the 1920s. It is an American classic and a wonderfully evocative novel (Bloom, 2010). The author seems to have a brilliant understanding of lives that are characterised by greed and incredibly sad and unfulfilled. The Great Gatsby is at once a romantic and cyclical novel about wealth and habits of a group of New Yorkers during the Jazz Age (Bloom, 2010). Fitzgerald’s work is magnificent as he paints a grim portrait of shallow characters that manoeuvre themselves into some complex situations. The use of symbols and articulate language makes the novel to be best appreciated by mature readers; and this enables them to analyse literature and think critically (Bloom, 2010). The plot Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, is a love story of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby’s quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The initial meeting of the two lovers takes place two years before the novel is written. Daisy was then a legendary young Louisville beauty while Gatsby was an impoverished officer. The two fell in deep love, but while Gatsby serves...
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...Dream While many countries around the world are working toward equality of social status and avoiding a large gap between rich and poor, there is still a strong desire in people for social freedom through the accumulation of wealth and extravagance. The Great Gatsby’s depiction of the connection between material goods and the American dream is still relevant today. At first glance, the movie may seem to be about the failed relationship of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. However, the major theme of the novel is the accumulation of wealth for social status and the idea of being able to reach a high level of success regardless of family history or lack of money. To understand the connection between the two it will be necessary to have an analysis of the culture values in the 1920’s, what people consider to be the American dream, and finally if there is still a strong desire to achieve the American dream in today’s society. In order to understand the connection between The Great Gatsby and the American dream it is first important to have a good understanding about the movie and motifs of the movie/novel itself. The story takes place in a post war America in the 1920’s when Nick Carraway moves to New York to pursue his career in finance. Nick soon discovers that he is neighbored to the wealthy and mysterious Jay Gatsby, who is known for his loud, lavish parties. Jay and Nick soon become good friends and Nick begins to learn the motifs behind the parties and the flashy accessories...
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...* Appealing nature to both lower and higher classes * Used as a model of social critique | * Set in Houston, Texas during the 1990s * Occurred during the Gulf War * Follows the sexual awakening of Jasira (an American-Lebanese girl) | * Set in Australia | Identity One’s sense of belonging is built upon their exploration of self and the confidence they establish through their own identity. | Identity is explored most obviously with Rosalind’s disguise as Ganymede. This concealment of her true identity allows Rosalind to discover whether Orlando truly loves her. It also allows Rosalind to gain a deeper understanding of herself. This is seen through the use of dramatic irony, this enhances the audience’s connection with the characters and adds to the humour of the play. “Nay, you must call me Rosalind”. Ultimately, it is when her actual identity is exposed that she is capable of loving and being loved by Orlando. | Jasira is essentially undergoing an identity crisis. Her parents are divorced and Jasira struggles to understand the changes that occurring in her body. Jasira struggles to comprehend what is wrong and what is right, and what her role as a daughter and as a woman is. Throughout the film, she is...
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...Jason Lepeska Lippincott English III GT/AP-4 17 January 2013 Research Paper The Great Gatsby was a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925, and has motifs of class separation, the hollowness of the upper class, and the decline of the visions of America. The setting is New York City in the summer of 1922. Nick Carraway moves to New York in hopes of finding a job there. Nick has connections in this town, like his cousin daisy, and her husband, Tom. He moves into a home next to a wealthy Jay Gatsby, an extravagant man who loves throwing ridiculous parties. As the summer progresses, Nick finally gets invited to one of these parties, where he learns Gatsby is in love with Daisy. Nick helps set up Daisy and Gatsby, and they start spending time together. Tom gets angry and ends up driving Gatsby to his unfortunate demise. While a Feminist reading provides insight into the novel, Fitzgerald’s emphasis on the separated classes system and the materialistic beliefs of the upper class demonstrates that a Marxist approach to the novel is of more use. Feminism criticizes the patriarchal language used in novels, and how that reflects the masculinity in the novel (“Feminist Criticism”). Feminism also analyzes how status and positions in the novel relate to the contrasting man and woman. It recognizes more traditional writing, like mailman. Men tend to work towards solutions, while women work towards connecting and feelings (“Feminist Criticism”). It is exemplified in the book...
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...critical theory today critical theory today A Us e r - F r i e n d l y G u i d e S E C O N D E D I T I O N L O I S T Y S O N New York London Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN © 2006 by Lois Tyson Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business Printed in the United States of America on acid‑free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 International Standard Book Number‑10: 0‑415‑97410‑0 (Softcover) 0‑415‑97409‑7 (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number‑13: 978‑0‑415‑97410‑3 (Softcover) 978‑0‑415‑97409‑7 (Hardcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data Tyson, Lois, 1950‑ Critical theory today : a user‑friendly guide / Lois Tyson.‑‑ 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0‑415‑97409‑7 (hb) ‑‑ ISBN 0‑415‑97410‑0 (pb) 1. Criticism...
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...The Write Approach: English Language Arts Research and Writing Guide Student Name: John Burroughs High School Burbank, CA The Write Approach Table of Contents Glossary of Terms The Writing Process Thinking Maps The Six Types of Writing Prompts Jane Shaffer Writing Terms Writing a Thesis Statement Writer’s Signal Words 1 4 5 6 7 8 11 Things NEVER to Do in an Essay 12 MLA Guidelines and Style Sheet Sample Essay Formatting Guide to Formatting Essays Using MS Word Revising and Proofreading Essays JBHS Proofreading Symbols Proofreading/Editing Worksheet MLA Quoting and Citation Guide Quote Integration FAQs Work Cited Page Why Did I Get This Grade? JBHS Academic Honesty Policy List of Resources and References Academic Honesty Contract 14 15 © JBHS English Department 2009 19 27 28 30 32 33 35 38 40 43 44 Glossary of Writing and Research Terms Annotated Bibliography: Includes a summary and/or evaluation of each of the sources used for researching a topic. Audience: Those whom you want your writing to reach. A writer needs to choose the appropriate words and style for his or her intended audience. Body Paragraph: Makes up most of an essay and has three main parts: a topic sentence, concrete detail/commentary, and a concluding sentence. Citation: [also known as parenthetical or in-text citation] Names a source and page number for text which quotes from, uses specific details from, or paraphrases source/research...
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