Money, it’s acquisition and whether it is “old” or “new” is of great importance on the society depicted by the novel The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel about an eccentric millionaire Jay Gatsby as told by the narrator of the novel Nick Carraway, midwesterner who lives on Long Island but works in Manhattan. Gatsby’s enormous mansion is adjacent to Carraway’s modes home, but Carraway becomes curious about his neighbor after being invited to one of his favorite parties.
The Author F. Scott Fitzgerald, American short story writer and novelist famous for his depictions of the Jazz Age in the 1920’s for writing his brilliant novel the Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald intends the audience to foresee this novel as an exploration of class aspirations in America, of a materialistic distortion of the American Dream, of self-determination, self improvement, and a satire on contemporary values of the Jazz Age.
In the novel Fitzgerald was trying to accomplish the basic idea stating that the period of the 1920’s was doomed to failure in the manner it cultivated relationships between the characters in the novel. Fitzgerald understood the Jazz Age as one where people used others as means to ends as opposed to ends in of themselves. The characters in the novel use people for their own self interest in Fitzgerald’s work that it becomes almost an accepted conclusion that the time period will invariably result in a crash of Calvin Petteway Ms. Gallagher English Pd2 January, 24th, 2019 intense proportions, therefore making Fitzgerald’s purpose in the novel remain unaccomplished.
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Fitzgerald, uses imagery, diction, and tone to explain the positive and negative aspects of the atmosphere between the East and West Egg that contrasts both neighborhoods of how the wealthy lives different from the poor.
Fitzgerald uses tone and imagery when he describes the despairing horrid atmosphere of East Egg’s Valley of Ashes. Fitzgerald had described the unpleasant tone of the Valley of Ashes by using dismal words and imagery such as “ghastly”, “wild” and “obscure” to illustrate how bad and superfluous the whole city acts. In the excerpt, Fitzgerald states, “Occasionally a line of graycars crawls along an invisible track gives out a ghastly creek and comes to rest and immediately the ash grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screams their obscure operations from your sight, but above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it .”
Correspondingly, Fitzgerald describes the horrid atmosphere of the solemn Valley of Ashes on symbolic level of negative tone and imagery to accentuate the dark, dismal surroundings of the Valley of Ashes in the Calvin Petteway Ms. Gallagher English Pd2 January, 24th, 2019 town of East egg by invoking a jaded tone for the Valley of Ashes by using the words “bleak” ,” obscure”, and “ash gray men”, who live in the working poor class community. In like manner, Fitzgerald illustrates on the comparison to the East/ West Egg to the Valley of Ashes by displaying the negative aspects of the East Egg as a poor living environment.
However, Fitzgerald uses descriptive diction to explain how lavish the rich West Egg community lives distinctly from the poor East Egg community by stating how happy and alive West Egg’s atmosphere is compared to East Egg’s. In the excerpt Fitzgerald states “ the lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher, laughter is easier minute by minute spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful world”. Furthermore, Fitzgerald incorporates this exhilarating imagery of how the West Egg community lives better off than the East through the sense of his positive choice of words of diction including “cheerful”, “alive”, and “brighter” creates a blissful atmosphere which contrasts the dreary and depressing imagery and tone of the Valley of Ashes.
As can be seen, Fitzgerald’s purpose was to contrast how the rich lives differently from the poor in East and West Egg Calvin Petteway Ms. Gallagher English Pd2 January, 24th, 2019 through imagery,diction, and tone was to show that West Egger’s are more superior to the low poor working class East Egger’s of the Valley of Ashes. From this evidence, it is clear to see that the American Dream is achievable. Though Fitzgerald portrayed the American Dream as something rare that could never make you happy, he showed some belief in the idea, and supported the theory that no matter what class anyone comes from, it is always possible for them to achieve success.
