Analyse how The Great Gatsby and Browning’s poetry imaginatively portray individuals who
challenge the established values of their time.
The Great Gatsby through narrative text style, and Barrett Browning’s poetry through Petrarchan
sonnet form, both portray individuals who not only challenge accepted values of their time but may
also adhere to certain values. Despite the immensely dissimilar contexts the texts are derived from,
we are able to compare challenged or accepted values within them as the share particular themes
such as love and gender roles. The novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, portrays the
character of Gatsby who challenges accepted values of class and money, but adheres to value of
courtly love, popular in his time. Contrastingly, Barrett …show more content…
Ultimately, both texts portray a range of values that we are able to
contrast through similar themes, which are either accepted or challenged by characters.
Gatsby is a character who strives against all odds to achieve his goal of acceptance in the social elite,
challenging established values, while also epitomising a Petrarchan lover of his time. Gatsby is “new
money” and we see that his goal of acceptance in the world of “old money” is unrealistic as new
money is not valued by people with old money, and hence he will never be accepted as one of the
social elite. We see how Gatsby constantly challenges this as despite the odds he strives for
acceptance by dismissing his parents as “unsuccessful” and insisting he was “educated at oxford” to
make himself sound more than he is. For Gatsby, Daisy is a representation of his dreams, so he puts
her on a pedestal, valuing her for materialistic ideals such as her voice which is “full of money”.
Gatsby’s yearning for Daisy is symbolised by Gatsby reaching out to the green light across the
challenge the established values of their time.
The Great Gatsby through narrative text style, and Barrett Browning’s poetry through Petrarchan
sonnet form, both portray individuals who not only challenge accepted values of their time but may
also adhere to certain values. Despite the immensely dissimilar contexts the texts are derived from,
we are able to compare challenged or accepted values within them as the share particular themes
such as love and gender roles. The novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, portrays the
character of Gatsby who challenges accepted values of class and money, but adheres to value of
courtly love, popular in his time. Contrastingly, Barrett …show more content…
Ultimately, both texts portray a range of values that we are able to
contrast through similar themes, which are either accepted or challenged by characters.
Gatsby is a character who strives against all odds to achieve his goal of acceptance in the social elite,
challenging established values, while also epitomising a Petrarchan lover of his time. Gatsby is “new
money” and we see that his goal of acceptance in the world of “old money” is unrealistic as new
money is not valued by people with old money, and hence he will never be accepted as one of the
social elite. We see how Gatsby constantly challenges this as despite the odds he strives for
acceptance by dismissing his parents as “unsuccessful” and insisting he was “educated at oxford” to
make himself sound more than he is. For Gatsby, Daisy is a representation of his dreams, so he puts
her on a pedestal, valuing her for materialistic ideals such as her voice which is “full of money”.
Gatsby’s yearning for Daisy is symbolised by Gatsby reaching out to the green light across the