The Great Gatsby Modernism Analysis

Modernist writing is heavily influenced by the process of industrialization and the implications it had on the traditional lives of Americans. Modernism is therefore, a rejection of tradition and a hostile attitude towards the past. The combination of the 19th amendment and new attitudes towards the expressive arts, the modernists used personal narrations and abstract characters to express their own ideological views and personal struggles. Moreover, the characteristics of modernist narratives are littered throughout with an emphasis on symbolisms, the distorted perception of time, a subjective narrator and paralleled connections between how the narrative is read and the connections drawn to the socio-economic climate of the period. Further, …show more content…
Hegemony is established by the characters’ status and is manifested into Tom Buchanan’s (among others) attributes in general. Tom is a compendium of American failures: he is rich with no conscience, moralistic without being moral, exclusionary, racist, and, above all, true only to himself. Tom’s characteristics echo the general theme of the novel, and to the larger theme itself. While Fitzgerald almost glorifies how the wealthy elite live, however there is no doubt there is a place for resentment for the attitudes that were fostered during the period which makes this an ever more compelling novel. Additionally, Barthes theory of actions and events are explained by using functions and indexes to explain the forward motion of a story. Functions are minor details that move the story forward, for instance Gatsby’s one of a kind yellow car that would eventually kill Myrtle. The function of Gatsby’s car shows Jay’s decadence, success and wealth whilst the colour, yellow, the index of the object, signifies his corruption. The insistent usage of colour can only signify Fitzgerald’s intended denotations to how the reader constructs lines between the characters ideologies and his own. Moreover, usage of the colour green in particular signifies Gatsby’s monumental feelings of hope and envy towards Daisy. It is only further into chapter four where the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock no longer shines in opposition to Gatsby’s house, Daisy enters Gatsby’s life and all of his material exorbitance now becomes obsolete in comparison to the love he has held for her for five years. We are bound by the illusion of love and are compelled to repress the criminality in the characters’ actions in pursuit of a satisfactory