During the nineteen twenties, America experienced an unprecedented period of spending and wealth. This period of time was also one which gave us many literary classics including The Great Gatsby and also A Rose for Emily. These two stories while very different offer a glimpse into the mindset created during that time. Within the stories is an interesting use of characterization, metaphors, and setting. These simple literary devices create a deep and complex world which we continue to look back on even to this day. The characterization found within The Great Gatsby and also A Rose for Emily is very different. The Great Gatsby offers the picture of wealth and easy which is a lifestyle that very few are fortunate enough to experience. Even
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One example of this is within the scene in the Great Gatsby when Gatsby and Dais see each other for the first time in years. This leads to Gatsby playing with a clock. ““I’m sorry about the clock,’ he said. My own face had now assumed a deep tropical bun. I couldn’t muster up a single commonplace out of the thousand in my head. “It’s an old clock, I told them idiotically. I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed into pieces on the floor.” This subtle scene allows the reader to realize that time stops for them. It becomes so distorted that it is believed that this clock, this old clock, is no longer going to work. In a way it is a picture of Gatsby’s love for Daisy. A Rose for Emily has a scene that is reminiscent of this one. It says “SHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows--sort of tragic and serene.” When Emily was seen again by this writer of the short story, she is similar in appearance to who she was before the tragedy, but in actuality, she was a very different person, a person who had become twisted by the times, and a person who was so caught up in her past love that she was not able to let it go. Gatsby and Emily’s culture is a very unique …show more content…
It is coated in safety, and of a period of time that was well received, but benith that is a dreadful sense of a complete lack of morality and of understanding. These characters are not to be repeated, but to be a portrait of the past. As one writer said “Thus, one observes two disparate ways of thinking at work. Do Americans want a return to the ideal past, or do they want to be forward looking.” The idyllic picture of the past is alluring, but shallow and cheap. In a world of money, everything was so cheap. Love is not something that was to be purchased, and definitely not something that was capable of being replicated within a shallow setting. These novels while simple on the outside are deeply complex on the inside, and in a certain respect the exact opposite of the culture in which they
One example of this is within the scene in the Great Gatsby when Gatsby and Dais see each other for the first time in years. This leads to Gatsby playing with a clock. ““I’m sorry about the clock,’ he said. My own face had now assumed a deep tropical bun. I couldn’t muster up a single commonplace out of the thousand in my head. “It’s an old clock, I told them idiotically. I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed into pieces on the floor.” This subtle scene allows the reader to realize that time stops for them. It becomes so distorted that it is believed that this clock, this old clock, is no longer going to work. In a way it is a picture of Gatsby’s love for Daisy. A Rose for Emily has a scene that is reminiscent of this one. It says “SHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows--sort of tragic and serene.” When Emily was seen again by this writer of the short story, she is similar in appearance to who she was before the tragedy, but in actuality, she was a very different person, a person who had become twisted by the times, and a person who was so caught up in her past love that she was not able to let it go. Gatsby and Emily’s culture is a very unique …show more content…
It is coated in safety, and of a period of time that was well received, but benith that is a dreadful sense of a complete lack of morality and of understanding. These characters are not to be repeated, but to be a portrait of the past. As one writer said “Thus, one observes two disparate ways of thinking at work. Do Americans want a return to the ideal past, or do they want to be forward looking.” The idyllic picture of the past is alluring, but shallow and cheap. In a world of money, everything was so cheap. Love is not something that was to be purchased, and definitely not something that was capable of being replicated within a shallow setting. These novels while simple on the outside are deeply complex on the inside, and in a certain respect the exact opposite of the culture in which they