Similarities Between Gatsby And Cohn

Slithering their way into the crowd of social elites, Jay Gatsby and Robert Cohn both struggle to fit in and control their lives. Whether it be an attempt at recreating the past, or an epiphany of a wasted life, the experiences of these characters in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway make evident the difficulty of living life as an outsider. Moreover, after careful analysis of their lifestyles, Gatsby and Cohn bring insight on ways to respond to missed opportunity, unrequited friendship and love, and the struggle of finding acceptance from others. Jay Gatsby, though living an extraordinary and enticing life, spends his time attempting to construct a future from something he can never attain. Gatsby’s problem emerges when viewing the effort and time lost due to his futile hopes of being with Daisy, ending in nothing. Additionally, Fitzgerald reveals within this the arduous and useless attempt of incessantly working towards …show more content…
From the beginning of the novel, Cohn has the epiphany, “‘Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?’” (Hemingway 19). With this, the concept of living ones life fully comes into hand. With all the other characters being in the Lost Generation, Cohn stands out as one who has not been wounded by the war, someone who has not yet lived. By establishing this exclusive group of those wounded by life, Cohn’s desire to join them seems senseless. However, this desire is prevalent among all outsiders and incorrectly orients them to live life inauthentically without control over their lives. To combat this temptation, outsiders have to live their lives independent of discriminative and exclusionary groups and seek out relationships