Similarities Between The Old Man And The Great Gatsby

Certain words hold feelings-- they hold images-- they hold life. Different words contain more power and emotion than imaginable. A word can warm a mood and bring it love and a sense of unpredictable madness to a scene. A word can cool a picture and give it edge with a sense of hope while the lingering memory of the idea flows through the page, becoming immensely important. Both Hemingway and Fitzgerald have compiled their words into enormous feelings, as pressing and powerful as the ocean or as wild and uncontrollable as a fire in both novels, The Old Man and the Sea and The Great Gatsby. In both writing styles words hold more than just descriptions. They bring hurt, heartbreak, love, pain, passion, hope, hate, and rage, but ultimately each …show more content…
The similarity that comes from both Hemingway and Fitzgerald styles starts with the power single word. Both authors use single words to their advantage, and the way the author chooses the word and placement can change the entire mood of the story. For example, in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald there is a description of Daisy that lights a spark and changes the outlook of the story. This specific description came at a time where the wild fool that is Daisy and the rich romantic were having the time of their lives after being apart for so long. Daisy had longed for him and his new wealth so much and the realization of a lost life had finally hit her. Her emotions burst out and she “began to cry stormily” and the one word, “stormily” changes the whole picture and it ignites into a thousand different emotions and feelings (Fitzgerald 92). In comparison, in The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway used a very similar technique, to give his scene a calm refreshing life. In this separated scene, the room of the shack is being described. The shack is depicted as dingy and lifeless, but there is a picture that is hidden anyway under a “clean shirt” (Hemingway 16). The world “clean” in this scene turns an otherwise unimportant observation into a calm and hopeful description of a beautiful memory. The world “clean” brings light into a dark room and the ideals of an ocean-like tone come flooding back into the scene. Both Fitzgerald and Hemingway create beautiful images with the drop of a single word. On the other hand, through the different writing styles, there are various differences that present themselves. The most prominent of these is that of the tone between a fiery, unpredictable wildness and a peaceful, powerful ocean. Both writers use their words very differently to create contrasting tones and moods. For example, Hemingway uses few adjectives to make