What meaning does your life have? Are you really happy? These are questions that at some point everyone asks themselves, trying to grasp the entirety of their being into one palpable idea. Yet so many would answer these questions with lies. In the endeavor to attain these common conceptions of “success”, people often create a facade of happiness and contentment. Scott Fitzgerald, writer of the novel The Great Gatsby, and E.E. Cummings, writer of the poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town,” convey a similar theme in their works through the use of tone, imagery, and symbolism. Both selections explore societies and people filled with insincerity, and they both reveal that surface level happiness doesn’t always reflect what’s underneath.
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In The Great Gatsby one important symbol is the green light. It says, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (180:Ch. 9). The green light represented the idea of Daisy, always close enough that you could see, but always just out of reach. Daisy herself epitomises the very idea of insincerity, she lives her whole life filling the roles she thinks she belongs in. When talking about her daughter Daisy says “I hope she’ll be a fool-that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” (17:Ch. 1). No one really knows Daisy, or what she feels and wants because the pressure of society conformed her to becoming someone other than herself. In the poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town” a powerful symbol of sincerity is the bells. Multiple times throughout the poem the line “(with up so floating many bells down)” is repeated and associated with different aspects of life. At one point the bells ring with the celebration of marriage, while at another they sound at a funeral.The bells are a symbol of insincerity, as they themselves represent such contrasting events in the circle of
In The Great Gatsby one important symbol is the green light. It says, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (180:Ch. 9). The green light represented the idea of Daisy, always close enough that you could see, but always just out of reach. Daisy herself epitomises the very idea of insincerity, she lives her whole life filling the roles she thinks she belongs in. When talking about her daughter Daisy says “I hope she’ll be a fool-that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” (17:Ch. 1). No one really knows Daisy, or what she feels and wants because the pressure of society conformed her to becoming someone other than herself. In the poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town” a powerful symbol of sincerity is the bells. Multiple times throughout the poem the line “(with up so floating many bells down)” is repeated and associated with different aspects of life. At one point the bells ring with the celebration of marriage, while at another they sound at a funeral.The bells are a symbol of insincerity, as they themselves represent such contrasting events in the circle of