The Past Has Passed “Time is like a river. You cannot touch the same water twice because the flow that has passed will never pass again” (Feinberg). The ideas expressed in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “anyone lived in a pretty how town” by E. E. Cummings reflect the message that this quote reveals. In The novel The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway, the narrator, gives his personal account of the lives of Jay Gatsby, Jordan Baker, and Daisy and Tom Buchanan. These characters are extremely wealthy and careless inhabitants of Long Island involved in several love triangles during the 1920s. The poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town” depicts the lives of anyone and noone, a couple in love, amidst the someones and everyones that live
…show more content…
F. Scott Fitzgerald is famous for his use of imagery in his writing while Cummings is known for unconventional language and syntax in his poetry. Throughout The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald uses imagery to foreshadow the lesson that the characters, specifically Gatsby, will learn. On only the second page of the novel the reader sees Nick reflecting on his experiences and realizing that Gatsby’s unrealistic dreams are what preyed on him and eventually caused him anguish (Fitzgerald). This foreshadowing continues on pages 95-96 when Nick witnesses Gatsby and Daisy together for the first time in five years stating, “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything” (Fitzgerald). Nick is beginning to see that Gatsby is holding on to his idea of what Daisy had been 5 years ago, even making her up to be something she never was, and that the woman Daisy is today is not the same girl that Gatsby fell in love with half a decade prior. Fitzgerald uses very descriptive language in this passage to effectively illustrate the extensive substance and detail of Gatsby’s past dream and his idolization of who he believes Daisy is. Another example of Fitzgerald’s use of imagery is on page …show more content…
Throughout both The Great Gatsby and “anyone lived in a pretty how town” the reader can identify many symbols that are used to represent some aspect of time. The infamous green light in The Great Gatsby is one of the most obvious examples of this. On page 180, Nick describes what the green light
F. Scott Fitzgerald is famous for his use of imagery in his writing while Cummings is known for unconventional language and syntax in his poetry. Throughout The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald uses imagery to foreshadow the lesson that the characters, specifically Gatsby, will learn. On only the second page of the novel the reader sees Nick reflecting on his experiences and realizing that Gatsby’s unrealistic dreams are what preyed on him and eventually caused him anguish (Fitzgerald). This foreshadowing continues on pages 95-96 when Nick witnesses Gatsby and Daisy together for the first time in five years stating, “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything” (Fitzgerald). Nick is beginning to see that Gatsby is holding on to his idea of what Daisy had been 5 years ago, even making her up to be something she never was, and that the woman Daisy is today is not the same girl that Gatsby fell in love with half a decade prior. Fitzgerald uses very descriptive language in this passage to effectively illustrate the extensive substance and detail of Gatsby’s past dream and his idolization of who he believes Daisy is. Another example of Fitzgerald’s use of imagery is on page …show more content…
Throughout both The Great Gatsby and “anyone lived in a pretty how town” the reader can identify many symbols that are used to represent some aspect of time. The infamous green light in The Great Gatsby is one of the most obvious examples of this. On page 180, Nick describes what the green light