“‘The Great Gatsby’ is at its heart, a tale of hopelessness.” Discuss this quote, illuminating your discussion with reference to other critical views and relevant context.
Despite the Great Gatsby being considered the ‘Great American Novel’, Fitzgerald uses the dream of the aspiring Jay Gatsby to illuminate the limits of American opportunity and the illusion of the American Dream.
Throughout the novel Jay Gatsby, consumed by the cultivation of image, exhibits an outrageous display of status and prestige through his lavish parties in the hopes of winning the heart of the coveted debutant Daisy Buchanan – “He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths”. However, as the novel reaches its climax, …show more content…
In the novel, yellow is an enchanting colour for Gatsby – there is ‘yellow cocktail music’ playing at Gatsby’s party with turkeys that are ‘bewitched to dark gold’. Fitzgerald, it seems is using the colour of yellow to associate wealth with destruction and amorality. There seems to be a sense of moral derailment that lies beneath all the wealth throughout the novel. In chapter four, we see the first reference to spiritual debasement by Fitzgerald as people are allured by Gatsby’s ‘church bells’ to a life of alcoholism and social decay in his debaucherous parties. In an era of freedom and recklessness, Fitzgerald uses the disembodied, bespectacled, unblinking eyes of TJ Eckleburg that ironically look out from a pair of ‘yellow spectacles’ as a tool for social critique, watching with a ‘persistent stare’ over the ash heaps that have resulted from the destruction of the partygoers who have neglected religion. The eyes, “in a book that is decidedly void of traditional spirituality” as one critic puts it, are an illusion to God, which is suggested through the biblical language such as “brood”, “gigantic”, “eternal”, “endless”, “dust”. In the Great Gatsby, the partygoers have replaced God for Gatsby who fuels the social decay, worshipping him for their materialistic needs, in an empty pursuit of
Despite the Great Gatsby being considered the ‘Great American Novel’, Fitzgerald uses the dream of the aspiring Jay Gatsby to illuminate the limits of American opportunity and the illusion of the American Dream.
Throughout the novel Jay Gatsby, consumed by the cultivation of image, exhibits an outrageous display of status and prestige through his lavish parties in the hopes of winning the heart of the coveted debutant Daisy Buchanan – “He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths”. However, as the novel reaches its climax, …show more content…
In the novel, yellow is an enchanting colour for Gatsby – there is ‘yellow cocktail music’ playing at Gatsby’s party with turkeys that are ‘bewitched to dark gold’. Fitzgerald, it seems is using the colour of yellow to associate wealth with destruction and amorality. There seems to be a sense of moral derailment that lies beneath all the wealth throughout the novel. In chapter four, we see the first reference to spiritual debasement by Fitzgerald as people are allured by Gatsby’s ‘church bells’ to a life of alcoholism and social decay in his debaucherous parties. In an era of freedom and recklessness, Fitzgerald uses the disembodied, bespectacled, unblinking eyes of TJ Eckleburg that ironically look out from a pair of ‘yellow spectacles’ as a tool for social critique, watching with a ‘persistent stare’ over the ash heaps that have resulted from the destruction of the partygoers who have neglected religion. The eyes, “in a book that is decidedly void of traditional spirituality” as one critic puts it, are an illusion to God, which is suggested through the biblical language such as “brood”, “gigantic”, “eternal”, “endless”, “dust”. In the Great Gatsby, the partygoers have replaced God for Gatsby who fuels the social decay, worshipping him for their materialistic needs, in an empty pursuit of