Does Fitzgerald Present Myrtle's Struggles In The Great Gatsby

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Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby explores the lives of America’s wealthiest and poorest individuals, narrated by Nick, a supposedly unbiased storyteller. It reveals the parallels between the two social groups— the Buchanans and Gatsby, who belong to America’s elite groups, and the Wilsons, who reside in an impoverished region of the East Coast—and how their lives intertwine in unexpected ways. Although The Great Gatsby demonstrates the mobility between social classes, it expresses that despite having reached or trying to reach a higher status, a person's success will always be tied to their upbringing. Fitzgerald conveys the possibility that achieving a better life is possible, however Gatsby’s character reveals how someone’s past directly/negatively impacts their …show more content…
The author’s use of imagery to describe her passing paints a disturbing picture that highlights how, despite the opportunities offered to her by Tom, she was unsuccessful in creating a better life for herself. Specifically, the description of her having been “knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust” implies that she is permanently trapped in the Valley of Ashes, an industrial city where people who are generally less well off reside. This can be inferred because the blood, which had previously given her life, is now spilled onto and mixed with the dust on the ground of the city. Her death and the idea that her life is combining with the street below her signifies the idea of “ashes to ashes” and is a reminder of the inescapable cycle that everything ends where it began. This can also be applied to mobility between classes because even though she tried to climb the social ladder she was ultimately unsuccessful due to her background and is now permanently tied to the place where she

Does Fitzgerald Present Myrtle's Struggles In The Great Gatsby

By employing conflicts, Fitzgerald emphasizes how the American Dream is an illusion because the lower class is subjected to being marginalized by the superior class due to social divisions. The first conflict Fitzgerald uses is Myrtle, who struggles to love and respect her husband because she feels trapped in her marriage. She believes that she can accomplish the American Dream by getting wealth and act as if she belongs to a higher class with the possessions she receives from Tom. However, she is…

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Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gatsby Essay

objectivity down to pronounce, “Gatsby turned out all right at the end” (Fitzgerald, 6). This is not taken lightly by Barbara Will, who notes that Gatsby is “a figure marked by failure and shadowed by death throughout most of the novel” and is far from “all right”. As she notes, this idea holds to Fitzgerald’s style if Gatsby is looked at as an embodiment of the American dream. Throughout the novel, Gatsby has no grasp of time or reality, for that matter, and Gatsby, a man who sees everything with…

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Roles Of Women In The Great Gatsby

unintended consequence of creating just another standard women felt pressured to conform. Meanwhile a profound novel, The Great Gatsby, recognized the rapidly changing social dynamic. A variety of taboos are exposed throughout the novel in order to accurately reflect the era, such as impractical parties, drinking, and the new woman ideology. The female characters, in particular, struggle throughout the novel to maintain their identity…

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Great Gatsby Essay

The Great Gatsby-RRS Title: The Great Gatsby Publication Date: 1925 Author: F. Scott Fitzergerald Nationality: American Author's Birth/Death Date: September 24, 1896, December 21, 1940 Distinguishing Traits of Author: F. Scott Fitzergerald was an American author who wrote novels and short stories whose writings were the epitome of the Jazz Age, a term he invented. His life is parallel to that of Jay Gatsby in the way that both met someone…

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The Great Gatsby has become such a classic of American fiction that its avowed literary merits easily obscure those qualities that also made it (and continue to make it) a cult favorite. In a way, the early history of the book is a counterpoint to the history of J. D. Salinger the Catcher in the Rye, with both books ending up as perennial favorites. The difference is that Catcher was a cult favorite first and then a critical success, whereas The Great Gatsby was praised by the critics long before…

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What Does The Valley Of Ashes Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald uses multiple symbols to convey the theme of his classic novel, “The Great Gatsby.” A symbol can be defined as a literary device that contains several layers of meaning, often concealed at first sight, and representative of several other aspects, concepts or traits than those that are visible in the literal translation alone. Symbolism is using an object or action that means something more than its literal meaning. A symbols purpose in a story is often to stand for something abstract…

Words 2563 - Pages 11