Contextual Study: The Great Gatsby And American Beauty
Contextual Study: The Great Gatsby & American Beauty
1. Comparison provides insight into the evolution that American culture has undergone throughout the 20th century
2. Jazz Age: era of great hope for the future, as end of WW1 set up expectations in people's minds that the future would be bright for everyone
3. decade of economic prosperity, with wealth a desired goal, as money thought to bring happiness and social & financial success
4. underlying the hope was a sense of shallowness and superficiality
5. period of excess when money was spent extravagantly on having a good time
6. rising popularity of Jazz: music form particularly associated with notion of freedom, with new dance crazes, The Charleston, …show more content…
throwing off the etiquette associated with earlier dance forms; exhibited a zest for the new-found freedom from restrictions
7.
Technology: from Gatsby's juice machine to Ricky's video camera
8. Music: from jazz to rock (Lester's Pink Floyd)
9. Conservatism: from no mention of sexual intimacy to sex underscoring the entire tale, including homosexuality being acceptable by the majority, which would have been unthinkable back then; irony of the fact that the homosexuals are seemingly the only normal, happy people in the story
10. Drugs: drug of choice shifting from alcohol to marijuana
11. Social class: 'new money' was frowned upon, now, being wealthy entails class and social grace; background very important back then, 'old money' (East Egg) and British products (Rolls Royce, imported shirts) considered classy, now patriotism, 'Buy American' promoted
12. Wealth: Gatsby illegally acquires wealth to win back Daisy, but Lester gives it all up to live a more satisfying and wholesome life
13. American Dream: represents path to happiness thru material success: seen in the idolising of successful industrialists, Carnegie, Rockefeller
14. Twenties: originally revolved around discovery & individualism, but easy money and relaxed social values corrupted this dream
15. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before …show more content…
us
16. To acquire his dream of Daisy, he first had to acquire wealth and all the trappings of success - the ostentatious parties, clothing, cars and house only a means to an end; set against this powerful longing are the characters he comes across - vacuous people with no dream
17. Gatsby's dream of loving Daisy ruined by difference in social status, his resorting to crime to make enough to impress her and the rampant materialism that characterises her lifestyle
18. From her materialistic world, filled with shallow pursuits, Daisy is a stranger to the kind of devotion and sensitivity that Gatsby represents; Nick Carroway, disgusted by the Buchanans' superficiality, says: They were careless people, Tom and Daisy... they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
19. Just as Americans have given American meaning thru their dreams of their own lives, Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealised perfection that she doesn't possess or deserve
20. Just as Gatsby's dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth
21. Nineties: original dream all but forgotten, replaced by mindless urge to acquire more wealth
22. Lester Burnham already, by defintion, living the American Dream - has wealth, security, big house in good neighbourhood, family - yet still unsatisfied
23.
His dull and monotonous voice introduces the audience to his daily routine, when he declares, plain and simple, This is my neighbourhood, this is my street, this is my life; hopeless tone he has set continues when he cynically comments jerking off in the shower will be the high point of my day; shows his disheartenment with his life
24. More wealth he has, more 'sedated' he feels, more dead inside
25. Seeing Angela helps him realises there is no happiness in wealth, the hollowness of the American Dream
26. He experiences a paradigm shift: he wakes up and smells the roses and realises that the Dream is simply a mirage, a hollow shell of what it might have represented
27. Lester abandons everything he has struggled for in search of something more solid and wholesome; striving for some ideal is the way by which man can feel a sense of involvement, a sense of his own identity
28. He undergoes a transition from a life in which he was 'locked up', to a new life in which he is now free to control his
future
29. The Dream offered a glowing vision of civilised man presented with limitless opportunites for achievement and prosperity in the New World, and contained the image of the 'self-made man', who achieved success by accumulating wealth; the Dream that promised so much had been corrupted by the shallowness and hollowness of the values that supported it; now seen to be only an illusion and nothing more
30. Money and success brought only superficial happiness and this was usually accompanied by corruption and spiritual desolation; the Dream that produced men who sought to accumulate enormous wealth left people with little personal fulfillment; the Dream itself was false
31. Texts characterise different times in history, so rooted in different interpretations of the Dream: from simply having an unquestioning urge to actualise the Dream, to questioning the validity of the Dream after having actualised it
32. Texts stress the need for hopes and dreams to give meaning and purpose to man's efforts
33. The juxtaposition of idealistic (Lester & Gatsby) and wordly (Carolyn & Buchanans) attitudes significantly indicates a moving away from faith and hope in a world where material interests have driven out sentimentality and faith; idealism is utterly hopeless and defenceless against a material society, and results in the death of both Gatsby and Lester
1. Comparison provides insight into the evolution that American culture has undergone throughout the 20th century
2. Jazz Age: era of great hope for the future, as end of WW1 set up expectations in people's minds that the future would be bright for everyone
3. decade of economic prosperity, with wealth a desired goal, as money thought to bring happiness and social & financial success
4. underlying the hope was a sense of shallowness and superficiality
5. period of excess when money was spent extravagantly on having a good time
6. rising popularity of Jazz: music form particularly associated with notion of freedom, with new dance crazes, The Charleston, …show more content…
throwing off the etiquette associated with earlier dance forms; exhibited a zest for the new-found freedom from restrictions
7.
Technology: from Gatsby's juice machine to Ricky's video camera
8. Music: from jazz to rock (Lester's Pink Floyd)
9. Conservatism: from no mention of sexual intimacy to sex underscoring the entire tale, including homosexuality being acceptable by the majority, which would have been unthinkable back then; irony of the fact that the homosexuals are seemingly the only normal, happy people in the story
10. Drugs: drug of choice shifting from alcohol to marijuana
11. Social class: 'new money' was frowned upon, now, being wealthy entails class and social grace; background very important back then, 'old money' (East Egg) and British products (Rolls Royce, imported shirts) considered classy, now patriotism, 'Buy American' promoted
12. Wealth: Gatsby illegally acquires wealth to win back Daisy, but Lester gives it all up to live a more satisfying and wholesome life
13. American Dream: represents path to happiness thru material success: seen in the idolising of successful industrialists, Carnegie, Rockefeller
14. Twenties: originally revolved around discovery & individualism, but easy money and relaxed social values corrupted this dream
15. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before …show more content…
us
16. To acquire his dream of Daisy, he first had to acquire wealth and all the trappings of success - the ostentatious parties, clothing, cars and house only a means to an end; set against this powerful longing are the characters he comes across - vacuous people with no dream
17. Gatsby's dream of loving Daisy ruined by difference in social status, his resorting to crime to make enough to impress her and the rampant materialism that characterises her lifestyle
18. From her materialistic world, filled with shallow pursuits, Daisy is a stranger to the kind of devotion and sensitivity that Gatsby represents; Nick Carroway, disgusted by the Buchanans' superficiality, says: They were careless people, Tom and Daisy... they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
19. Just as Americans have given American meaning thru their dreams of their own lives, Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealised perfection that she doesn't possess or deserve
20. Just as Gatsby's dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth
21. Nineties: original dream all but forgotten, replaced by mindless urge to acquire more wealth
22. Lester Burnham already, by defintion, living the American Dream - has wealth, security, big house in good neighbourhood, family - yet still unsatisfied
23.
His dull and monotonous voice introduces the audience to his daily routine, when he declares, plain and simple, This is my neighbourhood, this is my street, this is my life; hopeless tone he has set continues when he cynically comments jerking off in the shower will be the high point of my day; shows his disheartenment with his life
24. More wealth he has, more 'sedated' he feels, more dead inside
25. Seeing Angela helps him realises there is no happiness in wealth, the hollowness of the American Dream
26. He experiences a paradigm shift: he wakes up and smells the roses and realises that the Dream is simply a mirage, a hollow shell of what it might have represented
27. Lester abandons everything he has struggled for in search of something more solid and wholesome; striving for some ideal is the way by which man can feel a sense of involvement, a sense of his own identity
28. He undergoes a transition from a life in which he was 'locked up', to a new life in which he is now free to control his
future
29. The Dream offered a glowing vision of civilised man presented with limitless opportunites for achievement and prosperity in the New World, and contained the image of the 'self-made man', who achieved success by accumulating wealth; the Dream that promised so much had been corrupted by the shallowness and hollowness of the values that supported it; now seen to be only an illusion and nothing more
30. Money and success brought only superficial happiness and this was usually accompanied by corruption and spiritual desolation; the Dream that produced men who sought to accumulate enormous wealth left people with little personal fulfillment; the Dream itself was false
31. Texts characterise different times in history, so rooted in different interpretations of the Dream: from simply having an unquestioning urge to actualise the Dream, to questioning the validity of the Dream after having actualised it
32. Texts stress the need for hopes and dreams to give meaning and purpose to man's efforts
33. The juxtaposition of idealistic (Lester & Gatsby) and wordly (Carolyn & Buchanans) attitudes significantly indicates a moving away from faith and hope in a world where material interests have driven out sentimentality and faith; idealism is utterly hopeless and defenceless against a material society, and results in the death of both Gatsby and Lester