Great Gatsby Last Names Essay

The Importance of Last Names Today, we have grown to take last names for granted. They’re just always there, no one really questions them. But how did we reach this point? What was the original significance of our surnames? This question of importance also branches between The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby, where we see the curious situations of two men, Roger Prynne and James Gatz, who changed their last names, causing us to question whether or not surnames could perhaps have some negative impact on an individual’s life. Altogether, there is a plethora of inquiries to mak about these curious surnames and their importance to our lives, including both positive and negative impacts to individuals over the centuries. At their core, surnames are crucial for society to properly function. In early times, mankind thought up last names and employed them to differentiate between people, a use we still have for them today. They could be descriptive, such as Miller for a person who worked in a mill, or patronymic. Patronymic surnames were created based on a person’s father or grandfather. For example, a man with a father named Richard may have a surname of Richardson (Richard’s son). If that man’s name was John, his son might get the last name Johnson (John’s son), and so on and so forth, changing between generations of a family.These new inventions greatly
aided society because now, people had a way of differentiating each other besides just pointing out the person they were speaking of. Surnames also served to create a proper legacy for people. Now, assuming an individual’s surname got passed down as opposed to changing between generations, they could create their own family with their own last name to leave behind once their time on earth was done. Last names also force people to be more honest and responsible today.When filling out an important document, or doing almost anything in today’s society, people have to write down their full name at least once. This creates a trail for the government to follow them by if need be, which basically plants the idea in the back of citizens’ minds that “I have to act responsibly” because of the knowledge that anything they do can be found out with relative ease. This is sometimes casually referred to as a “paper trail". However, there are a few bugs in the system of surnames.
Like any innovation, last names came with their fair share of issues. The obvious problem was still mixing people up who coincidentally had the same first AND last names. Of course, the system had, and still has, plenty of kinks beyond just confusion. This method of naming, especially when it involved the job a person held, led to society essentially locking people into social classes and careers based on their name, leading to both positive and negative impacts depending on what exactly a person’s last name was implemented to represent about them or their family. Someone with a surname chosen after a prestigious job may end up favored by society and having an unfair advantage in life, while one with a lower class name would most likely face more struggles socially (and possibly as far as career is concerned) throughout their lifetime. That being said, although we’re never explicitly told this, it is safe to assume that individuals with names based on lower class jobs such as Miller or Smith may have tried their best over the years to gain higher level jobs to prove the stereotype behind their surname wrong. In fact, we still see evidence of this mentality today. Furthermore, today we can also observe people making fun of each other’s last names sometimes, a continuation of the idea that our surnames can bring on a negative reputation or impression. People tend to get trapped by these reputations and negativity associated with some surnames, and sometimes they opt to change their last names.
Obviously, in the early days when surnames had the potential to dictate a person’s entire life, there was plenty of motivation to change last names to something more positive or desirable, possibly one of a wealthier connotation if need be. However, in more recent eras, individuals have been observed choosing a different surname to hide from something, typically an event or their general experience with life up until that point. This is a mentality which ties together The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby, because both tales include an important character who changed his name to escape from his past. In Hawthorne’s work, this character is Roger Prynne (now Chillingworth) who changed his name to pretend that he himself was dead, shutting out his old life and beginning a new, evidently more sinister and controlling identity. Fitzgerald brings readers James Gatz, who changed his name to Jay Gatsby in order to forget about his previous life experience and his existence with his poor family, so that he could become the rich bootlegger that he is at the time that Nick meets and describes him to readers. Moreover, in traditional marriage the woman typically changes her last name to that of her husband. Why is that? Although there are plenty of theoretical reasons to be found, such as religion, love, even taxes, it is safe to say that the switch very intensely symbolizes her previous, single life ending and her fresh start as a wife, as well as her future life with a family of her own with her husband beginning. Because of this, the changing of last names arguably represents a change within a person. These ideas all convey a few conflicting messages, but this is where we have found ourself as a society today. However, we must ask ourselves if we are doing things correctly today or whether we as a society must take strides toward improvement. While these are questions which can be asked of any issue, the topic at hand is how humanity handles last names. Are they more or less important now than they were in medieval times? Must mankind place more emphasis on them? Or are we doing relatively well? It is painfully obvious that humanity as a whole does not use surnames based on employment or other descriptions of an individual any longer. However, in other areas of life surnames are just as important, if not more than they were originally. For example, humans still utilize last names as a way of differentiation between people who happen to possess similar first names. This is a use that surnames will always serve. Furthermore, the reputation behind any person’s surname can and will follow them through life, even if that reputation has nothing to do with them (i.e. having the same last name as a celebrity or an infamous criminal). At the end of the day, last names are now more crucial in some aspects of everyday life than they were centuries ago, but at the same time less necessary in others.
Altogether, last names are a very crucial aspect of human life.
At the beginning they were based off of details in people’s lives, and today society uses them to keep everybody honest, as well as for differentiating between individuals. As far as negative points go, there are people like James Gatz and Roger Prynne who choose to change their surnames to escape their pasts, a trend we also see in matrimony. All things considered, we utilize surnames much more for some parts of life today and much less in others than we once did, mainly due to the growth in size and evolution in how society as a whole
functions.