Preview

Revisting the Golden 20s in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
580 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Revisting the Golden 20s in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
Write about some of the ways Fitzgerald tells the story in chapter 2
‘The Great Gatsby’, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published in 1925 demonstrates Fitzgerald’s mixed opinions of the 1920’s, otherwise known as the ‘Golden 20’s’, the realisation of the ‘American Dream’. Fitzgerald uses a number of techniques to tell the story in chapter 2. Chapter 2 opens with a detailed and very graphic description of ‘The Valley of Ashes’ delivered by Nick Carraway, an extremely poor and ash ridden area between West Egg and New York City,
‘…where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens’.
The image really depicts the two worlds, as this is a place of industry and is the polar opposite of West Egg with all its’ newly rich residents.
With a great use of colour and vividness being used throughout chapter 1, this comes to a sudden halt in the introduction to chapter 2 as everything is described as having no colour, being grey, ‘ash-grey men’ and ‘grey land’ being examples of this. This really represents the poverty of ‘The Valley of Ashes’, which was the negative result to the economic boom. It also contrasts with Tom Buchanan’s apartment in which he shares with his lover Myrtle Wilson.
The persistent reminder of impoverishment hangs over the people who live there are the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg, plastered on a billboard that looks out of place in a world of people who would not be able to afford his service,
‘Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare.’
The overwhelming sense of consumerism and advertising is reinstated, manifesting the materialisation that was the 1920’s and the constant wish to realise the ‘American Dream’. Later on in the novel a man named George B. Wilson recognises the billboard to be ‘the eyes of God’; this could establish the thought of the capitalism removing all existence of a theological God and moral standards.
Tom Buchanan takes Nick to visit George in chapter 2, this is when you are introduced to his wife Myrtle Wilson

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the Great Gatsby, the valley of ashes is the dark side of the American Dream. The…

    • 164 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” the narrator, Nick Carraway, moves to West Egg to work as a bond trader in Manhattan. He grew up in a prominent family. He came from an old money family in Chicago. He attended Yale University and is known as a very well rounded man. This novel is based off of the 1920’s era. It was named the Roaring Twenties after the Great War when the United States underwent a change in radical and social reform. During this period, society was torn apart due to the clash between old and new money. The Great Gatsby reflects the American society during this period and undoubtedly depicts the difference between traditional and corrupted values. The Great Gatsby is a great depiction of the Roaring Twenties because of greed, parties, and fast women.…

    • 448 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In chapter 2 Fitzgerald creates a gothic vision, using bleak descriptions of the waste land that lies between the two eggs. Fitzgerald uses ashes as a way to symbolize the impure, dim and dirty lives that the rich lead: “ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys” which “ash grey men” inhibit (if you come to close to them it can become harmful). The desolate waste land is an industrial dumping site and I feel Fitzgerald uses it as a device to contradict the world of beauty glamour that its creators live in. It is a way of showing the darker, less glamorous truth of the new consumer culture as the vast amounts of waste create such an unpleasant sight. This…

    • 571 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    As Nick travels East his views on his surroundings contrast considerably to those he observed as he was travelling through the west, where he lives. As he enters the East his initial description uses words such as ‘Fashionable’ and ‘Cheerful’ which is a deep juxtaposition to the words used to describe the West i.e. ‘superficial’ or ‘bizarre’. His optimism in travelling East is expressed as he describes the ‘East Egg glittered along the water’ this shows how he sees it across the water as a place of wonder and amazement and that all the lights and colour attract him to it and pull him which is why he is initially so optimistic about going there. America in the 1920’s was described as part of the ‘Jazz age ‘and even though they separated themselves from Europe to avoid a class system there is a very definite divide between the West and East egg. As Nick lives in the West egg which is seen as the ‘less fashionable’ of the two, which runs on new money, with lots of ‘colossal’ mansions ‘squeezed’ together, Nick is, as predicted excited about entering the East egg which is considerably richer and better established.…

    • 1332 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ridge Scholarship Essay

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages

    On the surface, The Great Gatsby reads as a story of thwarted love between a man and a woman. The real theme of the novel, however, encompasses a highly symbolic meditation on 1920’s America as a whole, and, in particular, the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. Fitzgerald portrays the 1920’s as an era of decaying social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby himself hosts every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the…

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, pictures the wasted American Dream as it depicts the 1920s in America. The novel paints a vivid picture of the ‘roaring’ twenties, a time when values of the old generation were being rejected. Skirts became shorter and women cut their hair into bobbed styles; a lifestyle with little moral or religious restraint began to appear. It was a time of extravagance and high living. On the other hand, the 1920s was also a time of extreme loneliness and non-identity as people longed for life as it used to be. The war had promised so much and for many the results were disappointing. The number of cars on the road during this decade went from 9 million up to 26 million and this allowed young people to ‘escape’ from the supervision of their parents, which contributed to a more carefree set of morals. From a modern reader’s perspective, this novel demonstrates the superficiality of the lives of the wealthy, such…

    • 1445 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Stories are built on the premise that the past shapes the present. Regret, nostalgia, guilt, grief--they are the building blocks of fiction” (Henderson). Jay Gatsby is stuck in the past. Everything he does in his life is directly related to events that has occurred in his past. From trying to win Daisy’s heart, to inheriting money from his dead family, Gatsby doesn’t know what to do with his life from the now and the future. Gatsby isn’t alone either, Almost all the characters in The Great Gatsby, just like many people in modern society, tend to glorify and dwell on the past instead of living in the present.…

    • 113 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Study Guide Great Gatsby

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages

    On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era…

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Ebb and the Great Gatsby

    • 1472 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Published in 1925 American, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ is set in 1922, a time period commonly referred to as the ‘the Roaring twenties’ or the ‘jazz age’. This period in American history reflects the extremities of both romanticism and materialism, as well as a time of prosperity and the classic ‘American dream’ due to the conclusion of world war one. Love, hope and morality are reflected through the naivety of the time.…

    • 1472 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The valley of ashes in The Great Gatsby symbolize the negative byproducts of the endless pursuit of wealth during the 1920s. Although the Industrial Revolution brought countless technological advancements, the pollution and dumping from smokestacks and factories, responsible for the manufacturing of the new technology, led to the creation of the valley of ashes. The smokestacks and factories were the results of capitalism, a system which solely focuses on gaining wealth. The ashes represent the lifelessness of the “ash gray men” living…

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Thus the anger that that Gatsby had as he would drive into the Town of New York City he would see how the coal miners were killing their own family slowly as the inhale the ashes of coal. “The valley of ashes a fantastic farm were ashes grow to wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens...” (Fitzgerald 23). This showed that Gatsby still cared about the poor because he knew he was poor at some point in time and this hurt him it could’ve possible remineded him of back home.…

    • 455 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There is Myrtle Wilson's gaudy, flashy hotel paradise in which she can pretend that she is glamorous, elite, wanted and loved. She clings fiercely enough to this ragged dream to brave the righteous anger of Tom Buchanan by voicing her jealous terror that he will return to his wife. There is a desperation to her full, spirited style of living, she wants so much to escape the grey, dead land of the Valley of Ashes that she colours her life with any brightness she can find, be it broken glass or diamonds. Nick describes land she finds herself in as a wasteland, a desert, saying "this is the Valley of Ashes -- a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air" (page 29).…

    • 1024 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the early 1900’s, there was a decade of endless partying, drinking, swinging, and full-on hedonism known as the “Roaring 20’s”. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald tackles the views that many people hold about about the 20’s and shows them to be gloomy, wistful, and tainted by people’s own memories.…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In the Valley of Ashes, there is poverty and no hopes for achieving the American Dream. After World War One there was poverty and many people felt lost because so many lives were lost during the war. Gatsby worked hard to try to win Daisy’s love. He watches the green light at the end of her dock. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter -- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning---” This shows his longing and hope to be with Daisy. Gatsby can never quite reach the dock, showing his loss of the American Dream. Many people felt like they just could not quite reach their goals of their American Dreams. It was staring them right in their face, but it was not obtainable. The characters are careless in this novel. All they care about is living in the moment and not about the consequences. Also, Nick felt like he was living a lie. He was around people who did not have a care in the world. “Thirty- the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair” (Fitzgerald). This reveals how Nick feels like he has nothing to live for anymore. He is now thirty. He is not married and feels like he will be lonely for the rest of his life. He decides the East is not the…

    • 1729 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    the great gatsby

    • 2831 Words
    • 12 Pages

    It's elaborate, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. There is a lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon.…

    • 2831 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays

Related Topics