Similarities Between Good Country People And The Great Gatsby

Criticizing Conservative Continuity
The concept of time has always perplexed man and woman alike throughout history. The Egyptians developed the first device to measure this mysterious force. Ever since then, humans have created a society where time controls everything: when to wake up, when to go to work, when to go to bed, etc. As time goes on, things change and previous trends in one generation become outdated in the next. However, many individuals cannot bring themselves to adjust to modern life. During the early formations of the United States of America, pervicacious loyalists refused to change their stance pertaining to preserving British authority in the colonies. Then, Southern states during the mid- to late-nineteenth century were
Scott Fitzgerald, both authors excoriate individuals who form opinions based solely on older traditions and mindsets. In “Good Country People,” Mrs. Hopewell, a middle-aged mother, assumes and concludes that she can trust a Bible salesman who stops at her door because he appears to be from the country. “...[Hopewell and her daughter] had had a nice visitor yesterday, a young man selling Bibles. ‘Lord,’ [Hopewell] said, ‘he bored me to death but he was so sincere and genuine I couldn’t be rude to him. He was just good country people, you know,’ she said, ‘—just the salt of the earth’” (O’Connor 12-13). As Hopewell discusses her encounter with the salesman, her preconceived notions of people reveal themselves; Hopewell assumes the salesman possesses innocent intentions simply because he is from the country and clearly devout in his faith, as seen by his profession. Hopewell’s old-fashioned mindset pushes her to invite a stranger into her home for dinner, which eventually leads to the salesman stealing from and taking advantage of Hopewell’s daughter, Hulga. Similarly, in The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates the repercussions that result from chauvinistic thinking through the extremely wealthy and entitled character, Tom Buchanan. Throughout the novel, Tom’s conservatism leads the other characters to ignore his statements altogether as they lose respect for him because of his
Scott Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby, condemn their characters for refusing to let go of the past by highlighting the insanity of their conservative mindsets. In “A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner asserts the craziness of those who refuse to mold to modern ways through Miss Emily Grierson. Throughout the short story, Faulkner displays Miss Emily as a mysterious and traditional woman who resists any variation in her life, no matter how small the issue. “Change is Miss Emily’s enemy, so she refuses to acknowledge it, whether that change is the death of her father, the arrival of tax bills, the decay of her house, or even the beginning of residential mail delivery” (Mosby). Her intransigence appears childish when she refuses to allow the townspeople to install a mailbox for postal service. “A Rose for Emily” concludes with the townspeople going upstairs to find something very disturbing in Miss Emily’s locked up room: the corpse of Homer Barron, the construction man who mysteriously disappeared. “The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep … had cuckolded him. … in the second pillow… we saw a long strand of [Emily’s] iron-gray hair” (Faulkner). Since Miss Emily Grierson is too stuck in her idealized past, she cannot acknowledge Barron’s resistance to marry her. Instead of accepting the fate that she does not want, Miss Grierson kills Barron and lays next to him as his corpse rotted