The Waste Land And The Great Gatsby Essay
After World War I, people's lifestyles, values, culture, and faith went through drastic changes. The new trends opened up new aspects of life and destroyed the Victorian era values.
Such values include sexual self control, low tolerance of crime, and a strict social code of behavior. The devastation left from WWI, the absence of hope and faith and the loss of values contributed to many authors’ feelings that the world lacked purpose. This is visible in literary works: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot. Modernism generally encompasses a variety of specific artistic and philosophical movements. The premodernist world is characterized by sense of order and stability, rooted in: morality, faith,
collective …show more content…
But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the colemn dumping ground” (Fitzgerald 26). Fitzgerald indirectly implies that theses are the eyes of God. They symbolize God staring down upon the American society, judging them and seeing America as a moral wasteland. Regardless of the absence of religion from the characters in The Great Gatsby , God is still there. He is omniscient and omnipresent. But God was replaced with capitalism in the novel. Instead of a religious portrayal, the world exhibited
God through an advertisement on a billboard.
The idea of having morals and lacking morals is further illustrated in the way Fitzgerald groups his characters in the novel. The characters are classified into West and East Egg. Nick and Jay Gatsby who represent the West Egg are still attached to the Victorian moral values like human respect, faith, honesty, and other virtuous values. These values can be seen in the scene where Nick first interacts with Tom and Daisy during their dinner party. During this scene, Tom receives a phone call from his mistress, Myrtle Wilson. Nick who felt uncomfortable and “to a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing‒my own instinct was
Such values include sexual self control, low tolerance of crime, and a strict social code of behavior. The devastation left from WWI, the absence of hope and faith and the loss of values contributed to many authors’ feelings that the world lacked purpose. This is visible in literary works: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot. Modernism generally encompasses a variety of specific artistic and philosophical movements. The premodernist world is characterized by sense of order and stability, rooted in: morality, faith,
collective …show more content…
But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the colemn dumping ground” (Fitzgerald 26). Fitzgerald indirectly implies that theses are the eyes of God. They symbolize God staring down upon the American society, judging them and seeing America as a moral wasteland. Regardless of the absence of religion from the characters in The Great Gatsby , God is still there. He is omniscient and omnipresent. But God was replaced with capitalism in the novel. Instead of a religious portrayal, the world exhibited
God through an advertisement on a billboard.
The idea of having morals and lacking morals is further illustrated in the way Fitzgerald groups his characters in the novel. The characters are classified into West and East Egg. Nick and Jay Gatsby who represent the West Egg are still attached to the Victorian moral values like human respect, faith, honesty, and other virtuous values. These values can be seen in the scene where Nick first interacts with Tom and Daisy during their dinner party. During this scene, Tom receives a phone call from his mistress, Myrtle Wilson. Nick who felt uncomfortable and “to a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing‒my own instinct was