Modernism in ‘The Great Gatsby’

The Great Gatsby is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The novel follows a group of characters in fictional towns called West Egg and East Egg. the Great Gatsby is a story of disappointed expectations between lovers. Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of ruined moral, social, and economic values. The Great Gatsby delves into themes like idealism and American dreams. The pursuit to achieve their dreams made them embark on a journey to different towns. In the course of this essay, Jay Gatsby and which is the main character of the novel and tom Buchanan is considered the main focus. This novel shows the cogent evidence of the emptiness that comes in when people do not realize that there are things that money can buy and money can not buy. Money can not buy what matters.

In The Great Gatsby, the character Tom Buchanan serves as a foil to the main character Jay Gatsby. Gatsby’s personality emphasizes tom Buchanan’s qualities by contrast. While tom is loud and ignoramus, Gatsby is cultured, resourceful and highly intelligent. Nick, the first-person narrator, describes Tom as an ivy league player who feels entitled by his inherited wealth. He is a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. His words and actions in this novel show him to be biased, arrogant and unfaithful. Gatsby, on the other hand, is portrayed as the rich man who is obsessed with Daisy Buchanan, the wife of Tom Buchanan. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. Fitzgerald reveals the character Gatsby to be a young, innocent man who risks everything on his dreams. Tom is a stagnant character that acts as a barrier to gatsby achieving his goal of taking his old lover, Daisy back. Fitzgerald uses these two characters to comment on the wasteful lifestyle of the rich and how futile it is to fill your life with money.

F. Scott Fitzgerald focuses on Daisy Buchanan’s relationship with Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby and also the obsessive character of Jay Gatsby towards Daisy Buchanan. Relationships and love is one of the key incentives in Great Gatsby. Tom’s love for Daisy is unrealistic. The difference between these two is how satisfying and horrible they treat Daisy. While tom physically and emotionally hurts daisy and also has multiple extra-marital affairs which is known to daisy, Jay is more of a very caring and supportive man to her. He does everything in his power to make her happy. In other, for Jay Gatsby to be with Daisy, he needs to fulfill her version and thought of the American dream which prompted his decision to throw big parties every Saturday to impress her. As the novel goes on, it is seen that the love between Tom and Daisy is debilitated while the love story between Daisy and Jay is like a movie, it fades quickly.

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