The very name conjures up images of pleasantly smoky speakeasies, flappers in glittering gowns, and hard-livin', fast-talkin' gangsters YAHOO. Yet pictures of costly silken suits and diamond encrusted pocket watches hardly seem like fitting attire for the likes of common mobsters.
It seems inconceivable that they could have hit enough people over the head to afford such luxuries. Respectable working families looked up to these rough riders as the ultimate success story demonstrating the survival of the fittest and the ingenuity of the American man. The "old money" folks are able to see right through his deceptions. Irrevocably when his house of cards falls, all those friends that he treasured turned out to simply be parasitic people who take advantage of his generosity.
Short Summary of The Great Gatsby While The Great Gatsby is a highly specific portrait of American society during the Roaring Twenties, its story is also one that has been told hundreds of times, and is perhaps as old as America itself: a man claws his way from rags to riches, only to find that his wealth cannot afford him the privileges enjoyed by those born into the upper class.
The central character is Jay Gatsby, a wealthy New Yorker of indeterminate occupation. Gatsby is primarily known for the lavish parties he throws every weekend at his ostentatious Gothic mansion in West Egg.
He is suspected of being involved in illegal bootlegging and other underworld activities. Although this group was prominent in the American South, there were still a couple members in the North. By the s, th The Great Gatbsy portrays an accurate representation of America during the Prohibition.
In conclusion, The Great Gatsby is an accurate representation of the American Roaring Twenties through the historical depiction of the American Dream, flapper girls, and the Prohibition.
This movie shows the time period where the war just ended and America was eager to dream of obtaining wealth as well as having a materialistic life. These degenerates played an important role in American history, they were more than just bank-robbers and gunslingers, and they were men that affected all facets of society.
They were celebrities, some of the most recognized men in America. Their evil deeds made the front page of every newspaper. They were some of the richest men in America, but most of all; they were the scapegoats for America's problems.
They were hated by many, respected by few and feared by all. The vulgar newly rich citizens were ruining society as morals loosened all around. Old money became hypocrisy, claiming they were pure when they were just as ruined as the new money. This is demonstrated in the Great Gatsby by Tom Buchanon. Click the map infographic to download.
Rich people do like to spend their time drawing subtle distinctions between types of wealth. Nick tells us right away that East Egg is the wealthier, more elite of the two Eggs. Despite all his money, Gatsby lives in West Egg, suggesting that he has not been able to complete his transformation into a member of the social elite.
The distance that separates him from Daisy isn't just the water of the bay; it's also class. The second contrast is between the city scenes and the suburban ones. Like Nick Carraway, Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby commute into the city for their respective lines of work, while the women are left behind. This geographical divide ends up being a gender distinction, too. But the city is important in other ways, too; Tom only interacts with his mistress in the city, and Gatsby only sees Meyer Wolfsheim there.
They both use the city to hide their goings-on from the people they value on Long Island. We open in the early s : just after World War I , and right in the middle of Prohibition , when alcohol was effectively illegal.
Meanwhile, Daisy and Tom live in a house that is also extravagant, but one that has its luxury somewhat concealed :. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay.
The 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—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run.
The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon 1. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug 1.
The house is much more fit for its location - Georgian Colonial is an architectural style that is appropriate to America as its name suggests, it came from England during the colonial period. The description also confirms the permanence of the Buchanans' mansion.
Meanwhile, the place where Daisy and Tom live is deeply embedded and seems unbreakable. No one's pulling this thing out of the ground anytime soon. The Valley of Ashes in The Great Gatsby functions both as a literal place where the climactic event of the novel happens, and is also a powerful symbol — in other words, a concrete object that stands for an abstract idea connected to the novel's themes.
The Valley of Ashes is the name that Nick gives to an industrial neighborhood in Queens that the rich have to drive through on their way from the Eggs to Manhattan. This is where George Wilson has his gas station, and where Myrtle Wilson is run over and killed by Daisy.
Suitably, it is a horribly bleak and drab place:. About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a 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.
Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight. This is the place where those who cannot make it in the cutthroat world of East Coast capitalism end up. It is also the place propping up much of that wealth through the production coming from the factories that are polluting the spot.
But the description that transforms the ash that covers everything from simply being dust to a scary substance capable of creating otherworldly plans and people signals that this Valley of Ashes has rich symbolic meaning. For a detailed analysis of how this symbol functions within the great Gatsby, check out our articles on how to approach symbols in general and on the Valley of Ashes as a symbol in particular. There are several ways to go about finding your topic when tackling this kind of assignment.
Here are some possibilities:. Close reading. You can focus on settings themselves, digging really deeply into the description of one, two, or more places or times in the novel to explore how word choice, similes, metaphors, and any other literary devices help the reader visualize location.
For example, you could trace the way the word "ash" appears in the novel, at first defining The Valley of Ashes itself is a kind of fantastical alternate reality, and then spreading out toward the places of the privileged. You could focus on a literary device called metonymy, using a part to stand in for the whole, and explore why the novel chooses to focus on Dustin Ash as the representative aspect of this neighborhood.
Connection to character. Often, setting is a way to define character. If you write about this, your essay will tease out the common qualities of a character and of the place most closely associated with that character. These will either be synergistic, with one amplifying the other, or else they will play as a contrast, undercutting the character. In our case, for instance, Gatsby's mansion speaks volumes about how he sees himself and his money, and also about the vast gulf that separates him from the upper elite that he really wants to be part of.
Conversely, Nick's pokey little house seems humble and unassuming, much like Nick wants to project himself to be. But in reality, by being located next to obscenely luxurious mansions, the house is only falsely modest, and shows off some of Nick's poorly disguised snobbery. Read more about all the novel's characters in our overview article. Connection to theme. Similarly, setting can help clarify a novel's theme by providing a concrete example of an abstract idea.
In the great Gatsby, you could focus on the way one or more of the settings play into the failure of the American Dream , one of this novel's most salient themes. One way to do this would be to focus on the Valley of Ashes , the place where dreams come to die, both literally and figuratively.
If the idea of the American dream is that through hard work anyone can become successful, then George Wilson's tragic fate, as exemplified through his garage and circumstances, serves to completely debunk this myth.
Once you've figured out what you want to argue, start small by analyzing chunks of the text where the symbol pops up, and then broadening your points out to the rest of the book. This way, your argument will be strengthened by textual evidence. Learn how to write about the themes that settings are usually linked to.
Get help on other assignments by reading our guide on analyzing or comparing and contrasting characters. Brush up on the context of these settings in our summary of The Great Gatsby. We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:. Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia.
She is passionate about improving student access to higher education. Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub. See how other students and parents are navigating high school, college, and the college admissions process. Ask questions; get answers. How to Get a Perfect , by a Perfect Scorer. Score on SAT Math. Score on SAT Reading. Score on SAT Writing. What ACT target score should you be aiming for?
How to Get a Perfect 4. How to Write an Amazing College Essay. A Comprehensive Guide. Choose Your Test. Posted by Dr. Anna Wulick Nov 4, AM. All the Settings In The Great Gatsby Before analyzing the Great Gatsby settings, I'm going to briefly explain and describe all the different settings that the novel uses. Time Setting The Great Gatsby takes place during the summer of Quick Note on Our Citations Our citation format in this guide is chapter. Prohibition went into effect in , making almost all recreation alcohol illegal.
This means that any time you see people drinking alcohol in the novel, they are breaking the law. In The Great Gatsby , the power and agency of women come up often. The three women in the novel make choices about their independence; Daisy and Myrtle find it hard to escape dysfunctional marriages, though they try through affairs; Jordan is able to lead a more independent life. The production and ownership of cars skyrocketed after Ford popularized the efficient mass production of cars by assembly line.
In the , 1 out of 4 Americans owned a car. In the novel, cars are associated with danger and recklessness, as people are constantly either talking about car accidents or getting into them. And of course, the climax of the novel is when Daisy runs over and kills Myrtle.
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