The place of modernisation in The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has been hailed as one particular of the greatest literary functions of Modernism. The Fantastic Gatsby set the tone for the movement that defined American literature in the early decades effectively into the present day. The characters of The Great Gatsby are a direct reflection of the “lost generation” to which Fitzgerald belonged. In several approaches, his characters could be seen as a portrait of the folks he connected with, if not somewhat of a self-portrait. By way of his person characters, their personalities, and their crises, Fitzgerald presents a detailed display of Modernism in his classic novel.

At the launch of Planet War I, Americans felt the effect of males going off to battle and ladies working in factories lifestyles had been starting to divert from family members traditions. Men and women were forced to abandon their traditional values and adapt to the challenges and changes about them, giving birth to Modernism. Modernism does not have one specific definition, but an array of definitions and interpretations. Simply put, Modernism is “an omnibus term for a number of tendencies in the arts which have been prominent in the initial half of the 20th century” (Drabble 658). According to Hugh Holman, Modernism is “a sturdy and conscious break with tradition. Contemporary implies a historical discontinuity, a sense of alienation, of loss, and of despair” (Holman 326). M. H. Abrams states that “[T]he term Modernism is widely employed to identify new and distinctive features in the subjects, forms, concepts, and designs of literature and the other arts in the early decades of the present century, but particularly following World War I.” Though distinct writers and critics have assigned Modernism varying definitions, they all agree that at the heart of Modernism is a “deliberate and radical break from the traditional bases not only of Western art, but of Western culture in general” (Abrams). Modernism reflected not just a style of literature, but a new worldview.

About the time of the rise of Modernism, the research of Sigmund Freud and other psychologists and anthropologists were coming into light and beginning to have an effect on literature. As a outcome, considerably of the literature from this period reflects concepts of self awareness and stream of consciousness. In general, modernism believes that “we produce the globe in the act of perceiving it” (Holman 326). Holman adds that Modernism rejects conventional values and beliefs, embracing the person, inward, and unconscious as opposed to the social, outward, sub-conscious (Holman 326). From the radical shift of traditional values into a new way of thought and life, the “lost generation” emerged. The Anthology of American Literature reports that this group of self-proclaimed writers discovered themselves totally faithless and isolated from a culture they felt no longer made any sense. These sentiments had been specially exemplified in the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway (McMichael 983). A Glossary of Literary Terms states that writers of the “lost generation” frequently portrayed themselves as becoming estranged from the accepted conventions that they deliberately defied (Abrams).

The characters of The Excellent Gatsby, though they by no means admit to it themselves, are classic members of the lost generation. Their lives are empty they attempt to fill this void with extravagant parties, excessive travelling, and extramarital affairs, and by flaunting their wealth. Think about Tom and Daisy Buchanan, the distant relatives of Nick Carraway. According to Nick, the narrator of the novel, “They had spent a year in France for no certain explanation, and then drifted right here and there unrestfully wherever men and women played polo and were rich together” (Fitzgerald ch.1) in the correct fashion of the wealthy lost generation. Although Tom and Daisy have comfortably settled in East Egg, “I felt that Tom would drift on forever in search of, a tiny wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game” (ch.1). Tom spends his time attempting to make anything of his life by way of his continuous travels, shameless infidelity, and the reading and arguing of books that reflect his private worldview. Nick, being an observant and insightful narrator, says of Tom, “Something was producing him nibble at the edge of stale tips as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart” (ch.1). In the modernist tradition, Tom is by no means content, and constantly seeking one thing more.

One more crucial player in The Wonderful Gatsby is Daisy Buchanan. She is the stereotypical wealthy wife of the 1920’s who has small believed or care about something. Daisy portrays the characteristic Modernist feeling of alienation. She is quite isolated in the way that she is stuck in a loveless marriage, has no understanding or regard of anything that occurs outside her upper class circle, and her only buddies are as lost as she is. Her sole objective seems to be to drift to and fro with Tom as a sort of trophy among his other prizes. Despite the fact that she is a mother, Daisy does not uncover any type of meaning in her role as a mother, but makes use of her daughter as an object to show off. Although Daisy appears to know deep within that her life is empty, in all other respects she seems to be in full denial. Nick notes that he saw “turbulent feelings possessed her” (ch.1) but the only factor remotely resembling a confession of her unhappiness is in the following excerpt:

“[Y]ou see I feel everything’s terrible anyhow,’ she went on in a convinced way. ‘Everybody thinks so—the most sophisticated individuals. And I KNOW. I’ve been everywhere and observed everything and accomplished almost everything.’ Her eyes flashed about her in a defiant way…and she laughed with thrilling scorn. ‘Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!’” (ch.1).

This tiny insight into Daisy is probably the clearest instance in the novel of the mindset of the lost generation. Daisy has travelled and knowledgeable several items, but it has not produced her life at all satisfying. In a section describing Daisy’s past we study that “something within her was crying for a selection. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately—and the choice should be created by some force—of adore, of funds, of unquestionable practicality—that was close at hand” (ch.eight). Even though Daisy could have initially had some adore for Tom, her decision was materially influenced.

Jay Gatsby is the very best example of the Modernist value that focuses much more on person selections, pulling away from the structured society as a whole. Nick says of Gatsby that he had “an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have in no way found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again” (ch.1) Gatsby’s boyhood was spent on his family members farm, living a really conventional loved ones lifestyle. Nonetheless, because he rejects the traditional planet he came from and is not accepted into the globe he is attracted to, Gatsby finds himself alienated from both of these worlds.

The Buchanans have the patterned traditions set forth by their earlier generations, but their true happiness is corrupted by the emptiness in their lives. Even though they try to fill this emptiness with all of the material factors income can give, Gatsby’s life is full of ambition and excitement as he has a aim in reaching his vision of the America Dream. Nick notes that “He was clutching at some final hope and I couldn’t bear to shake him free” (ch.8) and that he was “watching more than nothing” (ch.7). Though Gatsby’s optimism is appealing, Nick knows that what Gatsby strives for will in no way be a reality.

Gatsby has turn into alienated by the conventional life he as soon as knew as properly as the modern life he desperately desires to belong to, but Gatsby remains faithful to his illusory American dream. In a extremely symbolic scene, when Nick sees Gatsby for the first time, Gatsby “stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way…he was trembling” (ch.1). Nick’s closing remarks about Gatsby confirm “his dream need to have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was currently behind him” (ch. 9). Gatsby is close enough to Daisy and the life he longs for that he can see it far off, but both Daisy and his dream of being portion of her life in her globe are far out of reach, and stay that way.

Nick Carraway finishes his narrative with closing thoughts on the major characters of The Great Gatsby. Tom and Daisy Buchanan have left hastily left the society of East Egg, escaping the speculation that they had something to do with Gatsby’s death. Nick coldly says of his former close friends, “They have been careless men and women, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up issues and creatures and then retreated back into their funds or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them collectively, and let other folks clean up the mess they had made…” (ch.9). Of Gatsby himself, Nick sympathetically writes: “Gatsby turned out all correct at the end it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and brief-winded elations of men” (ch.9). At the finish of the novel, Nick’s evident frustration with those he had been linked with leaves the lingering feeling of despair, gloom, and ambiguity, in the tradition of correct Modernism.

The most defining traits of Modernism have been the authors of the lost generation and the characters they produced who had been models of the very very same sense of purposelessness “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (ch.9). It is the sentiment of becoming lost somewhere among the golden previous and the impending future that Fitzgerald captures perfectly in The Great Gatsby. The lost generation was caught someplace among two vastly different occasions in a nameless void that we now contact Modernism.

Performs Cited

Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Fortworth: Harcourt, 1999.

Drabble, Margaret. Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford: Oxford, UP, 1985. 658.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby [electronic version]. [email protected],1 June 2007.

The University of Adelaide Library. Retrieved February 8, 2008. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/f/fitzgerald/f_scott/gatsby/

Holman, Hugh. A Handbook to Literature. New York, McMillan. 1992. 298-299.

McMichael, George, ed. Anthology of American Literature. vol. II Upper Saddle River, N.J.

Pearson, 2007. 983-984.