F. Scott Fitzgerald explores the dominant theme of 'Appearance Vs Reality' wihtin his marvellous creation, The Great Gatsby.
Fitzgerald smartly, in my opinion, egages his reader by manipulating this idea of what is real and what is an illusion on the surface. There are many characters Fitzgerald uses to develop this idea of having to look deeper into an individual to move away the mist and fog of their outer persona and realise what their actual realistic personaility is like.
Tom Buchanan for example is a man who presents himself as being powerful and an overall great man but we learn as the novel goes on that he is unfaithful, violent and quite racist, and also holds strong views against certain people or things.
Then theres the character of Gatsby himself. In the beginning of the novel we know hardly anything of who Gatsby is or what he does, and this technqiue used by Fitzgerald creates a mystery on the surface as to what Gatsby does and who he really is. All we do know is that he has a big house and holds many parties which could give the first impression to the reader that Gatsby is a sociable happy man who shares his large house and nice food with others. However as the novel goes on we learn that infact Gatsby invites these guests to party in his house however he's never there on the dancefloor breaking down some moves, he's on the side watching.
Small changes such as this then change our opinion on Gatsby and what he has in life as we start to learn abit more about this mysterious character.
Fitzgerald uses other characters or guests within the novel to raise suspicions in our mind as to who Gatsby really is and how he became as wealthy and well off as he is now for example when Catherine says "well they say he's an nephew or cousin of Kaiser Wilhelms, thats where all his money comes from." Remarks such as this make the reader question whteher their initial thoughts on Gatsby are true and other quite extreme opinions on who Gatsby is such as him killing a man once, makes the reader want to know more about this "great" character.
When we learn however that the concealed Mr Gatsby was once in the war with Nick, the idea of him being a normal man begins to kick in although there are still high levels of suspicion as to what he actually does and who he exactly is.
In my own personal opinion, the main way in which Fitzgerald presents this parallel between Illusions or appearance vs reality is by using the society in which the novel is set. The less important characters such as guests at Gatsbys party for example, that we encounter along the way are key to the idea of what is reality?
The community of individuals that surround Nick and Gatsby are extremely good examples of this idea of appearance and reality where Nick freely describes Characters as fake or distorted in terms of on the surface appearance which is obvious that they are not like this normally, and that its all just a front. "With the influence of her dress, her personality had also undergone a change." The fact that characters within the novel are fake gives the idea that the whole society is under an impressionable time where they feel that they have to change and act in a certain way in order to fit in.
Personally I think that Fitzgerald is a talented and intelligent author as he is able to mainupulate something that can still be related today such as distortions in reality in order to fit in. He also uses the fact that Nick is writing in first person to decide when he wants to give information out to the audience and when he wants to keep them in the dark about certain characters such as Gatsby so that the reaeder reads on to find out more about this illusive character.
Despibale Lea 2k13
Fantastic work Lea! This is another very engaging and amusing (‘he's never there on the dancefloor breaking down some moves’) piece of writing, with some perceptive analysis of the novel. I particularly like the focus on the techniques that Fitzgerald uses (such as a first person narrative) to create a gulf between appearance and reality. He is an ‘intelligent author’ who cleverly manipulates the reader’s response to his characters.
ReplyDeleteOne of the interesting and very important ideas that you write about is Fitzgerald’s presentation of Gatsby himself. Before we have even opened the book we are told that he is ‘great’, but until we meet him on page forty eight all we know about him is that he represents everything for which our narrator has an ‘unaffected scorn’ – hardly a glowing endorsement. We are then subjected to a litany or unsavoury rumours regarding his past. Having told us that Gatsby is ‘great’, why does Fitzgerald then do his utmost to persuade us otherwise? Is Gatsby great? If so, what makes him great? What do you think?
I’m afraid I do now need to assume the role of pedant! Could you just go over the post and check it carefully as there are a few technical errors, such as ‘egages’ in the second paragraph (and one or two other spelling mistakes). Also ‘infact’ is two words, as it ‘abit’. Finally, remember to use apostrophes to show missing letters (e.g. there is = there’s, NOT theres). OK?
Thanks Lea!