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So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end (Fitzgerald 104).
Nick's description of Gatsby's facade reveals that in Gatsby's attempt to acquire the essence of the American dream, he had to sacrifice himself and create a new identity. As such, an aura of sadness and loneliness lingers about Gatsby's existence as he lets go of his past and his own identity in the hope of finding happiness. In fact, on an individual level, while this represents the Modernist element of the dichotomy between illusion and reality, Gatsby's character is also doing that which Modernism as a genre seeks to do: create a disconnect with the past.
Since Jay Gatsby...
Sadly, Gatsby had believed in his dream of Daisy and the happiness that may come from that for so long that he could not face reality, even when it may have been in his best interest to face it:
There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams - not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion (101).
Gatsby truly believed that if he only could live up to other's expectations of what he should be and what he should have or, in other words, if
The rapid connection of plot strands which brought into physical incidence the numerous affairs and hostilities that resolved, however bleakly, the novel's various impasses, make somewhat absurd an otherwise brilliantly grounded work. And yet, Fitzgerald has been characterized by his critics as demonstrating the utmost of disclipline with Gatsby for creating a work so fraught with symbolism and yet relayed in so direct and palatable a fashion. As Eble
"(Fitzgerald, 2) the image of personality, the "self as process" (Bloom, 189), parallels that of reality as process. Gatsby's own character is for its most part invented, dreamed up into reality, according to a plan he had made when he was nineteen. Fitzgerald's novel is thus an extremely subjective vision of the world, in which the author has a very important voice. As in all modernist novels, reality is obliterated
My appearance was always good and my ability to play on the piano, especially ragtime, which was then at the height of its vogue, made me a welcome guest."(Johnson, 139) Nevertheless, this only increases his feeling that he does not belong to his own race, and his sense that everything is a bitter irony. As the hero passes as a white man, he is forced many times to listen
American Lit Definition of Modernism and Three Examples Indeed, creating a true and solid definition of modernism is exceptionally difficult, and even most of the more scholarly critical accounts of the so-called modernist movement tend to divide the category into more or less two different movements, being what is known as "high modernism," which reflected the erudition and scholarly experimentalism of Eliot, Joyce, and Pound, and the so-called "low modernism" of later
Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Cather share a bond when it comes to style and framing fiction with language. Words are not simply meant to describe a character or scene; they can help round the story through how they are arranged. Fitzgerald illustrates how language can blossom around particular aspects of characters and ideas. Hemingway and Cather demonstrate how short, concise sentences can enhance a scene by increasing tension. Style emerges as
" (Fitzgerald, 61) Also, the way in which Charles checks himself when he starts bragging about his business in front on Lincoln reveals the same weariness and desperation: "Really extremely well,' he declared...'There's a lot of business there that isn't moving at all, but we're doing even better than ever. In fact, damn well...My income last year was bigger than it was when I had money. You see, the Czechs