Comparative analysis of Martin Eden, The Great Gatsby, and A Farewell to Arms

Martin Eden, Gatsby, Farewell to Arms

Martin Eden and Jay Gatsby, both die at the end of their rags-to riches stories. Discuss what the death of the main character represents in Martin Eden and The Great Gatsby.

Both Martin Eden of Martin Eden by Jack London, and Jay Gatsby of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the title characters of these novels, die at the end of their respective stories. Martin Eden, whose story seems a closely autobiographical version of that of Jack London himself, pulls himself up by the bootstraps from humble origins. Eden becomes wealthy, and world renowned for his writing. But Eden dies at a young age (as did London himself, not long after writing Martin Eden), from self-neglect, heavy drinking, and hard living. Both Martin Eden and Jay Gatsby are victims of their own success, and in both cases, it is their successes, and the decisions and lifestyles that spring from those successes, that lead, inevitably, to these characters' premature but arguably preventable deaths.

Jay Gatsby is murdered by George Wilson, the angry husband of the deceased Myrtle. George mistakenly believes that Gatsby has run over his wife, Myrtle, in his car, fatally injuring her, when in reality Gatsby's lover Daisy Buchanan was driving the car. But blaming Gatsby instead, George comes to Gatsby's house and kills him.

Gatsby, like Martin Eden, is nouveau riche, having acquired, rather than inherited, wealth. Unlike Martin's wealth, though, Gatsby's is of questionable origin. Gatsby's wealth makes it possible for him to lure Daisy, whom he has always loved, into an illicit affair with him, since Daisy is now married to Tom Buchanan. It is that affair, however, that indirectly creates the circumstances that lead to Gatsby's death.

Gatsby, like Martin, becomes a tragic victim of his own success, although under different circumstances. Instead of destroying himself from within, as Martin does, Gatsby is killed by another, although essentially by mistake.

2. Discuss the green light in The Great Gatsby and the rain in A Farewell to Arms as symbols of fertility and death.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, the green light represents hope, renewal, and (since Gatsby associates the green light with Daisy) Gatsby's desire for her, as well as (in Gatsby's mind) Daisy's fecundity and fertility. In nature, green is the color of life: trees, grass, and other living things. As such, the green light symbolizes Gatsby's own hopes and wishes for the future, which revolve around Daisy. Since Gatsby associates the green light so much with Daisy, it also represents for him a sort of beacon leading him toward her.

Although within The Great Gatsby the green light symbolizes hope, life, fecundity, and fertility, in Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms, rain, which occurs often, symbolizes the opposite: impermanence, dissolution, and death, thus foreshadowing Frederic and Catherine's doomed relationship. Like Daisy's and Gatsby's relationship, the relationship of Catherine and Frederic ends when one dies prematurely.

In nature, rain causes disintegration and dissolution. For Catherine and Frederic, the rain, as the two lie together in bed with a storm raging outside, foreshadows Catherine's death and the cessation of the lovers' happy togetherness.