Lust and Desire in Ethan Frome and The Great Gatsby
This essay examines the theme of lust and desire in two landmark works of early twentieth-century American literature: Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome (1911) and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925). Drawing on close readings and secondary criticism, the paper argues that both novels portray desire not as a double-edged pleasure but as an inherently empty and self-destructive force. Gatsby's blind pursuit of Daisy ends in death and erasure, while Ethan Frome's longing for Mattie leads to a fate worse than death — a life stripped of all possibility. Together, the two works form a compassionate yet bleak commentary on the senseless suffering desire inflicts on humanity.
- Introduction: Desire as a Modern Literary Theme: Desire as a hollow, destructive modern literary theme
- The Great Gatsby: Blindness, Lust, and the Hollow Dream: Gatsby's blind pursuit of Daisy ends in ruin
- Symbolism and the Erasure of Desire in Gatsby: Eckleburg's eyes and the erasure of Gatsby's lust
- Ethan Frome: Longing, Darkness, and Destruction: Ethan's joyless marriage and awakened longing for Mattie
- The Sled Ride and the Obliteration of Desire: Suicide symbolism and the fatal sled ride
- Conclusion: Desire Without Intrinsic Value: Both novels frame desire as empty and doomed
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay builds a clear comparative argument across two novels, identifying a shared thematic logic — desire as hollow and self-destructive — while respecting each work's distinct setting, tone, and characterization.
- Secondary criticism (Bernard, Samuels, Will) is integrated smoothly to support close readings rather than substitute for them, lending the argument scholarly credibility.
- The paper maintains an empathetic critical tone, framing the authors' bleak view of desire as compassionate rather than cynical, which elevates the analysis beyond simple plot summary.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative literary analysis: two texts are placed in dialogue around a single theme, with each novel's evidence reinforcing and complicating the overall thesis. The writer uses direct quotation strategically — one passage from each novel anchors the argument about desire's pointlessness — then supplements those readings with scholarly interpretation to deepen the claim.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a broad claim about desire in modern literature before narrowing to Wharton and Fitzgerald. It then devotes a two-section block to each novel (close reading followed by symbolic/critical interpretation), keeping the two analyses parallel in structure. A brief conclusion synthesizes the shared finding without introducing new material. Works Cited follows MLA format.
Introduction: Desire as a Modern Literary Theme
Though the twentieth century can hardly lay an original claim to the use of lust and desire as major themes in literature — these are major driving forces behind human attitudes and behaviors, after all, and this has been reflected in art and literature since humanity first painted on cave walls — these topics did develop a certain unique flatness and unsatisfactory quality in the modern period. The impossibility of sated desire and the disappointment of lustful longing achieved became the common ultimate development of many works, in a curiously cynical way and without the grandeur of earlier tragedies that carried a similar message. This was especially true of certain American novelists writing at the turn of the century.
Edith Wharton and F. Scott Fitzgerald, though separated by a decade or two in their respective prominence, were two such authors. Desire can be seen in both of their works as a destructive force — a common element in many literary periods and genres — but it is also portrayed as somewhat base and meaningless. Though the pursuit of desire is full of passion and meaning in the moment, it is ultimately entirely pointless and bereft of purpose. Both authors put forth this bleak view of desire in a way that manages to remain free from cynicism, and is instead enormously human and touching. Rather than laughing at or merely commenting on this supreme foible of the human condition, these authors expose it as a compassionate commentary on the senseless tragedy and pain that pursuits as meaningless as those of sexual lust specifically, and desire in general, bring to humanity.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is unquestionably best known for his novel The Great Gatsby. This work defines the Jazz Age of the 1920s in America, which was typified by easy money and lax morals. This world provides the perfect setting for Fitzgerald's tale of love, greed, and corruption — and most of all, the vain pursuit of desire. In Edith Wharton's far bleaker tale, written in 1911 but set in the late nineteenth century in a small, wilderness-bound farming community in New England, desire operates just as powerfully without the glitz and overt greed. Ethan Frome can also be read as an exposition of both the potency and the pointlessness of desire. These two works are very different in their style, their characterizations, and in many of the conclusions they seem to draw regarding human nature, and yet they both arrive at a similar view of desire as essentially empty and fruitless.
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Bernard, Kenneth. "Imagery and Symbolism in Ethan Frome." College English 23(3) (1961), pp. 178–84.
Samuels, Charles. "The Greatness of Gatsby." Massachusetts Review 7(4) (1966), pp. 783–94.
Wharton, Edith. Ethan Frome. New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1922.
Will, Barbara. "The Great Gatsby and the Obscene Word." College Literature 32(4) (2005), pp. 125–44.
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