Post by thethoughtpolice on Sept 27, 2011 13:26:19 GMT
The American dream should allow people like Gatsby to think of these big dreams and let them have a future. However, who really exists in society are people like the Buchanan's who have stunted imaginations which limits the dream to others by imposing a glass ceiling. They are trying to recreate European aristocracy and cling onto the past.
The idea of the green breast shows nurturing but the green trees get cut to to create Gatsby's huge house. This shows that people are now more interested in materialistic good rather than nature.
Fatal Flaw (Hamartia) - The one thing they have that is their passion. This is not always a bad thing unless it is taken to the extreme.
Hubris - When a character goes against nature they are committing Hubris - its a sin
Ate - When they are punished for Hubris. They meet their destruction.
The closing lines of the novel leave us with a poetic metaphor of the river of time. Time is seen as a current always taking people into the past. It shows the reality of life, that people are tied inextricably to the past and can only move on if they take their past with them. Nick is seen throughout and from the very first lines to be someone with a strong connection to his past and therefore also to his present and future. Gatsby has only a frozen moment in the past, a perfect moment in the first flush of his love with Daisy. He has erased and recreated the rest of his past in the mould of the fantasies of an adolescent. Other than this, he lives purely for the future which is seen as impossible and unrealistic. Despite this, we are left with greater sympathy for his attempt to go against nature than the Buchanans who are tied solely to the past and their aristocratic heritage and cannot look o the future as they have reached their potential early and have nothing to look forward to.
The idea of the green breast shows nurturing but the green trees get cut to to create Gatsby's huge house. This shows that people are now more interested in materialistic good rather than nature.
Fatal Flaw (Hamartia) - The one thing they have that is their passion. This is not always a bad thing unless it is taken to the extreme.
Hubris - When a character goes against nature they are committing Hubris - its a sin
Ate - When they are punished for Hubris. They meet their destruction.
The closing lines of the novel leave us with a poetic metaphor of the river of time. Time is seen as a current always taking people into the past. It shows the reality of life, that people are tied inextricably to the past and can only move on if they take their past with them. Nick is seen throughout and from the very first lines to be someone with a strong connection to his past and therefore also to his present and future. Gatsby has only a frozen moment in the past, a perfect moment in the first flush of his love with Daisy. He has erased and recreated the rest of his past in the mould of the fantasies of an adolescent. Other than this, he lives purely for the future which is seen as impossible and unrealistic. Despite this, we are left with greater sympathy for his attempt to go against nature than the Buchanans who are tied solely to the past and their aristocratic heritage and cannot look o the future as they have reached their potential early and have nothing to look forward to.