The great Gatsby is too concerned with conveying a picture of 1920’s American society to have relevance to modern readers.
The great Gatsby is too concerned with conveying a picture of 1920’s American society to have relevance to modern readers.
With reference to appropriately selected parts of the novel and relevant contextual information on both today’s society and society in the 1920’s, give your response to the above view.”
As a heavily contextual literary piece, the great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the greatest pieces of modern American literature of all time.
The book as achieved this status not through its base in the setting of 1920’s America but because of its story and characters can transverse through generations and how its settings and meanings can be applied to most situations and lifestyles experienced by people from all classes and walks of life which is why the great Gatsby is such a greatly loved book.
Like any good author, Fitzgerald uses his surroundings to emphasise his novel and at the time of writing “the great Gatsby” Fitzgerald was part of the “roaring 20’s” so it only made sense that this be the time that Fitzgerald sets the scene of his masterpiece as it must have been easier to write about an era he knows and lives in and simply use that as a backbone for his socially critical ideas.
In any good novel that’s all context really is, a means for the author to explain their ideas so that the reader feels as if they have worked out for themselves rather than the author telling them. For example Jesus’ parables are always set in a place that the people he was talking to could understand yet the meaning of these parables are still learned and understood today regardless of context.
I can understand why someone might say that the great Gatsby novel relies too heavily on context as Fitzgerald reminds us time and time again throughout the novel not only that the novel is set in the 1920’s but also how the people act within this time frame. This is significant as it marks the tone of the novel as “live fast and carefree”.
With reference to appropriately selected parts of the novel and relevant contextual information on both today’s society and society in the 1920’s, give your response to the above view.”
As a heavily contextual literary piece, the great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the greatest pieces of modern American literature of all time.
The book as achieved this status not through its base in the setting of 1920’s America but because of its story and characters can transverse through generations and how its settings and meanings can be applied to most situations and lifestyles experienced by people from all classes and walks of life which is why the great Gatsby is such a greatly loved book.
Like any good author, Fitzgerald uses his surroundings to emphasise his novel and at the time of writing “the great Gatsby” Fitzgerald was part of the “roaring 20’s” so it only made sense that this be the time that Fitzgerald sets the scene of his masterpiece as it must have been easier to write about an era he knows and lives in and simply use that as a backbone for his socially critical ideas.
In any good novel that’s all context really is, a means for the author to explain their ideas so that the reader feels as if they have worked out for themselves rather than the author telling them. For example Jesus’ parables are always set in a place that the people he was talking to could understand yet the meaning of these parables are still learned and understood today regardless of context.
I can understand why someone might say that the great Gatsby novel relies too heavily on context as Fitzgerald reminds us time and time again throughout the novel not only that the novel is set in the 1920’s but also how the people act within this time frame. This is significant as it marks the tone of the novel as “live fast and carefree”.