Similarities Between The Great Gatsby And The Sun Also Rises

F. Scott Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway 's The Sun Also Rises both define the culture of the 1920s through the behaviors and thoughts of their characters. The characters in both novels have a sense of sadness and emptiness, which they resolve through sex and alcohol. This can be attributed to the disillusionment surrounding the Great War, better known as World War I. Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby represents the Jazz Age and high life of the 1920s, in contrast to Brett Ashley as the New Woman of the 1920s and Jake Barnes 's embodiment of the Lost Generation in Hemingway 's The Sun Also Rises. The Great Gatsby illustrated people reaching for the "American Dream." The Sun Also Rises instills a "permanent emotion," what many
Americans started to believe that the more property that was owned the better their chances of succeeding economically and socially. Because of this newfound materialism, many writers including Hemingway and Fitzgerald, were attracted to Americans. It was the Americans ' belief in the American Dream and the feeling of no place in the world and continual circling of the world, the Lost Generation, that influenced the characters ' decisions and actions in both novels hence the names The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises. Fitzgerald titled his novel The Great Gatsby for the reason of Gatsby 's never ending optimism as Hemingway titled his novel The Sun Also Rises to allude to the excerpt of Ecclesiastes he placed at the beginning of the novel, "The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth gown, and hasteth to the place where he arose." (Hemingway) Hemingway used The main difference between Fitzgerald and Hemingway, as well as they way they thought and wrote, is that Fitzgerald avoided war service while Hemingway served the Italian army and encountered a near death experience. If one were to try to learn about the people of the 1920 's through a textbook they would not learn the people 's behavior and general attitudes on life in general. One wouldn 't be able to be captured by that permanent emotion Hemingway constantly searched for and one couldn
The Sun Also Rises (1926) Lecture Notes (Last Day of Discussion). Fall 2001. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. http://www2.english.uiuc.edu/finnegan/English%20251/sunrises.html> November 28, 2004

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Collier Books Macmillan Publishing Company,