Emptiness in the Great Gatsby
Emptiness in the Great Gatsby
In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald portrays the emptiness of a very meretricious society. Many people in today’s materialistic world are just hollow, but some have a dream, which turns into a goal. In many cases this dream might be pursued, but for some people it becomes a superficial vision. Through the use of symbolism and characterization in the novel and Eliot’s poem the blindness of people in depicted; the only person with any substance is Gatsby, but in the end, his dream becomes artificial as well.
Through the use of characterization, Fitzgerald shows how most characters in the novel have no desire; however Gatsby did, he had “an extraordinary gift for hope.” For example, Nick saw Gatsby as the “best of the bunch,” because he had this “grand dream,” but in the end he turned out to be “blind,” just like the rest of the characters. According to T.S Eliot, in The Hollow Men, we are the silent listeners; who are “empty, filled with straw.” For example, the characters in The Great Gatsby, were empty just like the hollow men in the poem. We cannot stand on our own, “we are leaning together,” because we have no substance. Gatsby, unlike the other materialistic characters, captures his dream, but it’s empty. However, most people are so hollow that they don’t even have a dream. Daisy is Gatsby’s past; she is his dream, which he tries to attain. The characters in the book are so meretricious they do not know what to do; they cannot move because of a “paralyzed force.” The characters are restricted to a “spiritually empty world,” because of this force that inhibits them, from acting upon their dreams.
Through the use of symbolism, Fitzgerald also portrays the emptiness in the characters. According to T.S Elliot, “those who have crossed/ with direct eyes to deaths other Kingdom/ remember us.” The “direct eyes” refuse to see the world around them, just like the characters. This revelation explains the unsettling eyes of Dr. T.J Eckleburg, peering down from their signboard on the valley of the ashes. The eyes are disturbing because they have no fixed meaning, and they seem to stare down at the surface of the world without asking it to mean anything. George...