Dissatisfaction And Emptiness In The Great Gatsby And Revolutionary Road
“Behind the glamour of ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘Revolutionary Road’, there is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and emptiness” How far does this illuminate your reading of ‘The Great Gatsby’?
In Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ and Yates’s ‘Revolutionary Road’ it could be argued that there is more than just an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and emptiness. There is a lot of evidence in both novels that reflects the negative perception of women, the artificiality of certain characters and the pursuit of happiness reflecting loneliness and the failure of the America Dream. Both the 1920’s and the 1950’s were post war societies making both novels have very similar circumstances in society. Firstly, the women in ‘The Great Gatsby’ are constantly portrayed in a negative or undermining way. A striking feature of the novel is that all the women in are never described in great depth: “her face was sad but lovely with bright things in it”. This is Daisy’s only visual description; the use of the words ‘lovely’ and ‘bright things’ are all quite vague, almost childish therefore quite a patronizing and meaningless description of her. The most telling description is her voice: “Her voice was full of money”. The metaphor creates a direct link to materialistic values like money; many other examples follow. Similarly in Yates’s ‘Revolutionary Road’ Frank describes April’s voice: “Play-acting or not, her voice in moods of love had always been a pretty sound”. The word “pretty” has a similar effect as ‘bright’ and ‘lovely’ as they all lack depth. …show more content…
In ‘The Great Gatsby’ it led to their eventual downfall in the Great depression but it also led to the literal downfall of Gatsby. In ‘Revolutionary Road’ April suffered the same consequence because of her unhappiness, leaving all the other characters to continue leading corrupt and unhappy
In Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ and Yates’s ‘Revolutionary Road’ it could be argued that there is more than just an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and emptiness. There is a lot of evidence in both novels that reflects the negative perception of women, the artificiality of certain characters and the pursuit of happiness reflecting loneliness and the failure of the America Dream. Both the 1920’s and the 1950’s were post war societies making both novels have very similar circumstances in society. Firstly, the women in ‘The Great Gatsby’ are constantly portrayed in a negative or undermining way. A striking feature of the novel is that all the women in are never described in great depth: “her face was sad but lovely with bright things in it”. This is Daisy’s only visual description; the use of the words ‘lovely’ and ‘bright things’ are all quite vague, almost childish therefore quite a patronizing and meaningless description of her. The most telling description is her voice: “Her voice was full of money”. The metaphor creates a direct link to materialistic values like money; many other examples follow. Similarly in Yates’s ‘Revolutionary Road’ Frank describes April’s voice: “Play-acting or not, her voice in moods of love had always been a pretty sound”. The word “pretty” has a similar effect as ‘bright’ and ‘lovely’ as they all lack depth. …show more content…
In ‘The Great Gatsby’ it led to their eventual downfall in the Great depression but it also led to the literal downfall of Gatsby. In ‘Revolutionary Road’ April suffered the same consequence because of her unhappiness, leaving all the other characters to continue leading corrupt and unhappy