Great Gatsby Existentialism Essay
Anthony Caruso
Dr. Mosser
American Literature
5 October 2017
The Sculpting of Existentialism
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway identify the meagerness of American democracy in a gradually marketable and purchaser ethos and cast-off the capitalistic morals, characteristics, and customs given by and strengthened through the increasingly domineering social, and political structures of American culture. For Fitzgerald and Hemingway, what is at stake is the person, the creative essence, and the life of the realm. This mawkishness echoes throughout both authors’ early works, a sentiment manifest in their portraits of lost, aimless, powerless, and expressively unsatisfied characters. Like the existentialists who “rose in revulsion against the corruption of values in capitalist society” and whose “basic conviction was that the evils it …show more content…
Their philosophies, which embody an individualistic ethic and an existential-artistic vision of the creative spirit and of life and art, are only part of what distinguishes The Great Gatsby and Death in the Afternoon from Fitzgerald and Hemingway’s earlier works. In fact, Fitzgerald and Hemingway both admittedly set out to create something new in The Great Gatsby and Death in the Afternoon and do so by responding to—and also by subtly defying—the literary currents of their time. They defy the Eliot cult’s cry “Art for Art’s Sake!” in favor of creating art that is social-minded, didactic, and
Dr. Mosser
American Literature
5 October 2017
The Sculpting of Existentialism
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway identify the meagerness of American democracy in a gradually marketable and purchaser ethos and cast-off the capitalistic morals, characteristics, and customs given by and strengthened through the increasingly domineering social, and political structures of American culture. For Fitzgerald and Hemingway, what is at stake is the person, the creative essence, and the life of the realm. This mawkishness echoes throughout both authors’ early works, a sentiment manifest in their portraits of lost, aimless, powerless, and expressively unsatisfied characters. Like the existentialists who “rose in revulsion against the corruption of values in capitalist society” and whose “basic conviction was that the evils it …show more content…
Their philosophies, which embody an individualistic ethic and an existential-artistic vision of the creative spirit and of life and art, are only part of what distinguishes The Great Gatsby and Death in the Afternoon from Fitzgerald and Hemingway’s earlier works. In fact, Fitzgerald and Hemingway both admittedly set out to create something new in The Great Gatsby and Death in the Afternoon and do so by responding to—and also by subtly defying—the literary currents of their time. They defy the Eliot cult’s cry “Art for Art’s Sake!” in favor of creating art that is social-minded, didactic, and