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What Is True About the Great Gatsby

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What Is True About the Great Gatsby
Scott Humphreys
Mrs. Palace
HAL 2nd Hour
20 March 2013
Mode: Argumentative
Audience: Honors Ten students and teachers; American History teachers
Purpose: To inform the reader on the fact that The Great Gatsby is both Fitzgerald’s criticism and glorification of the Roaring Twenties.
Situation: Two sides are taken for every opposition, and in this case it is clear that both sides have valid information. Although, after evaluating the possible truths of meaning it is obvious that Fitzgerald is using his fiction in order to criticize the Roaring Twenties.
A Deeper Meaning The roaring twenties was a time of happiness, sadness, and every emotion in between. During this decade F. Scott Fitzgerald, a great author, wrote a novel with a very disputable meaning. Though arguments regarding F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, are very abundant within communities of readers, there is valid justification for both sides of perhaps the most popular debate: glorification or criticism. The novel is written with two messages within, much like many works of literature. One skims the surface of the pages, this being that Fitzgerald is glorifying the setting of the book, but the other is slightly more difficult to grasp as a reader, and this being that he is criticizing this time period. Fitzgerald gives clear points supporting both ends of this argument, which makes no one wrong, but someone is still right. When taken past all the riches, love, and fun, examples of Fitzgerald’s criticism are littered throughout the pages, making many more dynamic appearances in the book than his static glorification. Two sides are taken for every opposition, and in this case it is clear that both sides have valid information. Although, after evaluating the possible truths of meaning it is obvious that Fitzgerald is using his fiction in order to criticize the Roaring Twenties. It is indeed true that Fitzgerald glorifies the 20’s quite often, but there is very little variation from



Cited: Antoniou, George. “Yahoo! Voices.” How F. Scott Fitzgerald Epitomizes the Jazz Age in the Great Gatsby. Yahoo! Inc., n.d. Web. 20 Feb 2013. Fitzgerald, F. 1925. The Great Gatsby. New York, New York: Simon & Schulster Inc. Jin, Michael. “Decay of American Greatness.” GradeSaver, 23 March 2003. Web. 29 February 2012.

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