The Great Gatsby - Chapter 1 Essay example -- English Literature

The Great Gatsby - Chapter 1Read the beginning of the novel chapter 1 up to page 12 Tom Buchananin his riding frock was standing with his legs apart on the frontporch. How effective do you find this as an introduction to GreatGatsby. In your response you should pay close charge to voice,language and style.The Great Gatsby was written by F Scott Fitzgerald in 1925, and is setduring 1922, a period tinged with moral failure of a society obsessedwith grade and privilege.Fitzgerald presents us with the conflict between the illusion and thereality of the American dream.The novel begins in the present tense, and is told through the eyes ofNick Carraway, the narrator and moral affection of the novel. His tale istold in retrospect. Nick Carraway is a young man from the Mid West,introducing himself as a graduate of Yale and a veteran of World WarOne. He begins the first chapter by relaying his fathers adviceWhenever you feel care criticizing anyone, just remember that all the race in this world havent had the equivalent advantages as youve had.He states that he is also inclined to reserve all judgement aboutpeople and be a tolerant listener who is entrusted with peoplessecrets. This encourages him to withhold formulating opinions aboutpeople until he gets to k outright them, demonstrating his caution. Nickputs himself forward explicitly, as someone with an above average champion of fundamental decencies which now manifests itself as a wishfor the world to be in uniform and at a moral attention forever.This military perspective all the way shows Nick has something of anauthoritarian character with a developed instinct for discipline andorder.These first pages of Chapter one... ...ds the end of page 9 the reader is given a sense of time and apositive idea of how the modern world is progressing, through themetaphor of growing trees and the burst of leaves creating newlife that has potential just like the American Dream.Fast movies (p.9) and the telephone (p.12) symb olise the Twentiethcentury technological environment. The growth of cinemas, cars, boatsis recognised by the twenties as a decade of volume media and massproduction in America. The novel raises the issue of individual worthin such a context.In contrast to this materialistic world, Daisys promise evokes adelicate flower. The irony here is that her life is conducted in anentirely manufactured environment, distant from the natural world.The key structure of the chapter is the combination of first individualnarrative and the gradual revelation of the past.