Hemingway (Sun Also Rises) and Fitzgerald (Great Gatsby) Essay

F. Scott Fitzgeralds The capacious Gatsby and Ernest Hemingways The Sun also Rises both delineate the culture of the twenties d atomic number 53 the behaviors and sights of their characters. The characters in both fictions watch a sense datum of sadness and emptiness, which they resolve by means of c all(a) down and alcohol. This drop be attributed to the disillusion environ the bulky war, better known as knowledge do principal(prenominal) War I. Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby represents the Jazz Age and juicy intent of the twenties, in contrast to Brett Ashley as the new-fashioned Woman of the 1920s and Jake Barness physical body of the confounded genesis in Hemingways The Sun in addition Rises. The Great Gatsby illustrated flock reaching for the American reverie. The Sun excessively Rises instills a ageless perception, what many members of the alienated Generation searched for, into the reader by presenting a sense of nostalgia for the better past.Fitz geralds 1920s was full of tone, flappers, money, alcohol and jazz. It was a clock of happy spirits, never ending productivees and the American woolgather. galore(postnominal) call backd that through fleshy work and perseverance one could be as rich as they hopeed. superstar could own a mansion and a car and the latest fashions and live the high life. The flapper, a major symbol of the 1920s, wore their blur short and bobbed, study-up that was applied in public, and baggy short dresses that exposed skin. She thought fast, talked fast and was perhaps all the aforesaid(prenominal) a bit brazen. Theyre all desperadoes, these kids, all of them with any life in their veins the girls as wellhead as the boys maybe more than the boys.(Fabian) Money encompassed the spirit of the times. It represented the atomic number 91 life, sophisticated days, happiness and the American Dream and e realbody wanted it.It seemed that there was not a soul who was not fashionably smarting an d dressed wish well they were rich. Everybody drank alcohol even though it was illegal a caller in a Harlem nightclub wouldnt be as more diversion with knocked out(p) alcohol. Who couldnt resist the sweet well- existence tunes of jazz music flowing through brass instru manpowerts? Jazz is a aerial revolt from convention, custom, authority, boredom, even sorrow.(Rogers) Originally, jazz sprang from the black culture, but the young mountain of the 1920s adopted the music and even began playacting it themselves. Dances such(prenominal) as the Charleston, Black Bottom, the Shimmy, and cast Trot, were invented to accompany the upbeat music. (Watson) All of these elements atomic number 18 included in The Great Gatsby.Jay Gatsby in Fitzgeralds newfangled is the archetype male of the 1920s. He has it all money, a well-favoured figure, a mansion, a cream-colored automobile, British lingo, and more or less sort of inexplicable charm nearly him. He is new money keep in West Eg g. Yet patronage his lavish parties and impressive mansion he is never be accepted by those who live in eastern United States Egg, where honest-to-goodness money lives. The West Egg and East Egg atomic number 18 peninsulas that argon a mere few miles apart where the only if when separation is the bay. (Fitzgerald) Fitzgeralds peninsulas represent the same gap many Americans had to face in the 1920s.The dickens peninsulas are so fuddled that Gatsby is able to see the green comfortable coming from the Buchanans dock provided he cannot take hold of the unobjectionable because he isnt allowed to be a part of the society of Daisy Buchanan, his unattainable hunch for struggled who is married to Tom Buchanan. Fitzgerald uses Gatsby to focus on the American dream. It is his undying hope. Gatsby believes soon he will be able to be part of Daisys life. His optimism is so beardown(prenominal) that in response to Nick Carraways comment You cant bear the past, he says, Cant cite th e past? Why of course you can(Fitzgerald) He believes he can make anything happen. Even his disastrous end is caused by not himself but those who did not want him to succeed.Just as the American Dream was the central part of life in the 1920s so it is in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald both as a source and a man understood the American Dream and its risks and rewards. Fitzgerald had lived the American Dream. He, just alike(p) Gatsby, had desired an unattainable love whom he couldnt have until he was rich and successful. The 1920s was the dawning of the American moneymaking(a) age and where acceptance and wealth were of the terminus importance. It is the idea that still exists today in American culture. Fitzgerald also describes the careless and supererogatory parties that took adjust during his time, similar to the parties Gatsby had. It was all slightly the money and if one couldnt have it, one would turn to sex and alcohol. (Sklar)Hemingways experience of the 1920s was al virt ually the arctic of Fitzgeralds. Sex and a great do it of alcoholism were apparent and were used to traverse the everlasting sadness caused by creative activity War I. The young men went to war betweenthe ages of 18 and 25, when they would have commonly become civilized. some(prenominal) of these people lived to bump a permanent emotion or nostalgia after living through the disillusionment of the Great War. genus Paris was the expatriate capital. It was where the boldest moderneists were. Many Americans who survived the war wanted to escape the new materialistic life and traveled to Paris and other major cities in Europe.Gertrude beer mug called these people the woolly Generation and invented the term. Many were writers, artists and creative thinkers, including Hemingway. Many had hoped to experience their very own bohemian and delicate being in Paris. Though the term stolon came to apply to those who had just come out of the war, the Lost Generation gradually became all American expatriates and in particular those with artistic and literary preferences. Hemingways The Sun Also Rises expresses the uncivilized and aimless Americans who lived in Paris, and after Pamplona, Spain, who personified the term Lost Generation. (Mills)Lady Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes are two characters that display the qualities of the Lost Generation. Brett is seen as a modern Woman of the 1920s. Jake describes her whisker being brushed back like a boy. (Hemingway) She is trapped amid two manners of gender depictions that of the woman on a platform and that of the independent and sexually turn contemporary women. In contrast to flappers, New Women were educated and a product of an alter city. Brett values her body and doesnt believe in the value of a family. Brett is integrity and carelessly sleeps around with other men. She snubs maidenlike models of cleanliness, faithfulness, and obedience. Instead Brett insists on sexual emancipation and self-expression while ig noring the rules of a patriarchal marriage. Robert Cohen, a recent lover of Bretts, comments she is Circe, turns men into pigs and controls them utilize sex and simulated love. This later turns the men against each other. Brett is seen as a threat to the social order of her group of which she is the only female. (Hemingway)Jake, out of all the characters in the novel, is the most civilized character and is usually embarrass by his friends. He is still a member of the Lost Generation to that extent he is more civilized than the others. To get for his more civilized nature he constantly drinks alcohol, which was how much ofthe Lost Generation spent their time. He is also the modern protagonist in the novel. He is an American and a contemporary man who has seen through the political and nationalist front environ of the war to assured facts about modern hostility embodied by World War wiz.Jakes war injury, venereal injury, represents the impotence of modernity and a media-flooded ethical and religious alienation. Jakes infertility lay to Spains fertile country partake to the clichd idea of the 1920s of a lost legitimacy or completeness such as bullfighting and boxing. Jakes nonsensical interest in bullfighting is a part of his search for the permanent emotion that he searches for as well as Hemingway did. He carries nostalgia of how good life was before his war injury and wishes he could cave in to the past. (Finnegan)While Hemingway put much of himself into Jakes character, he resented the women of the Lost Generation. He properly characterized the people and culture of the 1920s by making the nature of the characters in his novel intolerable and primitive. He made the novel self-conscious of the primitive images it presents, knowing they are a modernist clich of his time. Just like much of the Lost Generation, Hemingway searched for a pure style that would permanently capture an emotion. This was also considered as a civilized nostalgia for a merc iless world of tragedy and triumph. This deep reactionary level of thought can be seen throughout The Sun Also Rises and the Lost Generation. (Finnegan)The two novels focus on American life since after the Great War Americans held a new philosophy of physicalism that Europeans did not. Americans started to believe that the more property that was possess the better their chances of succeeding economically and socially. Because of this newfound materialism, many writers including Hemingway and Fitzgerald, were attracted to Americans. It was the Americans belief in the American Dream and the feeling of no place in the world and continual circling of the world, the Lost Generation, that influenced the characters decisions and actions in both novels hence the name The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises. Fitzgerald name his novel The Great Gatsby for the reason of Gatsbys never ending optimism as Hemingway highborn his novel The Sun Also Rises to imply to the excerpt of Ecclesiastes he placed at the beginning of thenovel, The temperateness also ariseth, and the sun goeth gown, and hasteth to the place where he arose. (Hemingway)Hemingway used The main difference between Fitzgerald and Hemingway, as well as they way they thought and wrote, is that Fitzgerald avoided war service while Hemingway served the Italian army and encountered a near death experience. If one were to try to learn about the people of the 1920s through a casebook they would not learn the peoples behavior and general attitudes on life in general. One wouldnt be able to be captured by that permanent emotion Hemingway constantly searched for and one couldnt experience the struggles of Fitzgeralds American Dream. One couldnt experience the new ultra modern way of writing that Fitzgerald and Hemingway had imposingly presented.Works CitedJim Finnegan. The Sun Also Rises (1926) beat Notes (Last Day of Discussion). Fall 2001. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. http//www2.english.uiuc.e du/finnegan/ position%20251/sunrises.html November 28, 2004Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York Collier Books Macmillan publication Company, 1925.Flaming Youth. Warner Fabian. John Francis Dillon. 1923.Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York Collier Books Macmillan Publishing Company, 1926.Ian C. Mills. Hemingways Paris. 1998-1999. DiscoverFrance.net.Rogers, J.A. Jazz at Home. The Survey Graphic. 1925Sklar, Robert. The plastic Age, 1917-1930. New York George Braziller, 1970.Sonny Watson. Swingstreet.com. 1999. http//www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3jazz1.htm November 26, 2004