John Dos Passos and F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald were both published in 1925, and both take a similar view of the society of the time and of the ills besetting that society. The city in each becomes a metaphor for a mechanistic and materialistic society. The city in each is also a source of ambivalent feelings, for each writer is both attracted to the energy and life of the city while also seeing it as a microcosm for all the ills of American society. The ideal of the American dream in both novels proves to be an empty dream. For Dos Passos, this sort of society is set against the aspirations of the artist in particular, but more broadly against the aspirations of everyone. For Fitzgerald, the artist is equated with the romantic, and the romantic--such as Jay Gatsby--is lost in that sort of society. for Gatsby, the dream proves illusory, and the reality is the hypocritical society of West Egg. For characters like Ellen Thatcher in Manhattan Transfer, one who reaches the pinnacle of success as she has intended, the dream proves to be false.Gatsby is indeed seen in the Fitzgerald novel very much through the eyes of others, who speculate about him even as they also tend to pigeonhole him as someone who is not really part of their class. One such character is that of Jordan Baker, who serves several purposes in the course of the story. She is the means by which Nick Carraway is brought into the group that becomes so important to him and
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an interplay of ideas, attitudes, and perceptions to develop the themes. Through all this, Gatsby stands as the alienated man who wants to cross the bay and become part of a milieu different from any he has ever known.
New York City has a special role in this novel. The novel takes place largely in West Egg, but the West Eggers are all connected to the city--it is where they live at certain times, where they work, and where they go for entertainment. Jordan knows that Tom has a mistress in the city. For the West Eggers, the city is a locale for hypocrisy, social disintegration, and bleakness. Just as Gatsby gazes from East Egg to West Egg, so do the West Eggers and the people of the city look to the West, as if they could escape from everything they believe is wrong in the city by going West. The idea of the frontier remains powerful in this age even though the frontier is long gone.
There is real life in the city, life of a sort envied by Carraway:
I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye.
Yet there is an ambivalence about the city, as seen in the fact that the city is also the source o
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1660
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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