HorseradishTree
04-24-2005, 11:35 PM
This is an essay I wrote for my English class. I love sharing this stuff with you guys because your feedback is most helpful. Here she is:
Stories transcend the common medium. They can be told in many forms, be they paintings, novels, or films. They can, in addition, cross paths in many forms and create a valuable comparison. A stupendous example of this tradition lies within classic demonstrations of their respective media. Citizen Kane, a film made in 1941, and The Great Gatsby, a novel written in the 1920s, are prime specimens for picking apart and analyzing in such a demonstration. The subjects are most similar within their major flawed characters, human beings tortured by the need for human contact, wealth, and the desire to uphold the undying human spirit.
The protagonist of The Great Gatsby is one Nick Carraway, a quiet man with a taste for observation. He spends his time just watching his friends laugh, bicker, and weep over seemingly menial distractions. He believes that “[r]eserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope” (5). Thus, he lives a blissful and poignant lifestyle, punctuated by the occasional social episode that, for once, actually means something. Literary junkies have referred to him as a godlike figure. A similar character runs within Citizen Kane. He is Thompson, a reporter, simply wanting to learn the truth about a man by observing stories and objects throughout several persons’ own lives. His face is always masked in shadow, almost as if he does not exist in this realm or simply does not want to. In the end, he is as complacent as he was in the beginning, almost as though he were omniscient himself.
Jay Gatsby is a man running from his own self and attempting to mask it with the lives of others. His wealth allows his to create mass festivities at his own New York mansion, where he strives to blend in with the crowd so his disheartened mind can be at rest without the pain of someone noticing. He produces this façade with “one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.” Charles Foster Kane also surrounds himself with masses. This newspaper owner and brief political figure molds himself, externally, to be a man for the people. His true intentions, however, lie in the fact that he only wants people to love him so that he can better camouflage his own insecurities. He also does this through purchasing vast amounts of whatever fills his luxurious estate and makes him look so rich that he could not have a trace of a lack of confidence within him.
These two groups of men contrast each other in a conservative fashion. While Nick and Thompson separate themselves from all others of the community, Kane and Gatsby embrace their culture, all in an attempt to defy their own personal boundaries and regulations. This, in effect, ultimately destroys them, as their self-absorption fails to have a perfect counterbalance; in essence, their understanding of large groups of people as well as “forty-nine acres of nothing but scenery and statues” only pushes them farther away.
Wealth is a shallow concept that consumes one and makes one want to fill the void with more emptiness. It is a circular affair that always ends in peril and chaos. In order for a better tomorrow, the prospect of capitalism over the current market must be quelled so that the Kanes and Gatsbys of the world may live their lives in tranquil.
Stories transcend the common medium. They can be told in many forms, be they paintings, novels, or films. They can, in addition, cross paths in many forms and create a valuable comparison. A stupendous example of this tradition lies within classic demonstrations of their respective media. Citizen Kane, a film made in 1941, and The Great Gatsby, a novel written in the 1920s, are prime specimens for picking apart and analyzing in such a demonstration. The subjects are most similar within their major flawed characters, human beings tortured by the need for human contact, wealth, and the desire to uphold the undying human spirit.
The protagonist of The Great Gatsby is one Nick Carraway, a quiet man with a taste for observation. He spends his time just watching his friends laugh, bicker, and weep over seemingly menial distractions. He believes that “[r]eserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope” (5). Thus, he lives a blissful and poignant lifestyle, punctuated by the occasional social episode that, for once, actually means something. Literary junkies have referred to him as a godlike figure. A similar character runs within Citizen Kane. He is Thompson, a reporter, simply wanting to learn the truth about a man by observing stories and objects throughout several persons’ own lives. His face is always masked in shadow, almost as if he does not exist in this realm or simply does not want to. In the end, he is as complacent as he was in the beginning, almost as though he were omniscient himself.
Jay Gatsby is a man running from his own self and attempting to mask it with the lives of others. His wealth allows his to create mass festivities at his own New York mansion, where he strives to blend in with the crowd so his disheartened mind can be at rest without the pain of someone noticing. He produces this façade with “one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.” Charles Foster Kane also surrounds himself with masses. This newspaper owner and brief political figure molds himself, externally, to be a man for the people. His true intentions, however, lie in the fact that he only wants people to love him so that he can better camouflage his own insecurities. He also does this through purchasing vast amounts of whatever fills his luxurious estate and makes him look so rich that he could not have a trace of a lack of confidence within him.
These two groups of men contrast each other in a conservative fashion. While Nick and Thompson separate themselves from all others of the community, Kane and Gatsby embrace their culture, all in an attempt to defy their own personal boundaries and regulations. This, in effect, ultimately destroys them, as their self-absorption fails to have a perfect counterbalance; in essence, their understanding of large groups of people as well as “forty-nine acres of nothing but scenery and statues” only pushes them farther away.
Wealth is a shallow concept that consumes one and makes one want to fill the void with more emptiness. It is a circular affair that always ends in peril and chaos. In order for a better tomorrow, the prospect of capitalism over the current market must be quelled so that the Kanes and Gatsbys of the world may live their lives in tranquil.