This essay looks at The Great Gatsby written by F.Scott Fitzgerald and Atonement written by Ian McEwan, and their film adaptations, The Great Gatsby directed by Baz Luhrman and Atonement directed by Joe Wright. Many film directors that decide to adapt a novel to a film often change the essence and core message of the original work of the author. According to Paulo Coelho, the reader has a certain perception about the characters, scenes, and details of the novel. But when the reader goes to watch the film adaptation, all these perceptions and views are ruined and the reader often ends up leaving the film feeling disappointed. However, I do not agree that Joe Wright and Baz Luhrman changed the message of the two novels. To a large extent, I was not ‘disappointed’ by the film adaptations of The Great Gatsby and Atonement. I believe that both film directors have stayed loyal and faithful to the novel, they did not change my opinion on how I viewed the …show more content…
The valley of Ashes is a piece of wasteland with ashes of the train that carries the wealthy and upper class to New York. F.Scott Fitzgerald describes the people as ‘of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air’ he gives us an image of the poor people – the people are stuck in the failure of the American dream. They are like the waste of America, and they cannot move forward. We also get an image of an area filled with dirt, thick air and poverty. In the film, we see details of this unpleasant place, and we get an image of the type of people who live there. In the film we immediately see that this ‘farm’ is a symbol of the failure of the American dream. Baz Luhrman displays this farmland exactly or even better than what one would imagine. I was not disappointed and in fact, I got a bigger understanding of what the failure of the American Dream
All too often the film industry takes a book and changes it for movie purposes. The resulting film, no matter how good or bad it may be as a stand alone, is inevitably criticized with those all too familiar words “The book was better.” However, The Great Gatsby has found itself within a group of the select few book based movies that has very few changes from the book at all. In fact, most of the lines the actors used were straight quotes from the book. A good majority of the characters, settings, words, and events in both the film and the book are identical,but not perfectly so. There are still a few things that must be changed either due to translation from page to screen or due to stylistic choice by the director.
The author uses the Valley of Ashes, a small town between the West Egg and New York City, to symbolize the moral and social decay that stems from the desire to become wealthy. The Valley of Ashes, "a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air symbolizes a morally stripped place where materialistic and false people can live in harmony. The unfortunate events that occur in the Valley of Ashes, including Gatsby's death, the affair between Tom and Myrtle and Myrtle's accidental death, represent the severe consequences stemming from the failed attempts at achieving the American Dream. As the characters travel through the Valley of Ashes to reach elsewhere, they are forced to belittle themselves to a lower social status, as seen when Tom engages in an affair with Myrtle, a poor-stricken woman, who solely provides another form of comfort. Serving as a symbol of social and moral destruction, the Valley of Ashes also symbolizes the condition in which the poorer American society lived during the 1920s. The description of the Valley of Ashes used through color symbolism, creates a melancholy atmosphere which allows the reader to connect the importance of the "desolate strip of land" to the negative personality changes, reflective of the 1920s, within the characters.
There are many differences to be discovered between Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, written in 1925, and the movie directed by Baz Luhrmann in 2013. Clearly, as time drastically changed between the two, it is easy to assume that some aspects of the story have as well. Scott Fitzgerald and Baz Luhrmann both captured the essence of the world in the 1920’s in different ways. These differences can be seen throughout the characters and themes of the story.
Theme is a debatable topic among stories, some will agree and most have their own take. Two great novels that debate themes constantly are The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald written about a young man who becomes super wealthy and Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn a story of a young women who does not fit into society. The novels The Great Gatsby and Scarlet Letter disagree on the theme that people look to self-improvement to help get what they want, evidenced by plot, tone, and, character.
Analysis: Fitzgerald uses ashes, fire and dust to represent poverty. Valley of ashes is a place where “ ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys”. Basically it is a place where all of the industrial factories fiery remains fall and leave the territory unsanitary. It is a place for the rich to leave their junk and seek after their American Dream
“What is better, the book or movie?” a commonly asked question by many individuals who are curious to know one’s opinion on a novel or film he/she is interested in. The book is usually always better than the movie because the book is more detailed, one gets to know the characters better, and it allows one to be more creative and have his/her own interpretation on what is occurring. In this case, The Great Gatsby is a remarkable 1925 novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which was made into various movie adaptions in 1926, 1949, 1974, 2000 and 2013. Each version takes place in drastically different periods, so each type has its own take on the film, also depending on the director’s vision. This goes to show that the cinema has been trying periodically to recreate F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, but the attempts of the movies have mostly failed. In particular, the 1974 film decreases its effectiveness in representing the message that Fitzgerald was attempting to demonstrate in the book, which contributes to the book being significantly better than the film for various reasons.
As a child, one may have been sure that their future consisted of becoming a superhero and battling evil monsters, but as time goes by, people grow, they mature, and became aware that superhuman abilities are beyond their capacity. What would have happened if everyone continued to believe in their wildest fantasies beyond childhood? The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck explores this idea in distinctive detail. Gatsby looks into a mysterious man’s life in the 1920s and the secrets behind the extravagant parties he threw for all but himself, and his longing for a true love that consumed his sensibility. Of Mice and Men revolves around two peculiar young men in Great Depression era who worked to earn
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ian McEwan both created characters within their novels, The Great Gatsby and Atonement, who allow their actions to be influenced and ruled to by love. The ideas and values of the lovers in bot novels influence the connection and separation they experience in their doomed love affairs. The influence of society on wealth and class at the time effects the actions of the characters as they bound to be doomed through their great passion and obsession for one’s own personal gain.
Everyone has a dream that they want to achieve. The goal in life is to find something valuable to achieve. Many people immigrated to America for a second chance in life. The American dream is a goal someone wants to achieve in America. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men are two books that are prime examples of the American dream. The Great Gatsby is a story about a guy named Nick from the Midwest moving to New York for a job in the stock market. He finds many friends along the way, including Gatsby. Nick lived next door to Gatsby’s mansion. Gatsby used this mansion to try to marry a girl he loved named Daisy. In the end, Gatsby did not get married to Daisy. Of Mice and Men takes place during the great depression, which makes it hard for people to get work and earn money. The story is about two men in California who have a dream of having their own ranch. George and Lennie get a job at a ranch where they buck barley. They made friends with an old man named Candy, who wanted to help them buy a ranch house. Lennie had a mental disorder, which makes it hard for him to understand. He accidentally killed a lady because of mental disorder. In the end, Lennie was shot by George and he was not able to live on his own ranch. These two books are similar because characters from both books want to achieve their American dream. Although they did have their American dream, it was difficult for them to achieve it. F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby is a novel which critically discusses the ideals of the American Dream and recapturing the past. In the film adaptation, producer Jack Clayton stays very closely to the plot and even quotes the novel verbatim but fails to capture the essence of the themes portrayed in the novel. The text did not translate well into film; some facts are distorted, the depiction of the characters are different, the general ambience of certain settings do not match, and the movie is weighted towards the beginning of the book, with half of the movie based closely on the first two chapters of the book.
The Valley Of Ashes is the poor working class part of the story where industrial workers work and are surrounded by smoke and ash covering their clothes. In contrast to New York The Valley Of Ashes is a dump where poor people live in New York you're surrounded by tall buildings and cars and business men in suits. "This is the valley of ashes-- a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the form of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air."(Fitzgerald 23). This quote shows perfectly how the valley was nothing compared to New York City.
The 2013 movie adaptation of ‘The Great Gatsby” certainly steps out of the cozy boundaries of the novella of less than two hundred pages by F. Scott Fitzegerald with its gaudy attitude and fast-paced scenes that at the same time is quite picturesque and full of details reproduced to match the prose that has been written. Some lovers of the classic might be horrified at the big top-esque film that Baz Luhrmann has made it into, for this director is no stranger to flashiness and taking risks, as shown in his past films “Moulin Rouge!” and “Romeo + Juliet”; and the same desire in the both of them is still present in his installment of “Gatsby”: the want to capture the contemporary audience, even if it
Movie adaptations are widely produced in our modern cinematic world. Many book lovers criticize movie adaptations, proclaiming that it kills the spirit of the story, misses out on critical key themes, and eliminates the reader's and viewer’s imagination. The Great Gatsby movie, directed by Baz Luhrmann and released on May 1st, 2013, is a film adaptation of the book The Great Gatsby, written in 1922 by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The time lag between the movie and the book made some things unacceptable in our society. These changing societal proprietorship motivated Baz Luhrmann to alter the movie to be more suitable for current viewers. Consequently, there are many differences to be found between the book and the movie adaptation, which ultimately led to Luhrmann's movie being critiqued many times by the book’s fans, saying it was nothing like the actual book. Despite the fact that the movie adaptation of the Great Gatsby book follows the overall plot, it fails to show the racism, sexism, and abuse some of the characters withhold. The movie also fails to show the significance of the American dream, the condemnation of the lifestyle of the very rich, and it also annihilates reader’s imagination.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men are set in two close time periods, but give a different feel to the setting in each book. In both books, women have a status lower than men. Daisy, Jordan, Myrtle and Curley’s wife are seen as inferior, most likely due to society’s view of women during the time periods. In The Great Gatsby and in Of Mice and Men, the American Dream is often put aside, seen through the actions of women characters.
The tale of the Jay Gatsby is not only written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the novel, The Great Gatsby, but also directed and produced into a movie by Baz Luhrmann. Although thematically similar and entertaining, Luhrmann’s adaptation can hardly compare to the intricate and enchanting words written by Fitzgerald. Many differences fall alongside the similarities when comparing the novel and the 2013 movie of, The Great Gatsby, including characteristics of the narrator, relationships and Gatsby’s death.