The Great Gatsby Compare And Contrast Essay

The Great Gatsby has been around for ages; it is a story of a young man in the 1920’s who is thrown into a new world made up of the new and the old rich. He is confused by the way these people act and in the end cannot stay another minute in this strange, insensitive, materialistic world. The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses many techniques to help the reader understand how Nick Carraway (the narrator) is feeling throughout the story. In the book The Great Gatsby, the author F. Scott Fitzgerald uses effective language to make his writing successful. He uses the techniques of imagery and irony to display this message.

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.

130) In the earlier chapters when Nick was nervous and quiet in situations we saw syntax that unnecessarily spaced out thoughts using multiple sentences, and things like dashes, and this is used again much later in the book; showing how truly hollow the American dream is, once so obtainable in the middle of the book, to falling right back to where they had begun in the beginning of the book. This digression in the pursuit of the American dream for Gatsby shows how he really tried to make his dreams with Daisy work out, but in the end it would have never worked out, foreshadowing his son's demise. Shortly later when Gatsby is killed, Nick is telling the story from his point of view which is for the most part uncertain,” But they knew then, I firmly believed.” (Fitzgerald. 161)

In Scott Fitzgerald’s book version of The Great Gatsby, we can find many differences within the characterizations. Gatsby is portrayed differently in the book than in the movie. For example, in the book, Gatsby was frightened and aware of the fact that Daisy would never be his. In the book he was worried saying, “No telephone message arrived…” This quote shows how he seemed anxious from not hearing from Daisy. In the quote, “Gatsby

The character of Nick Carraway has shown many similarities and differences with the film and the novel. In the beginning of the film, Nick is seen in the setting of a mental institution in which he was admitted for alcoholic issues, the death of Gatsby, and disgust of old friends. Nick is telling the story of Gatsby and the people he met in the time of living in West Egg next to Gatsby’s mansion. In the novel, Nick starts off by telling his younger days when his father told him as he was about to leave for New York, “‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone… just remember that all people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had’” (Fitzgerald 1) In the novel Nick is said to be childish and uncomfortable but in the film he appears sophisticated and and easy

Also the paces of each movie differed as well. The mood differed the most out of everything. In both movies the original and the remake, there was great acting. The original J. Gatsby played by Robert Reford, Daisy played by Mia Farrow, Nick played by Sam Waterson and Tom played by Bruce Dern.

“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.

At the beginning of the book Nick sees Gatsby as a mysterious shady man. In the beginning of the chapter Nick somewhat resents Gatsby. In Nick’s opinion Gatsby was the representation of “…everything for

    The success of Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is in part due to his successful characterization of the main characters through the comparison and contrast of Daisy Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan and George B. Wilson, and Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby. The contrast is achieved through two principle means: contrasting opposite qualities held by the characters and contrasting one character's posititve or negative qualities to another's lack thereof. Conflict is generated when the characters sometimes stand as allegorical opposites. On the other hand, comparison of two characters is rather straightforward. This comparison and contrast is prevalent in Fitzgerald's

One thing that surprises me about Nick is that he was loyal to Gatsby who seemed likeable enough but empty inside. He seemed like the picture was more important than the real person. Nick was interested in person and would put himself in a bad light to help a friend. “I didn’t want to go to the city. I wasn’t worth a decent stroke

The other major distinction is the characterization of Tom expressed in the book and the movie. However, both have demonstrated the significance of the story. After reading the novel, I sympathize for Gatsby because of what he has gone through and the ending he gets, but compare the two I did not receive any emotional emerging at all from the movie. On a personal note, the novel feels more sentiment because it captivates and draws me into the story. On the contrary, the movie did not achieve this in my emotional level; it is true that I get the whole picture of the story, but lacking the details and the vivid imagery make it less effective.

Both of Fitzgerald and Gatsby are the out-dated man of their times. Fitzgerald earns his reputation as a novelist, while Gatsby is ambitious and later became rich as a bootlegger. They meet their beloved girl and win them in the similar way. Also, they have the tragic end finally in the similar way.

Fitzgerald chose Nick to narrate the text because his perspective creates a multifaceted view of the world Fitzgerald portrays. He is an outsider to the wealthy materialistic world in which he lives. His similarity to Gatsby in that respect helps us gain an appreciation for Gatsby’s character, but although Nick and Gatsby are both outsiders Nick fails to fully understand Gatsby. This appreciation but lack of full understanding gives the reader a very different perspective than a narration from Gatsby’s point of view or that of anyone else in the novel. Nick is caught between the perspective of the man “looking up and wondering” (35) and the man in the party. Gatsby is neither; he holds the party but then scarcely shows up. Far from being an outsider to the world of wealth and materialism, he seems to embody it. Gatsby and Nick both disdain the world of vacuous wealth, but they do so from different perspectives. Gatsby has everything he needs to be part of it and chooses not to; Nick is caught on the edge, unsure whether or not he wants that world, but ultimately he cannot have it. If Nick is an outsider unsure about trying to become an insider, Gatsby is an insider trying, studiously, to make himself an outsider.

Nick is a dynamic character. Starts to leave his values behind, temporarily and in one instance, he gets drunk for the second time in his life “… either it was terrible stuff of the whiskey distorted things, because it didn’t make any sense to me” (29). Only has gotten drunk twice in his life, and the reader can come to the conclusion that the whole scene at Myrtle's party is skewed. "Instead of being the warm center of the world, the middle west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe" (3). Gatsby's Influence The title of the story is The Great Gatsby Is Fitzgerald being ironic about how "great" Gatsby is or is it to emphasize how great Nick thinks he is? Nick thinks Gatsby is admirable and see that he is driven by love to achieve his dream. He finds that praise-worthy and thinks its an honorable dream. He believe he truly is a good person. Thinks Gatsby is an unfortunate victim to the Easts eccentric ways but is respectable. In the end he sides with Gatsby. It sets up his biases. He hears rumors that Gatsby is a "spy" and "killed a man" (48). He had expected that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid and corpulent person" (48). Time vs. Opinions His outlook gradually alters towards corruption as “the events of three nights several weeks apart” took effect on his writing and he found that they ” gave the impression that… they were all that absorbed” him (55). He has been focusing on one event and giving it great importance. He was partially opinionated

The central antagonist of Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age classic, Jay Gatsby, is revealed to the reader throughout the novel, creating a sense of mystery around his character, his past and his future. The quasi - fantastical pictorial of the same name, by Greenberg, also follows this reveal, portraying Gatsby's world and evoking a lingering curiosity. Initially, in both novel and graphic novel, the reader is set up to expect the worst. In the introduction of the novel by Fitzgerald, Nick states ‘ No- Gatsby turned out alright in the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interests in the abortive sorrows and short winded elations of men.’ This introduction creates a