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Though Tom and Daisy have comfortably settled in East Egg, “I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game” (ch.1). According to Nick, the narrator of the novel, “They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together” (Fitzgerald ch.1) in the true fashion of the wealthy lost generation. Consider Tom and Daisy Buchanan, the distant relatives of Nick Carraway. Their lives are empty they attempt to fill this void with extravagant parties, excessive travelling, and extramarital affairs, and by flaunting their wealth. The characters of The Great Gatsby, though they never admit to it themselves, are classic members of the lost generation. A Glossary of Literary Terms states that writers of the “lost generation” frequently portrayed themselves as being estranged from the accepted conventions that they deliberately defied (Abrams). Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway (McMichael 983). These sentiments were especially exemplified in the fiction of F. The Anthology of American Literature reports that this group of self-proclaimed writers found themselves entirely faithless and isolated from a culture they felt no longer made any sense.
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From the radical shift of traditional values into a new way of thought and life, the “lost generation” emerged. Holman adds that Modernism rejects traditional values and beliefs, embracing the individual, inward, and unconscious as opposed to the social, outward, sub-conscious (Holman 326). In general, modernism believes that “we create the world in the act of perceiving it” (Holman 326). As a result, much of the literature from this period reflects ideas of self awareness and stream of consciousness. Modernism reflected not just a style of literature, but a new worldview.Īround the time of the rise of Modernism, the studies of Sigmund Freud and other psychologists and anthropologists were coming into light and beginning to have an impact on literature. Abrams states that “he term Modernism is widely used to identify new and distinctive features in the subjects, forms, concepts, and styles of literature and the other arts in the early decades of the present century, but especially after World War I.” Although different writers and critics have assigned Modernism varying definitions, they all agree that at the heart of Modernism is a “deliberate and radical break from the traditional bases not only of Western art, but of Western culture in general” (Abrams). Modern implies a historical discontinuity, a sense of alienation, of loss, and of despair” (Holman 326). According to Hugh Holman, Modernism is “a strong and conscious break with tradition. Simply put, Modernism is “an omnibus term for a number of tendencies in the arts which were prominent in the first half of the 20th century” (Drabble 658). Modernism does not have one specific definition, but an array of definitions and interpretations. People were forced to abandon their traditional values and adapt to the challenges and changes around them, giving birth to Modernism. Through his individual characters, their personalities, and their crises, Fitzgerald presents a detailed display of Modernism in his classic novel.Īt the launch of World War I, Americans felt the impact of men going off to battle and women working in factories lifestyles were beginning to divert from family traditions. In many ways, his characters could be seen as a portrait of the people he associated with, if not somewhat of a self-portrait. The characters of The Great Gatsby are a direct reflection of the “lost generation” to which Fitzgerald belonged. The Great Gatsby set the tone for the movement that defined American literature in the early decades well into the present day. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has been hailed as one of the greatest literary works of Modernism.