A presente dissertação aborda a questão da experiência nacional representada alegoricamente no romance –O Grande Gatsby. Meu objetivo é estudar esta relação baseada na sedução estética do romance e a sua proposta de redirecionamento do Sonho Americano dos anos 20. Estudos Culturais e de Gênero fazem parte do embasamento teórico na observação de valores que são questionados e/ou perpetuados através de representações de gênero, classe social, raça e etnia no romance. A organização espacial da narrativa é entendida como um sistema estrutural em que o pertencimento de personagens a determinados “lugares” e cenários gera relações hierárquicas de poder, representadas por polaridades espaciais. Este trabalho sugere que os privilégios de algumas posições sociais estão representados alegoricamente na narrativa. O conceito de alegoria de Walter Benjamin enfatiza o estudo da temporalidade associada ao espaço narrativo e permite que se faça uma leitura do sentido gerado por essas representações, na medida em que expõe, e não omite, as contradições da narrativa. Estas remetem à impossibilidade de concretização histórica do Sonho Americano que é questionado e também re-valorizado através de sua ligação a um ideal pastoril em conflito com as demandas de uma ideologia marcadamente materialista no período entreguerras. Desta forma, a sobreposição de níveis temporais no romance liga a crença do excepcionalismo americano, patriotismo e herança cultural a um imaginário pastoril, em que uma versão do passado é legitimada e projetada para o futuro nacional. / This dissertation approaches the issue of a national experience represented allegorically in the novel – The Great Gatsby. My aim is to study this relation based on the novel’s esthetical seduction and its proposal of representing the new directions of the American Dream in the 1920s. Cultural and Gender Studies are employed as theoretical tools in order to observe the values questioned and/or perpetuated by the novel’s representation of gender, social class, race and ethnicity. The spatial organization of the narrative is conceived as a structural system in which the characters’ sense of belongingness to specific places and settings creates their hierarchical relations of power, represented by space polarities. This dissertation hopes to prove that specific social positions are inscribed allegorically in the narrative as owners of privileges in the representation of society. Walter Benjamin’s concept of allegory emphasizes the study of temporality, which is associated to space in the narrative, and allows one to conceive the meanings created by the mentioned representations, exposing the narrative’s contradictions. They lead to the historical impossibility of fulfillment of the American Dream. In the novel, the dream is questioned and also re-valued due to its link to a pastoral ideal in conflict with the demands of a materialistic ideology in the world war period. In this sense, the superposition of temporal levels in the novel connects a belief in American exceptionalism, patriotism and cultural heritage to a pastoral imagery, in which a version of the past is legitimized and projected to a national future.

A presente dissertação aborda a questão da experiência nacional representada alegoricamente no romance –O Grande Gatsby. Meu objetivo é estudar esta relação baseada na sedução estética do romance e a sua proposta de redirecionamento do Sonho Americano dos anos 20. Estudos Culturais e de Gênero fazem parte do embasamento teórico na observação de valores que são questionados e/ou perpetuados através de representações de gênero, classe social, raça e etnia no romance. A organização espacial da narrativa é entendida como um sistema estrutural em que o pertencimento de personagens a determinados “lugares” e cenários gera relações hierárquicas de poder, representadas por polaridades espaciais. Este trabalho sugere que os privilégios de algumas posições sociais estão representados alegoricamente na narrativa. O conceito de alegoria de Walter Benjamin enfatiza o estudo da temporalidade associada ao espaço narrativo e permite que se faça uma leitura do sentido gerado por essas representações, na medida em que expõe, e não omite, as contradições da narrativa. Estas remetem à impossibilidade de concretização histórica do Sonho Americano que é questionado e também re-valorizado através de sua ligação a um ideal pastoril em conflito com as demandas de uma ideologia marcadamente materialista no período entreguerras. Desta forma, a sobreposição de níveis temporais no romance liga a crença do excepcionalismo americano, patriotismo e herança cultural a um imaginário pastoril, em que uma versão do passado é legitimada e projetada para o futuro nacional. / This dissertation approaches the issue of a national experience represented allegorically in the novel – The Great Gatsby. My aim is to study this relation based on the novel’s esthetical seduction and its proposal of representing the new directions of the American Dream in the 1920s. Cultural and Gender Studies are employed as theoretical tools in order to observe the values questioned and/or perpetuated by the novel’s representation of gender, social class, race and ethnicity. The spatial organization of the narrative is conceived as a structural system in which the characters’ sense of belongingness to specific places and settings creates their hierarchical relations of power, represented by space polarities. This dissertation hopes to prove that specific social positions are inscribed allegorically in the narrative as owners of privileges in the representation of society. Walter Benjamin’s concept of allegory emphasizes the study of temporality, which is associated to space in the narrative, and allows one to conceive the meanings created by the mentioned representations, exposing the narrative’s contradictions. They lead to the historical impossibility of fulfillment of the American Dream. In the novel, the dream is questioned and also re-valued due to its link to a pastoral ideal in conflict with the demands of a materialistic ideology in the world war period. In this sense, the superposition of temporal levels in the novel connects a belief in American exceptionalism, patriotism and cultural heritage to a pastoral imagery, in which a version of the past is legitimized and projected to a national future.

This essay investigates the status of alcohol consumption in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby (1925). The analysis focuses on character study reading of Jay Gatsby, and Tom and Daisy Buchanan in conjunction with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, by placing habitus in the specific historical context of the novel. The analysis focuses on the social structures of the alcohol-consuming upper-class Americans, and the reproduction of internalized practices during Prohibition. Drinking alcohol is seen as a valued, cultural capital among the elite society and used as a tool in a competition of power. The Buchanans, as true members of their class, are constantly intoxicated. For Gatsby, a sober man and an imposter of the elite society, drinking has no cultural value. I argue that, from the cultural aspect, Gatsby’s fall is a consequence of his soberness among the drunkenness of the hierarchy.

No description available.

No description available.

Abstract This essay is an analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and it explores how identity and ideology always exist in a context of time. The American 1920s society was influenced by theories brought by Marxism, Albert Einstein and Freud. This era was highly influenced by cultural influencers, individuals such as Fitzgerald who became one of the greatest to mould and describe the era he lived in. When reviewing Fitzgerald’s text almost a century later, and at the verge of entering the 2020s, it becomes clear that some fundamental features of culture remain ever-present in the American culture. The multifaceted perspective presented to readers by Fitzgerald raises important questions regarding where the real is overruled and transformed by the ideal. The American 1920s was an era of contradictions which also is reflected in Fitzgerald’s ironic tone and in Gatsby’s smile. Fitzgerald offers an understanding which reaches as far as anyone would want to understand. Linchpins in this essay are the interaction between identity, ideology and social codes and the morality which drives actions and reactions and forms a link between the coexistence of contradictions. Social structures are part of history and the impact history possesses over culture, via nostalgia, is relevant for ideas today. Which clues do history and Fitzgerald’s text provide and store for us and can old ideas enlighten us to bring new solutions, or clarity, to apprehend anything about the future? There is a correspondence, a red thread, between eras such as the 1920s and the year of 2019 in the American society today, which explains why the ideas and ideals Fitzgerald portrayed as important parts of identity and culture a hundred years ago, also matter today.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald encapsulates the Roaring Twenties, a period of social and political change. The economy is thriving, and the American Dream, with its promise of monetary wealth, happiness and upward mobility, is seemingly within reach. Females gain suffrage, and a New Woman emerges, the flapper, who can be seen challenging stereotypical gender roles with her short skirts and bobbed hair. Ostensibly enjoying increased freedom, she dances the night away at speakeasies, a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other, defying Prohibition. This essay aims to evidence that the American Dream as constructed in the novel is a dream available only to the male gender, as the women remain shackled by a patriarchal society. By looking at The Great Gatsby through a feminist lens and with the help of well-established concepts within feminist critical theory and feminist narratology, this essay analyzes how the female characters are portrayed, along with their language, and their actions. The result reveals that in Gatsby’s world women orbit around the men, maneuvering for their attention, affection, and material wealth. Any transgressions of stereotypical gender roles result in punishment: loss of status, withheld affections, dismissal, or death. Consequently, instead of following their own American Dream, women are limited to pursuing the man who most successfully embodies it. Thus, for the females in The Great Gatsby, the American Dream stays an elusive idea as they remain reliant on the men to manifest it.

The thesis explores the notion of physicality in selected novels of Ernest Hemingway and Francis Scott Fitzgerald, using the works of Jean Baudrillard as its theoretical base. The text seeks to uncover the significance of a human body in the novels through a detailed observation of the depicted characters, focusing mainly on the role of the body as an emblem that reflects not only its owner's individual battles, but also the transgressive processes taking place in the society. The study assumes that the works written by the authors of the Lost Generation capture the gradual onset of capitalism and consumerism, and thus they reflect the emergence of the consumer society, a social order that became Baudrillard's main subject of study. The main aim of the thesis is thence to explore the human body as a reflection of major societal changes and uncover the methods in which the characters use their bodies to define their own position in the newly arising system. Following the theoretical introduction, the analysis firstly examines fashion and demonstrates its capability to either unify the members of the consumer society through their shared desire to follow specific trends, or alternatively hierarchically divide the consumers based on their dissimilar approaches to consumption. Secondly, the thesis...

This project is a discussion of the continuing need to address gender issues while teaching core curriculum in English classes at the secondary level.

This essay demonstrates how three popular writers of the twentieth century have created novels that contain echoes of Eliot's poem. They are F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926), and John Steinbeck's To a God Unknown (1933). I chose these particular novels because they exemplify widely different and distinctive echoes of the poem. Fitzgerald's use of waste land imagery is readily perceptible the most effective in defining and summing up the temper of the Jazz Age in America. Hemingway's borrowing lies principally in parallel characterization (Jake Barnes as he Fisher King is the outstanding example) and in depicting a morally and spiritually bankrupt world by showing that a satisfactory sexual relationship between man and woman is impossible. Steinbeck's borrowing is unique. HIs novel not only contains the Fisher King figure, desert land imagery, water motif, and the quest theme, but his protagonist, Joseph Wayne, like Eliot's Fisher King-Tiresias protagonist, is able to metamorphose from one "personage" into another. Steinbeck's borrowings are not used by him for the purpose of depicting the world of the Twenties, or any era. He may have done no more than build upon a piece of literature from the immediate past as Eliot had done from the more remote past when he created The Waste Land. There is also a possibility that Steinbeck disagrees with some of Eliot's philosophical ideas and playfully chides the poet for harboring them. In showing the nfluence of the poem on three important American novelists, perhaps this essay will disprove Karl Shapiro's statement that "at no point in the career of Eliot has there been the slightest indication of literary following,"5 and will furnish proof that Robert E. Knoll's statement regarding the influence of The Waste Land is a valid one: What The Rape of the Lock was to the Augustans and Tintern Abbey to the Romantics, The Waste Land has become to the Moderns, It is inescapable.6