Structuring some ideas for these two ESSAY TOPICS

F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel is a masterpiece because of the way it looks at the successes and failures of the American
Dream. Explore this idea with reference to both Gatsby and Daisy.
OR
The Great Gatsby explores the darkness within humans. That's what makes it so memorable. Analyse this statement
with close reference to the whole novel.

1) BRAINSTORM THE QUESTIONS - TYPES OF DARKNESS WITHIN HUMANS / FAILURES OF the AMERICAN
DREAM

 Immorality

 Superficiality

 Loss of belief in anything transcendental: (the absence of God in the modern world)

 The bleak realities underneath the myths of the American Dream…

2) WRITE THESE IDEAS AS TOPIC STATEMENTS

Topic One: The novel explores a world in which hedonism and materialism took the place of faith, certainty and belief.

Topic Two: Fitzgerald also reflects the corruption and criminality which thrived underneath the American Dream, evoking a world
in which genuine beauty was replaced by the shallow glamour of artificial beauty and the confronting reality of decay.

Topic three: Moreover, the novel exposes the powerful class divides and elitism which remained in place in the Roaring
Twenties, despite the American Dream’s promises of social opportunity, wealth and increased social status.

3) CONSTRUCT A THESIS USING THESE TOPICS (outline of main argument for your introduction):

A sample:
Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby expresses the dark realities of the American Dream (or “masterfully explores the darkness
within humans”), in its depiction of a world in which hedonism and materialism took the place of faith, certainty and belief;
corruption and criminality thrived; and in which genuine beauty was replaced by the shallow glamour of artificial
beauty and of

pg. 1 - The Great Gatsby essay scaffold

 Ms. Limbers, If you scroll down to page 3, you will see what I have completed
far.

Structuring some ideas for these two ESSAY TOPICS

F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel is a masterpiece because of the way it looks at the successes and failures of the American
Dream. Explore this idea with reference to both Gatsby and Daisy.
OR
The Great Gatsby explores the darkness within humans. That's what makes it so memorable. Analyse this statemen
with close reference to the whole novel.

1) BRAINSTORM THE QUESTIONS - TYPES OF DARKNESS WITHIN HUMANS / FAILURES OF the AMERICAN
DREAM

 Immorality

 Superficiality

 Loss of belief in anything transcendental: (the absence of God in the modern world)

 The bleak realities underneath the myths of the American Dream…

2) WRITE THESE IDEAS AS TOPIC STATEMENTS

Topic One: The novel explores a world in which hedonism and materialism took the place of faith, certainty and belief

Topic Two: Fitzgerald also reflects the corruption and criminality which thrived underneath the American Dream, evoking a
in which genuine beauty was replaced by the shallow glamour of artificial beauty and the confronting reality of decay.

Topic three: Moreover, the novel exposes the powerful class divides and elitism which remained in place in the Roaring
Twenties, despite the American Dream’s promises of social opportunity, wealth and increased social status.

3) CONSTRUCT A THESIS USING THESE TOPICS (outline of main argument for your introduction):

A sample:

Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby expresses the dark realities of the American Dream (or “masterfully explores the dark
within humans”), in its depiction of a world in which hedonism and materialism took the place of faith, certainty and bel
corruption and criminality thrived; and in which genuine beauty was replaced by the shallow glamour of artificial
beauty and of decay. Moreover, the novel exposes the powerful class divides and elitism which remained in place
Roaring Twenties, despite the American Dream’s promises of social opportunity, wealth and increased social status.
Modernist features of the author’s narrative style serve to make his expression and representation of these ideas memorabl
rendering a literary masterpiece.

4) WRITE YOUR BODY PARAGRAPHS USING ABOVE TOPICS (EACH ONE STARTS A NEW PARA):

The novel explores a world in which hedonism and materialism took the place of faith, certainty and belief
Fitzgerald portrays Gatsby as a detached and mysterious host of astonishing lavish parties held at his mansion,
embodying the corrupted and uncorrupted American Dream. Gatsby’s lust for wealth driven by his absolute love fo
Daisy symbolises the materialism and corruption that prevailed over integrity and true love. Daisy is presented as
innocent and pure through the colour white and light imagery masking her corruption, hunger for wealth and
materialistic nature which unfolds throughout the novel. The ability of Gatsby to reinvent himself and amass vast
wealth reflects the opportunities and successes of the American Dream. Gatsby "sprang from his Platonic conceptio
himself," the narrator says, using the classical allusion to Plato's ideas of ideal forms as a metaphor for Gatsby's cre

pg. 2 - The Great Gatsby essay scaffold

 decay. Moreover, the novel exposes the powerful class divides and elitism which remained in place in the Roaring
Twenties, despite the American Dream’s promises of social opportunity, wealth and increased social status. The Modernist
features of the author’s narrative style serve to make his expression and representation of these ideas memorable, rendering a
literary masterpiece.

4) WRITE YOUR BODY PARAGRAPHS USING ABOVE TOPICS (EACH ONE STARTS A NEW PARA):

The novel explores a world in which hedonism and materialism took the place of faith, certainty and belief.
Fitzgerald portrays Gatsby as a detached and mysterious host of astonishing lavish parties held at his mansion,
embodying the corrupted and uncorrupted American Dream. Gatsby’s lust for wealth driven by his absolute love for
Daisy symbolises the materialism and corruption that prevailed over integrity and true love. Daisy is presented as
innocent and pure through the colour white and light imagery masking her corruption, hunger for wealth and
materialistic nature which unfolds throughout the novel. The ability of Gatsby to reinvent himself and amass vast
wealth reflects the opportunities and successes of the American Dream. Gatsby "sprang from his Platonic conception of
himself," the narrator says, using the classical allusion to Plato's ideas of ideal forms as a metaphor for Gatsby's creation
of a new and powerful social identity on the back of the American Dream. By accepting society's values of wealth,
Gatsby effectively loses his integrity and individuality, and rather than achieving his goal, he is inevitably betrayed by
the upper-class he once aspired to become. The recurring motif of lightness and the colour white in the descriptions of
Daisy such as “Daisy’s white face” and “dressed in white” aligns Daisy with Gatsby's idealised image of her which is
pure and innocent. This ideal is inevitably contradicted in Chapter 6 when Daisy's perception shifts. Daisy is "appalled
by West Egg" and thinks it's vulgar when she attends one of Gatsby's lavish parties, revealing her vacuous nature and
superficial lifestyle in which she is very much absorbed in. Later in the novel, as Gatsby is tossing and throwing shirts
at Daisy, she "bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily," explaining that she had never seen "such
beautiful shirts before." The shirts represent wealth in this scene, and Daisy's sobbing demonstrates her interest in
materialism. Daisy weeps not because she is reunited with Gatsby, but because of the sheer satisfaction that all of his
riches bring her. Rather than working hard and investing time in true love, Gatsby and Daisy prove the foolishness of
short-cutting the American dream and letting the lust of materialism triumph over purity.
Topic Two: Fitzgerald also reflects the corruption and criminality which thrived underneath the American Dream, evoking a world
in which genuine beauty was replaced by the shallow glamour of artificial beauty and the confronting reality of
decay.________________________________________________________________ _________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________

Topic three: Moreover, the novel exposes the powerful class divides and elitism which remained in place in the Roaring
Twenties, despite the American Dream’s promises of social opportunity, wealth and increased social status.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________

IDEA building blocks (some options)

pg. 3 - The Great Gatsby essay scaffold

Fitzgerald’s Modernist style memorably represents the failures and successes of the American Dream, in innovative ways. He
employs recurring motifs such as light and dark imagery and symbolism to express the dark realities of the Jazz Age, in which
hedonism took the place of belief, and corruption was rife, and beauty was reduced to artificial and shallow realities. Supporting
ideas:

 Quote examples of light and dark contrasts in ch 6 at the party (Dalton task 1 had heaps of light and dark contrasts) and
then analyse how this use of contrasting imagery shapes the author’s meaning.

 Look also at the dark imagery in ch 4 surrounding Nick’s encounter with Mr Wolfsheim. In both examples, you analyse
how these images shape the author’s meaning – how Fitzgerald represents the contrast between the bright hope of the
American Dream and the dark immorality and criminal culture which also flourished at the same time.

 Fitzgerald also uses symbolism to depict the moral and social failures of the American Dream in the Jazz Age. Ex 1: The
unseeing eyes of Dr Eckleburg are a symbol of the absence of God in the Modern world, and this is expressed in ”….”,
which has the effect of building the nihilistic mood of the narrative.

 The valley of ashes is another powerful symbol Fitzgerald uses to express the ‘death’ of idealism and morality, despite
the positive elements of the American Dream. (Technique – the author here suggests the biblical allusion to the ‘valley of
death’ in Psalm 23, in his descriptive evocation of a wasteland, a ‘half world’ devoid of any beauty, almost suggesting the
valley of ashes is like the underworld of classical myths.

Gatsby embodies both the success and failures of the American Dream in that he is a self-made man who rises from the
lower classes to society’s elite, yet his downfall or failure highlights and critiques the flaws of the American Dream
and the world of the Jazz Age.
 The fact that Gatsby could reinvent himself and amass great wealth reflects the opportunities / successes of the
American Dream. The narrator alludes to this when he says, Gatsby “sprang from his Platonic conception of
himself” using the classical allusion to Plato’s ideas of ideal forms acts as a metaphor for Gatsby’s invention of
a powerful new social identity on the back of the American Dream.
 On the other hand, Gatsby is shrouded in sinister mystery which reinforces that he is an outsider (class divide)
and there is a fatalism in the narrative mood (e.g. “and so we drove on towards death”) which leads us
eventually to the dismal image of stark abject image of Gatsby’s dead body floating on a lilo in his pool (note
the dramatic irony of this final image of Gatsby – he is at last ‘swimming’ in all that water Fitzgerald refers to
as another motif in the novel (the water is a symbol of upward social mobility and opportunity in a number of
American novels).
 This dark and haunting imagery of Gatsby dead, alone and ‘pathetic’ contrasts with the hyperbole and divine
imagery used to describe Gatsby’s social rise, (Nick uses the biblical metaphor of “a son of god” who “must
be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious* beauty” like Gatsby
alongside the bleak and underwhelming descriptions of Gatsby’s end and his true nature. (*meretricious =
trashy, tasteless, sham)
Essay:
Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby expresses the dark realities of the American Dream (or “masterfully explores the
darkness within humans”), in its depiction of a world in which hedonism and materialism took the place of faith,
certainty and belief; corruption and criminality thrived; and in which genuine beauty was replaced by the shallow
glamour of artificial beauty and of decay. Moreover, the novel exposes the powerful class divides and elitism which
remained in place in the Roaring Twenties, despite the American Dream’s promises of social opportunity, wealth and
increased social status. The Modernist features of the author’s narrative style serve to make his expression and
representation of these ideas memorable, rendering a literary masterpiece.

The novel explores a world in which hedonism and materialism took the place of faith, certainty and belief. Fitzgerald
portrays Gatsby as a detached and mysterious host of astonishing lavish parties held at his mansion, embodying the
corrupted and uncorrupted American Dream. Gatsby’s lust for wealth driven by his absolute love for Daisy symbolises
the materialism and corruption that prevailed over integrity and true love. Daisy is presented as innocent and pure
through the colour white and light imagery masking her corruption, hunger for wealth and materialistic nature which
unfolds throughout the novel. The ability of Gatsby to reinvent himself and amass vast wealth reflects the opportunities
and successes of the American Dream. Gatsby "sprang from his Platonic conception of himself," the narrator says,

pg. 4 - The Great Gatsby essay scaffold

using the classical allusion to Plato's ideas of ideal forms as a metaphor for Gatsby's creation of a new and powerful
social identity on the back of the American Dream. By accepting society's values of wealth, Gatsby effectively loses his
integrity and individuality, and rather than achieving his goal, he is inevitably betrayed by the upper-class he once
aspired to become. The recurring motif of lightness and the colour white in the descriptions of Daisy such as “Daisy’s
white face” and “dressed in white” aligns Daisy with Gatsby's idealised image of her which is pure and innocent. This
ideal is inevitably contradicted in Chapter 6 when Daisy's perception shifts. Daisy is "appalled by West Egg" and thinks
it's vulgar when she attends one of Gatsby's lavish parties, revealing her vacuous nature and superficial lifestyle in
which she is very much absorbed in. Later in the novel, as Gatsby is tossing and throwing shirts at Daisy, she "bent her
head into the shirts and began to cry stormily," explaining that she had never seen "such beautiful shirts before." The
shirts represent wealth in this scene, and Daisy's sobbing demonstrates her interest in materialism. Daisy weeps not
because she is reunited with Gatsby, but because of the sheer satisfaction that all of his riches bring her. Rather than
working hard and investing time in true love, Gatsby and Daisy prove the foolishness of short-cutting the American
dream and letting the lust of materialism triumph over purity.

pg. 5 - The Great Gatsby essay scaffold