Great Gatsby and Araby Essay

In Araby, an allegorical short yarn from his compilation, Dubliners, author James Joyce depicts his homeland of Ireland as a paralyzing and morally filthy environment. The young protagonist is an unknowing victim of high societys preoccupation with materialism, and in his rush to grow up accepts its distorted views of riches and warmth as truth. Conversely, Jay Gatsby, from F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby, tries to win back the heart of Daisy Buchanan through and through his obsessive attempts to repeat the past. In each work, the male lead resorts to fiscal extremes to capture the attention of his female counterpart under the false fancy that manage can be purchased. While the son hopes that a afford give win the affection of his friends babe, Gatsby desperately strives to dally Daisy with his bootlegging spoils. Some are able to escape the influence society exerts, while others remain fixated on vanity. Each author manipulates color and ghost to epitomize the ma terialism of adulthood and the confusion of love of wealth with unfeigned love. The protagonist of Araby fantasizes ab pop disclose growing up enough to attain the love of his friends sister.Because the young boy believes he is in love, he elevates himself above his peers. He isolates himself in his dark attic and watches his companions playing under in the street, their cries weakened and indistinct (Joyce 24). Although he tries to ignore them, the voices of his childishness emancipation still reach the boy no matter how much he tries to separate himself. The boy discounts some distant lamp or vindicateded window gleaming below on his peers, abandoning the light of childhood while he exercises a feeling of superiority (Joyce 23). By distancing himself from his coequals, he embarks on a gravid quest to prematurely reach adulthood, thereby reducing the value of childhood innocence. His quest, however, succeeds unaccompanied in pressing him further into the darkness of adult ideals. Adults demonstrate greater challenges and have more responsibility than children do it is easier for them to forsake their ethics than to leave materialistic values behind. Because they ignore their values, adults are of a off the beaten track(predicate) lesser innocence than the children they are meant to teach and thus exert a negative influence on their unknowing pupils.The boy learns from his surroundings that buying love is the only acceptable path to attaining happiness and growth. Mangans sister turns the silver bracelet round and round her wrist, drawing the boy into the superficiality of adulthood (Joyce 24). However, because he sees the girl as defined by light, he mistakenly confuses the ideas of wealth and happiness (Joyce 22). The combination of materialism and happiness makes it herculean to determine the meaning of either. Rather than developing a relationship ground on mutual interest, the boy tries to buy the girls love. When he is unable to purchase a gift for her, he finds himself in a completely dark environment (Joyce 26). The boy immediately epiphanizes that he is a creature driven and derided by vanity, signifying that light can emerge out of darkness (Joyce 26).His cognizance no longer allows surrounding influences of materialism to trance him he realizes love is not a commodity. Mistakes are necessary for moral growth, therefore the young boy needed to suffer vanity and the consequences of his ingest greed to realize that wealth alone cannot fulfill happiness. His challenges expire the freeing through which he ascertains the shallowness of the adult world, ultimately subjugating his influences. By vanquishing them, the boy discerns the genuine love depicted by light. Fitzgerald juxtaposes the obsessively nostalgic Jay Gatsby with Joyces young boy who hastily looks forward to adulthood. Despite Gatsbys seniority, he and the boy both believe they can purchase their beloveds affection. Gatsby views wealth as the equival ent of self-worth his doomed sense of hope justifies his illusion. He optimistically watches the atomic number 19 light at the end of the Buchanans dock, minute and far away, with his fortify stretched out toward the dark water (Fitzgerald 26).Gatsby reaches for Daisy with profound determination, but bases his resolve on the crooked belief that his grandiose home and expensive clothes will win her love. His materialistic concerns create an impassable gap, placing align love out of reach. Lights on the other side of the water appear greener and grander, causing Gatsby to ignorantly believe that is where happiness originates. The intrinsic confusion of wealth and happiness deprives Gatsby of a authentically fulfilled life. Thinking his new affluence will enliven Daisy, Gatsby draws her attention to his new Rolls Royce. However, the association of Gatsbys yellow car with uncomfortablenesswith powerand finally with death (Parkinson 41) foreshadows destruction. Even after Daisy acc identally kills myrtle Wilson with the yellow car, Gatsby still fails to see the uncontrollable dangers of greed . Wealth only consumes those who attain it, spitting failure into their faces when it ceases to satiate their avarice.Gatsbys picturesque luxuriousness deteriorates to frustration because money cannot make him happy. Rather than accepting this conclusion, he dons an tasteful wardrobe which echoes Daisys attributes of white, florid, and silver (Parkinson 47). Gatsby believes his white flannel suitand gold colored necktie will attract Daisy under the guise of unruffled elegance (Fitzgerald 89). The double entendre, however, is that the gold necktie resting around his throat parallels wealths threat to choke off his credibility, sanity, and ultimately, life-force. Although Gatsby actively perpetuates his superficial ambition, Daisy obviously allows life to unfold around her. Fitzgerald parallels Daisys floral namesake with her white outside(prenominal) and tainted yell ow interior. Wealth rots her to her core, though she maintains a pretense of purity, unceasingly dressed in white (Fitzgerald 127). Daisy enjoys her trivial existence only because she has the content to do so.Without wealth to distract her from her meaningless life, she would feel empty and worthless. comfort based solely on the availability of money inevitably crumbles and fades away, landing place in the colorless, desolate Valley of Ashes. With an ever-looming presence, the sign of Doctor T. J. Eckleberg looks over this vale of lost dreams through faded yellow glasses. No matter how self-willed the dreamer, visionaries with greedy ambitions must endure cruel judgment.These individuals poison their own lives and become soulless shells, unable to muster the same determination again. The green light he strives for becomes distant and unattainable even though Gatsby never truly gives up on winning back Daisy (Parkinson 46). The spoils of his wealth decay to awkwardness and loneli ness in failing to realize his mistakes, he leaves behind a sparsely attended funeral and an unprincipled legacy. Despite all that he fought for, Gatsby forsakes true happiness for the false love he derives from exploiting wealth.