gattom Importance of the Automobile in The Great Gatsby Essay

The Importance of the Automobile in The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby was written closely a time of gaiety for a certain set of people. genius of the major thematic aspects of the phonograph record is impetuous and the automobile. At the time the book was written the car had begun its establishment as a national institution. This is plain in unrivaled of the central events in the book. Toms unfaithfulness first comes to neat from a car accident in Santa Barbara. He misguides the car and the distraction of his life is made glaringly evident. The automobile affected Fitzgerald and it influenced the writing in The Great Gatsby. driving is equated with living. Nick Carra look, describing their ill-fated trip from sensitive York in Chapter Seven of The Great Gatsby says, ...we drove on toward death...(143) This is both literal and fictionical. They were driving toward the horrific scene of Myrtles death. The entire novel deals with living, which is a moveme nt toward death. Driving becomes a metaphor for living. Automotive transport becomes the rhetoric for describing everything. Even constitution is related to automobiles. Nick describes the season in terms of elements associated with cars. Already it was thick summer on roadho consumption roofs and in front of wayside garages where new vehement gas-pumps sat in pools of light...(25). For these people driving is about the new way of getting around quickly and living life fully. No one is exempt from being touched by the influence of cars. Fitzgerald incorporates the automotive metaphor into every aspect of his novel. This is especially evident when Fitzgerald describes people. Often the basic speech communication used is automotive related. Daisy describes Tom as a great medium-large hulking physical specim... ...ed that draws the automobile metaphor into it. It is the hit and run entitle of living that makes The Great Gatsby such a wonderful book, and Fitzgeralds continuous us e of cars helps to keep this a vivid image. Works Cited Berman, Ronald. The Great Gatsby and Modern Times. Urbana U of Illinois P, 1994. Dillon, Andrew. The Great Gatsby The Vitality of Illusion. Arizona Quarterly 44.1 (1988) 49-61. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York. New York. Scribner., 1995. Godden, Richard. The Great Gatsby Glamor on the Turn. Journal of American Studies 16.3 (1982) 343-371. Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald A solicitation of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, 1963. Trilling, Lionel. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgeralds Great Gatsby. Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston Hall, 1984. 13-20.