"American Beauty" and "The Great Gatsby"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how within both "American Beauty" and "The Great Gatsby" themes and messages are essentially the same, regardless of the difference in media and context. The paper relates that messages of superficiality are communicated and then re-enforced throughout both works. The paper further looks at how, with the use of dramatic irony, both Mendez and Fitzgerald draw the audience's attention to the corruption that surrounds them and silently make a negative comment on the hypocrisy of society. It also examines how the familiarity of the self-destruction of the American Dream that is shared by Fitzgerald and Sam Mendez can only come from first-hand knowledge of this corrupted society. The paper maintains that, even though the contexts of the two texts are different, both creators communicate the same negative opinions of society.

From the Paper:

"The creators of American Beauty and The Great Gatsby communicate strong messages of superficiality to the audience. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald draws the audiences' attention to the superficiality of the American Society by repeatedly showing the characters expectations of fraudulence and repeated imagery of emptiness. In Chapter 3 the audience is shown the expectations that are held by the people of society for everything to be an illusion, the idea that any great wealth or glamour is an illusion. "You needn't bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They're real." The reaction of those who see that the wealth and glamour of Gatsby's mansion is more than an illusion is significant as it shows to the audience how the American society expects the people living the dream to be in some way corrupt. "

More papers on "American Beauty" and "The Great Gatsby":

• Analytical Essay # 148666 : "The Great Gatsby" and "The Sun Also Rises"
• Book Review # 101782 : "Materialism and Superficiality"
• Analytical Essay # 53551 : "Fitzgerald and Nafisi Compared"

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