Jay Gatsby and Willy Loman

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how in "The Great Gatsby", F. Scott Fitzgerald created Jay Gatsby, a man with a mysterious past that is bared over the course of the novel. It also looks at how in "Death of a Salesman", Arthur Miller created Willy Loman, a man haunted by a past that he does not understand. It discusses how Jay Gatsby knew what his past was, and concealed it. Nevertheless, he could treat his father with generosity, if only from a distance. In comparison, the paper looks at how Willy Loman longs to recapture his past, but it is a past he has idealized almost beyond recognition. He does not realize that in the venality of his failing life, he already has it.

From the Paper:

"Fitzgerald gives only a glimpse of young Jimmy Gatz, through his father. Henry Gatz comes to New York for the funeral, "a solemn old man, very helpless and dismayed" (Fitzgerald, 111), after reading of Gatsby's death in the Chicago papers, and Fitzgerald does not explain how Mr. Gatz connected Jay Gatsby and his son. The old man confronts Gatsby's edifice with grief "mixed with awed pride" (Fitzgerald, 112), blind to the fact that "foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams" (Fitzgerald, 2). His worn-out photograph of Gatsby's house is "more real to him now than the house itself" (Fitzgerald, 115). "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Fitzgerald, Francis Scott. (1953). The Great Gatsby. New York, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
• Miller, Arthur. (1949). Death of a Salesman. Hew York, New York: The Viking Press.

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