Great Gatsby Final Paper on Feminism Essay

In his prison termless refreshed The peachy Gatsby, author Francis Scott Fitzgerald draws c ar to the irrational nature of women and the effect it had on their lives during the 1920s. The female characters in the novel tend to irresponsibly think with their hearts rather than with their heads. Time and again, this focal point of the view leads these women to a action of unhappiness and jeopardy. Fitzgerald utilizes tools such as conundrum and imagery to effectively display the negative consequences of their choices. Fitzgeralds purpose is to emphasize the real sufferings of women caused by their own lack of reason. He establishes a truthful tone without the novel in order to demonstrate to readers that the true source of the emptiness and sorrow felt by women in the 1920s does non come from the men in their lives, but from their own incoherence.Fitzgerald in the beginning uses paradox as a strategy that best exemplifies the irrational doings and decisions women in th e novel make. Early on in the novel, Jay Gatsby hosts grand parties at his home hoping to one day lure Daisy, the adult female he is madly in making love with, back into his flavor. Most women attend Gatsbys parties not because they are friends with him, nor because they were invited, but instead to have a carefree time at a strangers expense. Jordan regularly attends these extravaganzas at Gatsbys home she confesses to Nick one night, I like large parties. Theyre so intimate. At small parties there isnt any privacy.Her avermentassociates grandness with privacy and security, and smaller affairs with loneliness and discomfort. Jordan demonstrates the senseless thinking of many women of the era. They feel the need to be surrounded by strangers and wanton in the finest of things in order to feel intimate or secure. These gatherings are one way women fill the emptiness in their souls. They drink their spite away, dance off their fears, and gossip incessantly. These females are bl inded by the smear given to them at these affairs. Wealth is mistaken for security as attending is for love. In the same way, Daisy loses the voice of reason in her own life when she marries Tom for his wealth despite being madly in love with Gatsby.The day before her wedding, Daisy is descri roll in the hay to be lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress-and as drunk as a monkey (76). Fitzgeralds use ofparadox exemplifies the struggle Daisy is facing. Although it is her wedding day, and she looks beautiful, the discontent she feels is obvious. Fitzgerald strategically employs paradox to portray the insecurity and despair the women of West Egg feel throughout their lives. Furthermore, Fitzgerald demonstrates the pain of women through his use of imagery.At the first party Nick attends, he witnesses a woman, who although dressed beautifully, and surrounded by glamour, is visibly in misery. She had drunk a quantity of champagne, and during the course of her s ong, she had decided, ineptly, that everything was very, very sad (pg.51) This vivid description of the woman represents the pain felt by many women during this time period, and wealths inability heal it. In the same way, Fitzgerald uses imagery to shed enlighten on Daisys unhappiness after her marriage to Tom. Gatsby describes Daisys life as a single woman as innocent and pure.Fitzgerald uses illusionimagery to exemplify this. She owned a white car, lived in a home described as a high white castling and lived what Gatsby thought was a white girlhood. The use of color imagery emphasizes the purity before she was corrupted by the idea that one could follow for money and still be happy. This use of color imagery at once again acknowledges the senseless decisions women made during this time period, and the despairity that backfires on them because of these choices. In the Great Gatsby, author F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays women as irrational in their thinking, behaviors, and actions. This senselessness is supported by the lifelong insecurity and loneliness the women feel as a dissolvent of their actions.