Impact of World Wars on Ireland & Literature: Joyce's 'Dubliners' & Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway', Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Impact of World Wars on Ireland & Literature: Joyce's 'Dubliners' & Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway' e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! MODERNISM History After the death of Victoria in 1901, Edward VII became king, and when he died he was succeeded by George V. But role of monarchs had been reduced to the political power lay with government. During the first decades of the century, the Liberals were split between a reformist element, who wished to integrate the demands of the working classes, and a more conservative element. The Liberal government continued on the path towards social reform which had begun during the Victorian Age. Some reformes introduced were for example the Old Age Pensions Act, which granted pensions to people over 70, and the National Insurance Act, which made free medical treatment available to insured workers. And subsequently, the Parliament Act. Irish Question Another important element of this century was the so called “Irish question”. The majority of the Irish population was Catholic and they supported the idea of more indipendence in the Parliament of Dublin, but the majority Protestant population of Ulster (Northern Ireland) wanted to stay under British rule, for this reason they refused to accept the 1912 Home Rule Bill which proposed to give more power to the Irish, while still remaining within Britain. During the war, in 1916, a group of Republicans staged a rebellion in Dublin. It lasted six days until it was suppressed but the result was the support for Irish independence among the general population, and the Easter Rising became a symbol for Irish resistance to British rule. Imperials rivalry The British Empire was still expandin though the country's economy was being surpassed by those of the United States and Germany. However, the aggressive imperial ambitions of Germany, combined with the unstable position of the central European Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Habsburgs, had begun to generate tension. This lead to the First World War. The war shattered the mood of relative optimism that had characterised the beginning of the century. The world changed forever First World War The event which officially started World War I was the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian nationalists.We can say that it developped a new international character, which was due, in part, to the imperial roots of the conflict. The war was between the German Empire and the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on one side, and the maritime powers of Britain and France on the other. However, many other countries were also involved. Suddenly the initial became a war without limits, involving the mobilisation of masses of conscripted soldiers, this was linked to the imperial expansion of Western powers. The countries involved were now locked into a global system of trade, economic BroWth and competition, in addition, military technology had advanced greatly, with the result that the number of casualties was enormous. When the USA entered the conflict in 1917, Germany was finally exhausted. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was drawn up by the Allied powers, with the aim of preventing Germany from building up its military machine again. Russian Revolution Durin the war Russia saw the most significant revolution of the century. The Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, led by Lenin, forced Tsar Nicholas to abdicate, and established a communist government. At the beginning the revolution was felt with hope and seen as a time of construction. However, in the following decades, Lenin' successor Stalin established a reign of terror that led to the death or imprisonment of millions of Russians. After the war The horrors of World War I led to a profound change in people's attitudes to war in general. At the beginning of the war, the dominant feeling was an aggressive patriotism, but later most people in Britain wanted the war to end as soon as possible, and anti-war feeling spread. In 1919, the League of Nations was created to ensure war never broke out again. Also this kind of 'Pacifism' was embraced not only by people opposed to violence, but also by liberal internationalists. However, they were to be proved wrong. Free Irish State After the war, Ireland took important steps towards independence. In 1918 the Sinn Féin party set up an Irish Parliament in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic. In 1919 the IRA (Irish Republican Army) was created and a civil war began, it ended in 1921, and in 1922 the Irish Free State was born, excluding Ulster. New Reforms During the Twenties of 1900 the picanha experienced a period of optimism, In fact, some reforms were approved that made society more just, Come l'Education Act, Which made school compulsory for boys until the 14 years, Or the rise of a health minister. In the overseas colonies of Brittany, especially in India, a feeling of rebellion developed. Mahatma Gandhi He started the protest based on the principle of non- violence. Roosevelt and "New Deal" Elections of '32 in an atmosphere of uncertainty. Hoover is a whistle. Democrat Roosevelt presented himself to the electorate with the program "New Deal" (new pact) in which he exposes the lack of confidence in the ability of the market to self-regulate. The first major commitment that is proposed is to give work to the population and id start mobilization in case of war. First steps: 1. devaluation of the dollar to raise the price level 2. public works financed by the State ? reabsorption unemployment 3. minimum wages and a reduction in working time: all worked; minimum prices for products and a ban on unfair competition in trade; no restrictions on trade unions and an obligation on employers to negotiate. 4. State control and reorganisation of the banking system, stock market stock exchange surveillance "Security Exchange Commission" 5. Encouragement for the reduction of cotton and wheat culture (stocks) 6. "Tennessee Valley Autorithy", exploits hydroelectric forces over a large area of the river for the benefit of consumers and electricity at lower prices than private companies. Plan elaborated with the help of scholars and politicians: the brain trust. Trade union organizations supported Roosevelt, who proposed the New Deal, which was re-elected in 1936. He also favored the unionization of workers and the national pension system to ensure retirement; he established a federal control of banking, a control of relations between financial companies and public utilities. Keynes supported the state’s interventionist policy against the political conservatism of European governments; focusing on a more vigorous public spending policy to be implemented with budget deficits (no taxation). The objective: to increase employment, national purchasing power and to stimulate the recovery of private investment; the role of the Central Bank is fundamental. Wall Street,s crack October 24, 1929 there was a collapse of shares and securities in the "Stock Exchange". This causes entire personal fortunes to be wiped out, and so what is called the Great Depression is born: tens of millions of workers around the world found themselves in misery and thousands of businesses and savers in ruins. the cause of the depression is financial and stock market speculation; adventurous spirit leads to an improvement in European production; accumulation of American stocks. In general: increase in customs tariffs; the monetary tension is subject to a series of maneuvers of individual countries (revaluation of the lira to 90) the war debts of the allies to the USA; interest rates. 1) links between the American and European economies, Latin America and Asia 2) low investment in major productive sectors, little increase in purchasing power, unemployment or underemployment, low wages 3) lack of state control over the private banking system (which uses savers' money) Economist Keynes is the mode of capitalist production threatens to disintegrate. Hundreds of banks went bankrupt; companies shut down; the US Congress had a further increase in import tariffs. In the industrialized countries the unemployed rose to 10 million. Hitler's rise to power Damaged by war debts, Germany It was ruled by a National Socialist or Nazi party led by Adolf Hitler that continued to gain popularity. The League of Nations continued to pursue a policy of pacification with the belief that it was possible to reach a compromise with the German leader. but the invasion of 'epiphanies'. An epiphany is a moment in which a spiritual awakening is experienced, when ordinary thoughts and feelings come together tand doing so they produce a new awareness. This instant of intensity can be compared to Woolf's idea of 'vision'. In his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce explains through his character Stephen what he means by epiphany: “By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation” “Dubliners” Joyce' first short stories were published in 1914 in a collection called Dubliners. Collectively, they form a realistic and evocative portrait of the lives of ordinary people in Dublin and the city itself is a real protagonist of the novel. The stories are arranged in four groups that correspond to four "phases' of life: 1) childhood 2) adolescence (Eveline) 3) maturity 4) public life A recurrent theme in all the stories is the feeling of paralysis that many of the characters experience as a result of being tied to narrow cultural, social and political traditions. This aspect is also part of their relationships, which are conditioned by repressive religious and moral codes. Joyce himself once defined Dublin as 'the centre of paralysis'. Speaking about stylistic featurs of his novels we can say that the stories in Dubliners are written in an apparently traditional way. However, the descriptive realism which permeates them already contains some of the elements that Joyce experimented later, like the absence of a moralising narrative voice, description of characters' inner thoughts and use of symbolism. Eveline Eveline was a very young girl who worked in a department store,as a shop assistant even if she didn't really like her job. She lived with her father, a drunkard, an aggressive man, who used to be violent with his sons but less violent with Eveline. However she had to give to himall the money she earned. Eveline’s mum is dead, so the girl has to take care of the house and the family and above all to keep all them together, as she has promised to her when she died. One day she met a young sailor, called Frank, fascinating, cheerful, open hearted, generous and so Eveline felt in love with him mainly because he is so different from her father, he is tender, sweet, manly, funny (he has a lot of stories to tell because he has travelled all over the world). This made Frank ask Eveline to marry him and to move with him to Argentina, where he wanted to live. She agreed and organized in secret her departure, as she was trying to find a way to escape from the monotony of her life even if she loves her father and regrets the idea of abandoning him. When the departure day has arrived she arrivedat the port but she didn't leave, and so, paralyzed, she decided to stay in Dublin. This feeling of paralysis was caused by weakness, and by family, moral, cultural rules, by fear, and it derives by a previous epiphany, caused by a street organ, playing a music in the street, the same that she heard many years before when her mother died and so it reminded her of the promise. She realized that she can’t leave in that moment of epiphany. Features of Eveline The story is told by a third-person narrator and it is adopted Eveline’s point of view throughout the story. Joyce employed free indirect thoughts to give voice to Eveline’s thoughts. The character of the girl is not introduced in a traditional way since we are not given information about her physical appearance, family and school. The reader is obliged to infer the pieces of information from the development of her thoughts. Important stylistic devices and themes of ‘Dubliners’ present in ‘Eveline’ are: the realistic description of places, the use of a limited point of view (the point of view of Eveline), the presentation of the character from the inside, the use of a new concept of time (which is internal, subjective), the use of epiphany and the theme of paralysis linked to a failed escape, as Eveline lacks the determination to pursue her dream and is paralysed by her resignation to continue her life in her home city. Eveline is compared to a ”helpless animal”, since she is passive, paralysed, unable to make up any decision. The access to the character’s consciousness is provided by Joyce through the technique of Epiphany, that is “the sudden revelation of a hidden reality” through “casual words or events”. The sound of the street organ can be considered as the epiphany of this story; Eveline remembers her promise to her mother and understands the emptiness and the meaninglessness of her dreams and of her love. The miserable life of Eveline’s mother has influenced her decisions; at first there is her plan to escape which coexists with her antithetical wish of getting on living in her home; at the end there is the failure of her project of escaping and paralysis wins inside her soul. Eveline is a story of paralysis: she is a simple-minded girl who can not escape the prison of her home and her father’s authority. The Dead Gabriel , a University teacher and writer, and Gretta Conroy go to the annual Christmas party given by Gabriel’s aunts Julia and Kate Morkan. There’s a lot of eating, drinking, dancing and laughing at the party and Gabriel meets several friends. Among the people Gabriel meets there’s Miss Ivors, a nationalist who accuses him to be a “West Briton”. From this moment, Gabriel changes his mood and the party becomes a failure for him, even if he delivers a very successful speech after dinner. Just before leaving, Gabriel sees Gretta listening to an old Irish song someone is playing on the piano, obviously enchanted by it. When they arrive at their hotel, Gabriel’s sexual desire is frustrated by Gretta, who tells him the song has reminded her of Michael Furey, a boy who was in love with her when she was seventeen and who died for her love. After having told her story and cried over it, Gretta falls asleep, while Gabriel, looking out of the window at the snow falling down, experiences his epiphany, which will probably bring him to leave Ireland with his wife. The main character are: • Gabriel Conroy can be clearly identified with Joyce himself. He’s an intellectual and he’s sick of Ireland and the Irish, as he openly states in his conversation with Miss Ivors. He experiences his epiphany when he realizes the people at the party are really dead, while the dead Michael Furey is still alive and when he becomes aware of the superficiality of his relationship with his wife. He’s the only round character of the Dubliners, who will probably leave Ireland. His name refers to the Angel of the Annunciation, the hope of a re-birth. • Gretta is Gabriel’s wife; she’s never told her husband the story of her first love, but she seems to love him anyway. The setting is Dublin, but the story is mainly set indoors, first at aunt Julia and Kate’s house, then at the hotel, with the exception of the ride to the hotel by carriage. As we share Gabriel’s point of view, we also experience his changing feelings: the party turning from warm to suffocating, the relief of the ride by carriage, the anonymity of the hotel room. Themes • Paralysis: the paralysis of life in Dublin is symbolized by the repetitiveness of Christmas party rituals and closeness of Irish nationalists’ minds, embodied by Miss Ivors. Gabriel is paralyzed by his duties as a public man, a nephew, a husband. • Epiphany: Gabriel experiences his epiphany when he realizes the people at the party are spiritually dead, while the dead Michael Furey is still alive, as he had the courage to die for love, going against social rules. He becomes aware of the superficiality of his relationship with his wife, he thought to know very well, and plans to escape. • Escape: Gabriel is the only character of the Dubliners whose escape is not said to fail. Given his obvious identification with Joyce, we may think he’ll take the writer’s same journey towards Europe. Anyway, Joyce’s narrative is resignedly ambiguous on this point. Symbols The snow: it may be the symbol of death, covering Ireland like a shroud, or the symbol of purification and rebirth. The “journey westward”: according to Irish folklore, the journey westward is a journey towards death (west as the place where the sun sets), but taking into consideration Joyce’s openly acknowledged debt to Dante, it may be the counterpart of Dante’s journey, which starts westward. The Title The title refers to Michael Furey as he is physically dead but extremely “alive” in the heart of Gretta, it refers also to Gabriel as he is physically alive but dead in his emotional self, his passions and feelings, and also to the whole of Dublin’s community, Dublin as the centre of paralysis as Joyce says. Epiphanies Gabriel's one: he realises how little he has mattered in her life, how dead he has been, and how alive Michael has been in her heart even is he was physically dead, he feels admiration for Michael who braved death for her. He reconsiders all his emotions and feelings at the party, realising how foolish he has been. He thinks that death will soon come for the people around him whom he loves and for him too. For the first time he feels equal to the others and in communion with all, the living and the dead, while the SNOW falls over the living and the dead alike Gretta's one: Gretta is memorized by a song being sung by Mr. Bartell D’Arcy. Gabriel observes her and becomes filled with lust as he remembers wooing her in the past. However, when the two arrive at their hotel for the night and he intends to make love to her, she suddenly breaks down in tears. Gabriel is angry at first but as Gretta explains how the song resurfaced the feelings for a past lover, Michael Furey, that had died outside her window in the cold. She tosses herself into the bed and cries until she is asleep. VIRGINIA WOOLF Virginia Woolf was born in 1882 in London and the environment mainly influenced approach to writing and art. When Virginia was young she had a nervous breakdown due to her mother and step-sister Stella’s death. From that moment a period of mental instability started in her life, and she also first attempted suicide by taking drugs. After the death of her father she decided to move to the Bloomsbury where she became a member of the Bloomsbury group, Its members Were Writers, painters and intellectuals Rejected the traditional morality of the current Society, Also Leonard wolf was part of the group. In 1922 Virginia met Vita Sackville West and so they began a romantic affair. But the second world war increased anxiety and fears, And so she put rocks into her pockets and drowned herself into the River Ouse. Precisely for this reason the sea became an important symbol in Virginia Woolf’s novel, since it represents what is harmonious and feminine and also death. Rather than The linear sequence of the events, isInterested in the Impressions of the characters Who Experience this events. But she’s more interested in female subjectivity since she's considerate as an heroine to many feminists. Thanks to the indirect interior monologue, time Is related and a single moment can last for a very long time, Because this technique represents the gap between the chronological and interior time. Thanks to that the readers get the point of view of characters themselves, but there's still the occasional presence of anarita to give order to the characters' thoughts. Virginia Woolf used the so-called moments of being, That our moments of intensity and Vision, she says the mind receives a lot of impressions as a shower of innumerable atoms, from that moment we understand the life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged,But that life is a luminous Halo that surrounds us from beginning of consciousness to the end. So that through the moments of being characters are able to see the word behind Appearances, while the epiphanies of James Joyce were a sudden spiritual manifestation. Also we can say that there's another difference between the two English authors that is the use of stream of consciousness, Woolf one is characterized by the presence of the voice of the narrator, since she never let characters' thoughts flow without control. Mrs Dalloway The story of Mrs Dalloway takes place on one single day in one single pilate - the city of London. A middle- aged woman, Clarissa Dalloway, is busy buying flowers and objects for the party she has organized for the evening. In the novel, Clarissa's counterpart is represented by a man, Septimus Smith, a shell- shocked veteran of the war. He wanders through London, but his is a voyage towards self-destruction: the novel ends with Septimus' suicide. The news of his death reaches Clarissa while she is at her party. She realizes that Septimus' death was essential for her to stay alive: The novel ends with Clarissa realizing that she felt glad that he had done it. SEPTIMUS AND CLARISSA The novel is named after its female protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, who has rather conservative political views and is not particularly open-minded, she is clearly defined by her marital status, as suggested by the title ‘Mrs' which accompanies her name. She is a complex and frustrated woman; she lives her being a wife and a/mother as a limitation to her freedom, but she is not able to express her feelings spontaneously and self-imposes strong restrictions on her liberty just because she feels weak and imperfect. Clarissa's mind is constantly pervaded by her past memories, but the reader can understand (economic, cultural, etc). Eliot seems to waver between these views of the Unreal city, unable to reconcile his clear admiration for London as one of the quintessential focal points for the modern world, and his fear that the modern city will alienate its inhabitants from each other and the world, rising and falling like its great-city predecessors of the past. In his first reference to the “unreal city”, Eliot describes a scene, borrowed from Dante, of “a crowd” that “flowed over London Bridge”, each man’s eyes “fixed before his feet” (62-65). This haunting image likens the entrance into London to Dante’s description of masses crowding toward the gates of hell, clearly setting an ominous tone upon the city, giving “unreal” a sinister definition. This reference shows Eliot’s despair over the city and its people, setting himself up as the unfortunate observer, helplessly bearing witness to a doomed procession, a failed generation. Eliot also gives the city a glazed over “sameness”, repeating parts of his descriptions several times as though they can never change. The “Unreal city” is constantly “under the brown fog of winter dawn” (60-61), which casts London in a surreal, unchanging haze. Eliot reinforces this lack of visual cues for temporality later in the poem, as the ‘Unreal City” appears again in “the brown fog of winter noon” (210-211). In this stanza, within “The Fire Sermon”, Eliot provides his most positive outlook toward the city. He references “Tereu”, the villain in a story about transformation, and implies a link to the “unreal city”. Eliot seems to affirm that though the city may be part of the cause of suffering and the emptiness of modernity, it is also the catalyst to transform that suffering into art. London is both the source of alienation and disillusionment, and the ingredients from which to create the artistic antidote. Despite this minor concession, Eliot seems to maintain his fatalistic attitude toward London throughout most of the poem. In his final, and perhaps most important usage of the “unreal city” motif, Eliot presents a vision of decay and destruction. He reminds the reader that despite its present state, London will fall like the great cities of the past (“Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna” (378-379), through “cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air” (376). London is not forever, and regardless of its successes or failures or anything else, it will one day be gone, becoming like any emblematic city from antiquity: just an emblem, an intangible memory; unreal. Eliot's "The Wasteland" concentrates on the depression and despair of life as part of death. It is his description and characterization of "unreal city" and images of the city life that supports his subject that city life is dirty, overcrowded and malicious. "Under brown fog", "like a taxi throbbing waiting", "crowd flowed over London Bridge" are images he illustrates of what he wants the reader to focus on. Interestingly, Eliot also uses contrasting ideas to the city life: prison compared to palace. Palace being the most luxurious living life, to a prison being the most depressing (and punishable) living life. Furthermore, Eliot mentions "London Bridge" and "the Hanged Man". London has a history as being a great, wealthy and powerful empire for hundreds of years. But, London also has a dark history of crime and punishment - and the London bridge structure is a symbol to that piece of history. In the Elizabethian era, people who committed crimes were mutilated and had their heads chopped off, and then their heads were placed on stakes above London Bridge to warn everyone of what happens to them if they commit a crime. Eliot's description of "crowd flowed over London Bridge" is an imagery that it is not only the living that crowds the London Bridge, but the spirits of the hundred of people who died decades ago. The "Unreal City" is Eliot's description that millions and millions of souls crowd the city. Could it be his point that it is useless to determine the living with the unliving in a cruel and depressing city? FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD Born at the end of the 19th century, Fitzgerald belonged to the generation which lived in the so-called "Golden Age", the roaring Twenties. He is at best in the description of the period, when wealth and success were the main goals of the age, often leading to corruption, hedonism, alienation and solitude. Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in the Mid west of the United States. Though a mediocre student in childhood and boyhood, he managed to enroll at Princeton University, but he never graduated and enlisted in the Army in 1917, when World War I was near the end. While he was in Montgomery, Alabama, he met and fell in love with a seventeen - year - old beauty, Zelda Sayre. She agreed to marry him, but, led by her overpowering wish for wealth and leisure, she delayed the wedding until he could become a successful man. In 1920 Fitzgerald published his first novel. The Side of Paradise, which was a best-seller and launched him as a writer. This allowed him to earn enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him. The couple threw themselves into a hectic social life requiring enormous sums of money, which Fitzgerald desperately tried to earn to please his wife. But in the period of the Great Depression the old lifestyle was no longer possible. Zelda suffered a series of nervous breakdowns; the marriage degenerated into a violent and embittered relationship, with Zelda finally being hospitalized as a schizophrenic in 1934. Fitzgerald turned to writing for Hollywood, producing screenplays for films, while succumbing to alcoholism, which hampered his writing. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1940, at the age of forty-four. The Great Gatsby Plot This isn’t his real story, he hides some secrets about his past and people thinks he is involved in illegal bootlegging and other underworld activities or, even, that he has killed someone. Gatsby asks to his new friend Nick to arrange a meeting between himself and Daisy; despite all troubles, the love between Gatsby and Daisy is revived, and the two begin an affair. In the meanwhile Gatsby tells Nick his true story: he was born North Dakota, poor, and the baron Dan Cody served as Gatsby's mentor until his death. Gatsby inherited nothing of Cody's fortune, but thanks to him, he was introduced into the world of wealth, power, and privilege. After his reunion with Daisy, Gatsby ceases to throw his elaborate parties. The only reason he threw such parties was the chance that Daisy might attend. Daisy, Tom, Gatsby, Nick and Jordan are in a hotel in New York when a bitter confrontation begins. The two lovers proclaim their feelings and Daisy says she has never really loved her husband. On the trip back to East Egg, Gatsby allows Daisy to drive his car in order to calm her ragged nerves but when they pass Wilson's garage, Daisy runs over Myrtle who is killed instantly. Nick advises Gatsby to leave town until the situation calms down. Gatsby, however, refuses to leave in order to ensure that Daisy is safe. Wilson wants to take revenge, and Tom makes him believe that Gatsby is the murderer and his wife's lover, so Wilson shoots Gatsby before committing suicide. The novel captures much of the excesses of the American Jazz era, the period of material abundance following World War I. Nick and storyteller is an observer is a participant at the same time, so events and characters are presented filtered through his point of view; even Gatsby’s personality is gradually described through Nick’s experience. The great Gatsby can also be seen as the statement of the American dream of realization, So the protagonist is one of the great dreamers of American literature, But the beautiful and illusory world To which gatsby aspires It is possible only through money. Long Island is characterized by a division between West egg and East Egg, a place where people like the Gatsby live who have money but do not have a social position. Finally there is the territory of the "Valley of ashes" In which live Wilson and his wife Myrtle, Since they have there their gas station, In which Myrtle meets his tragic death, Victim of the little interest of the world of the rich to which she wanted to belong. The uncertainty about Gatsby’s identity is marked in the novel through the way Fitzgerald presents it as a presence that seems to exist everywhere nowhere, sometimes as nothing more than gossip. Even his death, told by Nick’s speculations, gives the reader the impression that Gatsby does not exist in any physical sense, as if it eventually evaporates. Symbols The green light: The green light represents Gatsby’s dream of winning back Daisy. As his dream is associated with the American dream, it also symbolizes it. In Chapter 9, Nick compares it to how America, rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the new nation. The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg: They are a pair of bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising poster over the valley of ashes. George Wilson sees them as the eyes of God staring down and judging American society as a moral wasteland. They may stand for Nick’s eyes, as he’s the only one in the novel who understands what’s going on. On the other hand, as they are only painted and consequently blind, they may represent the other characters’ blindness to what is actually happening. The valley of ashes: The valley of ashes represents the moral and social decay of those who have devoted their life to the pursuit of wealth. It also represents the loss of vitality and consequent decay of the poor: George Wilson, forced to live and work in the valley, has lost his self esteem and his dignity. He will be able to gain them back only with two tragic actions: murder and suicide. Themes The collapse of the America dream: Gatsby’s story symbolizes the disintegration of the America dream in a period of material prosperity and economic boom.The decline of social and moral values, substituted with cynicism and greed, is symbolized by the wild parties held at Gatsby’s mansion. According to Fitzgerald, the American dream has died due to the disillusionment consequent on the First World War and to the materialism encouraged by the economic boom. As Nick explains in Chapter 9, the American dream originally was the pursuit of happiness thanks to personal effort, but easy money and relaxed moral values have wasted it. The plot reflects this assessment, as Gatsby’s dream of being loved by Daisy is ruined by social differences, by his resorting to crime and by her materialism. The impossible hope of recapturing the past: Each character wants to recapture the past: Daisy her first true moments of love, Nick the simpler life in Minnesota, even Tom sometimes wishes to go back to when he was more honest and Jordan would like to try again with Nick at the end of the novel, but it is Gatsby who wants to recapture the past in a way that is completely impossible. Gatsby wants to cancel the past five years as if they had never existed, which means he is unable to clearly see the present. "Can't repeat the past?... Why of course you can!"
(Jay Gatsby) GEORGE ORWELL Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on 25 June 1903 in eastern India, the son of a British colonial civil servant. He was educated in England and, after he left Eton, joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, then a British colony. He resigned in 1927 and decided to become a writer. In 1928, he moved to Paris where lack of success as a writer forced him into a series of menial jobs. He described his experiences in his first book, 'Down and Out in Paris and London', published in 1933. He took the name George Orwell, shortly before its publication. This was followed by his first novel, 'Burmese Days', in 1934. An anarchist in the late 1920s, by the 1930s he had begun to consider himself a socialist. In 1936, he was commissioned to write an account of poverty among unemployed miners in northern England, which resulted in 'The Road to Wigan Pier' (1937). Late in 1936, Orwell travelled to Spain to fight for the Republicans against Franco's Nationalists. He was forced to flee in fear of his life from Soviet-backed communists who were suppressing revolutionary socialist dissenters. The experience turned him into a lifelong anti-Stalinist. Between 1941 and 1943, Orwell worked on propaganda for the BBC. In 1943, he became literary editor of the Tribune, a weekly left-wing magazine. By now he was a prolific journalist, writing articles, reviews and books. In 1945, Orwell's 'Animal Farm' was published. A political fable set in a farmyard but based on Stalin's betrayal of the Russian Revolution, it made Orwell's name and ensured he was financially comfortable for the first time in his life. 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' was published four years later. Set in an imaginary totalitarian future, the book made a deep impression, with its title and many phrases - such as 'Big Brother is watching you', 'newspeak' and 'doublethink' - entering popular use. By now Orwell's health was deteriorating and he died of tuberculosis on 21 January 1950. 1984 Plot Nineteen Eighty-four is a novel by the English author George Orwell published in 1949 as a warning against totalitarianism. Orwell’s dystopia had a strong impact on fictional culture, and this result achieved by very few books . Concepts such as newspeak, Big Brother (the all-powerful State), the Thought Police, and Room 101 (the novel’s torture chamber in the “Ministry of Love”) made a powerful change in the English vocabulary. The story is set in 1984, in a chilling dystopian reality and the world is dominated by 3 totalitarian states: Oceania (composed of the Americas, the British Isles called "Airstrip One" in the novel, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia, and Southern Africa below the River Congo), East-Asia (China and Taiwan, Japan, and Korea.), Eurasia. The main character is Winston Smith, a humble man who works in London (which is now located in Oceania). He is an ordinary guy whose job is to rewrite history in order to bring it in line with political thinking. The atmosphere is really sinister: every single person is brainwashed into obedience, worshipping "The Big Brother". The Brotherhood is a secret organization whose purpose is to defeat the current government. Smith is not sure whether this group exists or not, but he eventually decides to rebel against Big Brother. He has a forbidden affair with a girl who works with him in the Ministry of Truth (which is, of course, something strictly forbidden by the rules because it can cause deviant thought) and they join The Brotherhood together. They are soon found out and punished in Room 101, the torture chamber inside the Ministry of Love. They both are tortured, brainwashed and then forced into cheating on their partners. The torture is meant to completely destroy their humanity and dignity. The novel sadly ends with an indifferent Smith, who feels "happy" and satisfied worshipping The Big Brother. The most amazing aspect of this novel is how relevant it is, even after a long time since it was first