Gatsby Text Connections

The Great Gatsby draws a clear connection to the outside world it is set in, as well as other novels. Perhaps the most obvious connection is that of the love triangle occurring between characters in Gatsby and those in Dickens’s novel A Tale of Two Cities. Both texts feature two men who vie for the attention of an emotionally shallow yet extraordinarily beautiful young woman, Daisy in Gatsby and Lucy in A Tale of Two Cities. While the eventual fate of all these characters may be substantially different, the parallels remain the same, and reading Gatsby and watching Daisy tear people apart makes one think substantially less of Lucy as a character, when one realizes the striking similarities between the two. Both are at least partly at fault in the death of another, more complex character than themselves. The novel also relates to the time in which it was set- the 1920’s, a time of economic prosperity in the United States and one in which lifestyles like those of Gatsby and the Buchanans were existent. Gatsby’s dark secret of his true profession, hinted to be bootlegging, was an actual business, and a very profitable one at that, and in that regard the text relates to the real world it exists within.