Most of us read The Great Gatsby in our sophomore Humanities class. Both Gatsby and Citizen Kane, produced about twenty years apart, focus on a man who some might say is the epitome of success. What similarities and differences do you see? Are these works celebrations or critiques of these men, or somewhere in between? Or something else? Do they tell us anything about the American Dream?
I think both The Great Gatsby and Citizen Kane mainly critique the characters of Gatsby and Kane, respectively, but in a way that more so suggests a warning to aspiring Americans. Although Gatsby's story is told in chronological order and Kane's is a recount after his death, the stories have questionable narrators and similar plotlines. Gatsby and Kane are powerful, respected, rich men who live in luxury. They have mansions and materialistic wealth. However, they feel very empty inside, which is why Gatsby tries to get Daisy to be with him and why Kane is so possessive of Susan. All they really want is to be loved, and they believe their wealth will allow them to find the solutions to their problems, but in the end it does not and they both die alone. They also attempt to show proof of their generosity (Gatsby hosting parties and Kane speaking for the people) in order to be validated; however, they have made questionable actions as well, including Gatsby's bootlegging and Kane making Susan sing opera). Both stories explore the theme of superficiality, where being rich doesn't provide fulfillment in the characters' lives. Americans during the roaring 20s and the Great Depression idealized what Gatsby and Kane had. They had an American Dream, as they sought to collect many assets, be generous, and rise to fame. As the stories take a closer look and dive deep into the relationships that Kane and Gatsby have, it becomes clearer that their lives are more complicated than meets the eye, and the dream is not what it seems. Both characters also go through experiences that transform their lives (meeting Dan Cody for Gatsby and moving away with Thatcher for Kane). A difference in the tales is the symbols. The green light in The Great Gatsby represents Gatsby's hope for the future, and the sled in Citizen Kane represents Kane's childhood before he moved away. The stories seem to send the message that although these characters had a lot of potential, they placed too much value on the American Dream in order to achieve unreasonable goals which eventually led to their downfalls.
ReplyDeleteThe Great Gatsby and Citizen Kane focus on the ideas of achieving the American dream, however remaining incomplete. The stories of Both Charles Foster Kane and Jay Gatsby are told through another person’s perspective. For Kane, his life’s story was told by several different people including Leland, Mr. Bernstein, Emily, and finally Susan, and with each narration change, the narrator had a stronger connection to Kane each time. Whereas for Gatsby, Nick is the narrator the entire time, but his relationship with Jay grows throughout the entire story. Both men are some of the most successful business people in the world within their respective stories, however there is something that remains missing the entire time. Kane inherited a lot of money to start off and grew a multi-million-dollar newspaper business, the inquirer. Kane could do anything to make himself, or anyone else, happy, for example when he built the opera house. Money was not a limiting factor when it came to Kane struggling to find happiness. The same goes for Jay Gatsby, he earned large sums of money through illegal activity with alcohol. He threw fancy parties very often, and could do whatever he wanted. However, the one thing that was missing in them hears was something that could not be filled with societies hypercentric views of money. For Gatsby all he wanted was the love of Daisy. Charles’ desires are more ambiguous; however, the term Rosebud leads his desires to his childhood. When Charles was very young, his parents made a deal with Mr. Thatcher to make the focus of Kane’s life the summation of money. This took away importance from critical emotional development needed by children. Things like emotions of empathy, sympathy, love, and having a choice of who he wants to become were all discarded under the care of Mr. Thatcher. These voids within the hearts of Jay Gatsby and Charles Foster Kane are irreplaceable and priceless, which makes the millions of dollars they share useless.
ReplyDeleteThe Great Gatsby and Citizen Kane do not criticize the characters Gatsby and Kane, themselves, but rather the stories of these characters are used to criticize the perception of the American dream held by many Americans. The book and the novel also criticize the idea that money can buy happiness. The American Dream is generally thought of as the idea that anybody can succeed in America regardless of background through hard work. The novel and the film do not criticize this idea in itself. Instead, they criticize how people interpret the word “success”. In both The Great Gatsby and Citizen Kane, the point is made that many Americans like Gatsby and Kane believe that the “success” promised by the American Dream can be any type of success, when, in reality, the American Dream promises only economic success. Of course, one could argue that economic success is not actually possible for all people in American society as the American Dream suggests, but the stories of Gatsby and Kane do not make this argument, as both characters are able to transcend their original social classes and become rich. Gatsby and Kane, however, are never able to succeed at attaining what they truly want. What Gatsby truly wants is to marry Daisy, and what Kane truly wants is to find his youth and be at peace. Both men achieve the American Dream, with Gatsby having a huge mansion and fancy cars and with Kane owning a huge newspaper and living in his own huge mansion, but it does not turn out to be what they thought. The Great Gatsby and Citizen Kane argue that many Americans believe achieving the American Dream means living a fulfilled and happy life, but it really only means making a lot of money and having material success. The novel and the film also criticize the fact that many Americans believe that economic success leads to and is connected to inner peace, happiness, and fulfillment. Gatsby, it could be argued, decided to become rich altogether so that he could impress Daisy. However, no matter how much money he spends on his glamorous and luxurious parties, he cannot win her over and get what he truly wants. The story of Kane is similar. He fills an entire warehouse with statues and other objects that he never uses, and he essentially builds his own palace (Xanadu). He spends enormous sums of money doing this, thinking it will make himself feel whole, but he nonetheless dies unsatisfied. The stories of Gatsby and Kane are used to show that money cannot always be used to achieve one’s true goals.
ReplyDeleteBoth Citizen Kane and the Great Gatsby tell a story of what it might be like to live the American Dream. People watching both of their stories from the outside might be envious of them, but in reality their endings did not go as they had planned them to. The similarities between these two are that they both thought that money was the source of happiness. They both thought that money could buy them anything, but realistically money could not get them to the one thing that they wanted. The path that Kane took to try and keep his abundance of riches only caused him to fail in finding love. The same situation happened with Gatsby. Gatsby tried to win over Daisy with his wealth and riches, only to not have her fall in love with him in the end. One difference between the two was how they gained their wealth. Kane gained money from his inheritance and his newspaper company, while Gatsby got his through illegal bootlegging and scamming. Both men, though wealthy, ended up lonely and sad. Both situations show that yes, wealth can be good, but you shouldn't be so obsessed trying to get it that you lose sight of what really matters to you. Had we not known their endings, we would have easily thought that they were living the American Dream, but when you think about the American Dream you tend to think of a happy ending.
ReplyDeleteThe Great Gatsby and Citizen Kane are two of the most famous stories in classic American history. Both exemplify what it is like to live the American dream. However, they both take their ideas of it far beyond what is reasonable and end up in a pit of misery.Jay Gatsby and Charles Kane are the two characters from their respective stories. Both men have excess riches and a desire to prove themselves worthy of the so-called American dream. Kane appears more secluded in his personality, showing his wealth by collecting sculptures and buying his wife whatever she pleases. Whereas Gatsby threw the biggest and most lavish parties every weekend to attract the attention of a lover. They both however are very very wealthy in their respective rights and in their minds have almost achieved the “ american dream.” In the case of Gastby the audience is taught the lesson that love cannot be bought and doing so only forces sadness into the lives of the affected individuals. During Citizen Kane we are shown that money cannot buy happiness and that trying so will result in the opposite. Both stories use a seemingly perfect example of the American Dream however they show that wealth is not the only defining factor of this dream.
ReplyDeleteThe novel The Great Gatsby and the film Citizen Kane are critiques of people who believe that money will attain them everything and fulfill their desires. Throughout the film Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane is relentlessly, till his death, trying to find fulfillment. To fulfill his desire, Kane uses his wealth to run a newspaper for the “public good” and project a grand image of himself to the public. Consequently, Kane’s public image gets desecrated when the public finds out about his affair with “singer” Susan Alexander. To restore his image, Kane builds a grand opera house for Susan, hires a qualified vocal teacher for her, and forces her to perform in the opera house to the point where she attempts suicide. While Kane is caught up in his selfish desire to better his public image and reach a sense of fulfillment, he drives Susan Alexander to the brink of death. Consequently, Alexander quits performing at the opera house, and Kane’s sense of fulfillment vanishes. Finally, Kane builds Xanadu to show the world that he is an “important” person, and he believes that Susan will stay with him because of it. However, when she finally comes to terms that Kane does not care for her, but for his public image, Susan leaves Kane. From that point until his death, Kane never found the fulfillment he desires, and his great wealth contributed nothing to it.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, Jay Gatsby believes that money and grandeur will win him the love of Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby rebrands himself by changing his name from James Gatz to the enigmatic Jay Gatsby and amassing a fortune through bootlegging (the illegal selling of Alcohol). To become an important figure within his community, Gatsby held extravagant, over-the-top parties where the wealthy would congregate. While Gatsby was able to successfully become known as a wealthy, important person, his actions lead to attracting trouble with Tom Buchanan, leading to his assissination. At the end of the novel, Gatsby dies without winning back Daisy.
Both Kane and Gatsby believed that their wealth would be able to buy them happiness. For Kane, that came with a sense of fulfillment and for Gatsby, that came with Daisy’s love. However, their actions, blinded by their overwhelming wealth, lead them into further trouble which lead to their demise.
Both films, directed twenty years apart, have a common theme that drives the main character; the American dream. In Citizen Kane, main character Charles Kane, has money, power, women, and a very successful career. Everything a man living in America would want. Living on the house at the top of the mountain, naming it Xanadu to further emphasize its magnificence. For Gatsby, he also has achieved the American dream from an outside perspective. He has money, women, and power over just about everyone he meets. However, as the audience starts to learn more about these men, we learn that they feel incomplete. They yearn for the same thing. Love. For Kane, he always filled that yearning with money. He would buy various statutes that resembled those he loved. For Gatsby, he spent his money buying artificial love, where the woman only loved him back because he had more money than anybody else. However, Kane is not identical to Gatsby, we see him try and help the lower class families by giving them some of his fortune so they do not endure the same struggles he's gone through. In addition, Kane does try to make a genuine love connection with characters in the film. When Charles was younger we see him love his parents, however his parents rarely reciprocated these emotions, so this is why Kane does not love, because he was never taught. Whereas Gatsby knows how to love, he just struggles when that feeling is not mutual, such as him following Daisy all her life. Finally, both characters’ downfall is centered around their success and money that they lost not only the characters they loved, but the audience’s sympathy.
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