Do you realise
how similar they actually are?
1st, both have
the word "great" in the title.
2nd, in both
books the protagonists from a young age are discontent with their situations
and have big dreams- Pip in Great Expectations and Gatsby in The Great Gatsby.
3rd, both
protagonists more or less create their own names- Philip Pirrip calls himself
Pip and James Gatz becomes Jay Gatsby.
4th, both
protagonists move up the social ladder, and while Pip becomes a gentleman
thanks to someone else's money, Gatsby becomes rich through dishonest
means.
5th, both
protagonists love a girl richer than them and socially above them and thus tied
to their dreams- Estella and Daisy respectively.
6th, both
stories have a significant house that gives rise to or strengthens the
protagonists' ambitions- Satis House (Estella's house) and Daisy's house.
7th, both
novels are social critiques.
I reckon the
books have more things in common, which I haven't thought of, but they're
probably minor similarities and I shouldn't create the impression that
The Great Gatsby is just like Great Expectations. Only
the central idea is the same.
Another thing they may have in common is the danger that their adaptations may focus on the love story, the romance, pushing the more
important themes such as social issues to the background (in order to attract
the audience) while neither Great Expectations nor The Great Gatsby is a love story. In Great Expectations Pip does have
feelings for Estella but to me it looks like he likes the image of her, of
something beautiful, ideal and unattainable, tied to the better and more
glorious world to which he previously never had access and which from then on
gets fixed in his mind, she's also tied to the day that has changed his life
forever, the day he realises that he's common. It's only later that this feeling turns into love, when Pip sees beneath the surface and comes to understand Estella and loves her for who she is, with her vulnerability, weaknesses, suffering and self-loathing, not for her beautiful appearance. The love in The Great Gatsby is even less, Gatsby doesn't really love Daisy, he knows nothing about her, he only loves the idealised image in his head and all the things she represents.
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