Text Connection

Blog # 4: Text Connection

Instant Gratification versus Postponed Gratification

            F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, is scripted with certain characters that represent the book’s motifs. One such character, Tom Buchanan, displays great levels of impatience when interacting with other characters. Fitzgerald makes many text-to-world connections in order to connect Tom’s impatience with that of today’s society. The modern world is constantly demanding, like Tom’s attitude, and we desire things instantaneously. Take for example the ability to download media. The Internet allows us to transfer and buy songs, movies, and books within ten minutes. This idea of instant gratification consequently leads to impatience, as society becomes easily aggravated without this access. Society’s dependence on technology and Tom’s dependence on wealth signify the moral decay of his time and ours, as well as the end to what was the American Dream. Cleary, Society’s impatience mirrors that of Tom’s in that it captures the decadence of the American Dream. Tom lives in an era with an over abundance of materialism and prosperity, similar to that of ours, thus indicating the end to the famous time period of new discovery and individual pursuit of happiness. Seeing that both Tom and today’s people share equal settings, in terms of goals and social corruption, the causes for his impatience and ours can be considered the same.