Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Jay Gatsby v. Charles Foster Kane
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?
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The Great Gatsby and Citizen Kane are akin since the storylines parallel each other. The side characters and settings are different but the most important thing, the protagonist and main story, are the same in both classics. The story is simple, an overly wealthy man struggles to find happiness in his life, and ends up dying without anyone who loves him. Jay Gatsby and Charles Foster Kane play this character, and over the course of both stories, their lives get darker until ultimately they die alone.
ReplyDeleteGatsby and Kane were both impoverished boys. Gatsby grew up on a farm with hardly no food or money, while Kane lived in Colorado with a drunk and abusive father in his mom’s boarding house. From their poor beginnings, Gatsby and Kane became a part of the wealthiest class in America. Their paths to achieve wealth are different, but that is of little importance since both stories mostly portray the characters in their later years. The main parallel between the two protagonists, is their conquest for attention and to be loved. However, they are incapable of truly loving someone other than themselves and they are never satisfied. Their wealth hides their misery as both are narcissist who take comfort in materials. They collect objects to keep themselves occupied from their glum lives. Kane finds solace with his statues since it isn’t a mutual relationship and the statue doesn’t judge him. At the end of their days, both Gatsby and Kane cared about others’ judgment rather than their own happiness. The Great Gatsby and Citizen Kane are essentially the same story of men who are rich with money but not with love.
It is true that both Jay Gatsby and Charles Foster Kane began their lives as poor boys and ended up corrupt through the power of wealth in the end until their deaths, however their characters are completely different. Sure, both become two of the richest names in America and live extravagant lives, yet their intentions with their money and women are unalike. Jay Gatsby, originally James Gatz, threw away his past life in an effort to achieve a single goal: receive the love from Daisy that he had always wanted, but had been too poor for her liking. His only intentions in life were to make Daisy happy - through the amount of money he possessed – and he would do it any way possible. He worked with some of the lowest, yet richest, illegal men in their bootlegging scandal to complete his mission. On the other hand, Charles Kane worked not solely for wealth or one woman’s liking, but for public approval as he wanted everyone to love him. As said in the tent by Susan Alexander (on her knees and an extreme high angle) when the extreme low angle on Charlie Kane reveals him to be a monster, “You don’t love me, you want me to love you. Sure, I’m Charles Foster Kane, whatever you want you name it and it is yours, but you’ve gotta love me.” It wasn’t that he necessarily wanted money; he wanted to be powerful and control the people, and wealth helped pave the way towards accomplishing that goal. Additionally, his newspaper contributed greatly as he was able to instill in the people what he wanted them to believe in. I wouldn’t compare Kane as much to Gatsby as I would to President Trump. Donald Trump uses, for better and worse, his social media accounts to spread the word on ideas and draws a lot of attention for his comments on worldwide issues much like Kane used The Inquirer. Through Trump’s opinions, he is able to spread his bias and what he believes in to millions of people around the globe; people will interpret information through his words and phrasing of ideas. Also, coincidentally and partially because of the money factor, both Kane and Trump have much younger spouses in comparison to their actual age.
ReplyDeleteAlthough both Kane and Gatsby yield from modest upbringings and rise in the ranks of wealth to ultimately be well known for their success, there is little else that they have in common. Interpersonal relationships are the most important thing in a person’s life, and these two men could not approach relationships any differently. Gatsby has always been in love with Daisy and is not shy in showering her with affection. Other than Daisy and his new friend Nick, Gatsby does not have many friends. Instead he has superficial partygoers who can’t be bothered to attend his funeral. Kane in contrast has two main friends and two main ‘loves’. Kane is much better than Gatsby at creating friendships, but these friendships ultimately fail when Kane too dies alone and companionless. Kane does not treat the women in his life the way Gatsby treated Daisy because he doesn’t truly love them. Kane’s whole goal with any relationship is to receive love but never to grant it. We see Leland, a friend who may have feeling for Kane, saying in his old age that Kane was incapable of love. We also see Kane’s relationship with Susan Alexander as a representation of the fact that he is incapable of possessing loving emotions. She is portrayed using high angle shots to show her lack of power in their relationship. He is framed using low angles to show that he wants to control her into loving him, but is actually monstrous and doesn’t love her back. These angles are shown after her disaster of a show, in the party tent on the beach, and after she leaves him. In the former, Susan is very upset about her show and Kane does nothing to make her feel better and is instead focused on how to make himself look better. This is typical of Kane because he is selfish and unloving. Gatsby dies because he loves too much, and Kane dies never having loved. These men live very different types of lives as a result.
ReplyDeleteOrson Welles’s Citizen Kane and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby show the dark side that comes with the American Dream. Many people associate the American Dream with being successful, having materialistic wealth, and living happily ever after with one’s true love. Both films expose the American Dream for what it truly is and what it’s like to live one. Charles Kane and Jay Gatsby both are considered ‘new money’, they came into life as poor, only child boys then later grew into a life of money and fame. Some may characterize these men as narcissistic and egotistic. Xanedu is quite similar to Gatsby’s lavish mansion in West Egg, both are filled with giant rooms that make people looks insignificant in size. Flowers are an important symbol in both films; Gatsby is in love with Daisy and Kane’s last words are rose bud, the search of what rose bud is present throughout the entire film. Both films criticize Kane and Jay Gatsby by showing that no matter how wealthy one is you cannot buy love. After watching both films it is hard to say whether I feel bad for both lead characters for not being truly happy or feel some sort of envy towards them and their materialistic wealth. Kane and Gatsby both have achieved the stereotypical American Dream of business success and materialistic wealth but neither of them are successful with finding true love or happiness. Citizen Kane and The Great Gatsby show that living the American Dream does not always mean living a happy life with those who you love and love you back.
ReplyDeleteOn the surface it may seem as if Jay Gatsby and Charles Foster Kane are very similar people. Both grew up poor, and both end up finding a way, by whatever means, to become very rich, powerful, and socially revered. Both men epitomize the realization of the American dream. However, “the American dream”, and the completion of it, is characterized by only 1 superficial metric: an individual’s accumulation of wealth. This is pretty much the only thing either man has in common, because a deeper analysis of either one’s character and/or motive for achieving success reveals that in fact they are markedly different. Gatsby’s one and only goal is to one day achieve enough wealth and social hierarchical status to be accepted by the love of his life, Daisy. On the other hand, Kane’s underlying goal in achieving wealth is to fulfill an internal struggle to receive the attention he didn’t have as a child, and to fulfill an internal desire to possess power and control over the masses. Gatsby is also more secluded and introverted, yet genuine around those he cares about, while Kane is more outgoing and friendly, and more fake around just about everybody. As far as the purpose of either story in critiquing vs. celebrating their protagonists, I think ultimately neither celebrates their “accomplishments”. In fact, once it’s all said and done, the lesson is set up in a way to have the viewer doubt that all the obstacles the protagonist traversed in his life to achieve what he did were ever even genuine accomplishments. I believe the story of Citizen Kane is similar to a critique since it revolves more around the theme of a “tragic hero”, in which one or two major flaws of a main character who seems to be so flawless and successful, actually end up leading to his demise. On the other hand, I perceive The Great Gatsby to be more-so a critique of the incredibly crude, messed-up upper class society, which Jay Gatsby was a victim of, during America’s Great Depression. I viewed Gatsby’s downfall to be not the fault of his own, but the fault of the fake, backstabbing people “without a care in the world” who surrounded him. Finally, both films condemn the idea of the American dream. In Citizen Kane, we are told that despite the fact that Kane received everything he ever wanted, he was still left unhappy. The Great Gatsby approaches this theme differently by illustrating in a number of scenes a contrast of the dirty, suffering faces of the working class, to the careless, fake-happy demeanor of the Great Depression’s few beneficiaries.
ReplyDeleteIn Citizen Kane and The Great Gatsby, the two main characters have similar ambitions in life, however they have different reasons for messing with time. Both men are born without money in their families, but later in their lives become wealthy. In Citizen Kane, Charles Kane runs a newspaper for his entire career, creating an extravagant life for himself. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatz does everything he can to separate himself from his past, changing his name, his history, ultimately to become James Gatsby. The men also try and show their wealth through their material belongings. In Citizen Kane, Charles Kane demonstrates his wealth through his palace, Xanadu, and the statues inside. For Gatsby, his clothes, his cars, and his extravagant parties show his wealth as well. The similarities do not stop here; both men do not have the woman they want by the end of their lives. For Charles Kane, his second wife leaves him after a tiresome, lonely marriage. For James Gatsby, he spends his whole life chasing after Daisy, his green light, to wind up without her at the end of his life. This introduces the idea of James Gatsby’s desire to go back in time. All of his life, he wants to return to the moment when Daisy and him were together, and everything was much simpler. However, Charles Kane is obsessed with stopping time to show his control, ultimately making up for a tumultuous childhood in which he had absolutely no control. Gatsby and Kane are both men with new money who are not afraid to show it, but are also men who die without a woman by their side and an unhealthy relationship with the idea of time.
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