A Battle for the Dream of Love

Two "Jazz Age", or 1920s, authors, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, wrote classic American novels that boast a theme of the struggle for love. Both got to their theme of love through the style they wrote their story in and through the plot of the novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald's theme of love was masterfully portrayed in his book The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's version to the theme of love was written in his book A Farewell to Arms.

Yes, both authors had a theme of love in their story and they were written in such a similar way, but they both wrote two very different versions for the theme of a fight for the dream of love. The two stories are similar in that there was a fight for love. The dream of love was that in the end of the two stories the characters did not get to be with who they loved, because death got in the way (Fitzgerald; Hemingway).

In A Farewell to Arms the loved, Catherine Barkley dies (Hemingway), and in The Great Gatsby the lovers Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, and Tom Buchannan (Fitzgerald). They had only dreamed to be with that individual they loved, but without a doubt they fought hard for it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald used all the resources of language, which was his fundamental accomplishment, to capture the brilliance of the moment (Hart). Word choice was big thing he used. This helped him pull off the theme of love.

With that being said, the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary definition of love is a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties, or affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests ("love"). Fitzgerald and Hemingway used this wording of the definition, in respect to the other dictionaries wordings. This one just seems to jump out at how they were used in the two books.

Keatsian, and after that, Shakespearian, was the vital quality of F. Scott Fitzgerald's style (Hart). Writing in the manner of John Keats, was a supportive direction for Fitzgerald to take to reach the theme of love in The Great Gatsby, because Keats wrote some of his poems in that style ("John Keats"). It can be easier and harder to do.

This can be harder than just creating your own individual style. For example, it is harder for a guitarist to play a bands song than play a song they have written, because it is not in their complete own style. Fitzgerald could have still written in the style of love, but tailored it to his own. This could have changed the story has a whole from what it is now to something better or not as good to what the quality of the story is now.

Although it can be harder to write in another author's style, writing in another author's style, as F. Scott Fitzgerald did, can also make it easier if the purpose is to provide a theme of that same style, and this made it easier to bring about his theme of love, because it was the fashion that John Keats often wrote in ("John Keats"). There is no big argument that needs to be made about Keats, because he was of great influence to Fitzgerald, and the nightingale's song in The Great Gatsby is only heard in a Keatsian moonlight (Hart).

In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby had love for Daisy. "Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay" (Fitzgerald 78). This showed that he wanted to be able to what was going on in her life all the time.

The fight for love, is the question? Tom Buchanan had some suspicion that Gatsby had had an affair with Daisy, whom Tom was married to. Tom wanted confrontation between him and Jay Gatsby and had a big long event happening with him (Fitzgerald 113-145).

A Farewell to Arms is not just another love and war story, because Flannery O'Connor says it would be, but "belief in the soul, there is very little drama" (Stoneback). It is much deeper than just the common love and war story.

Ernest Hemingway used the story's plot, just as Fitzgerald did, to get to the theme of love. In A Farewell to Arms, the character Lt. Henry finds that he has love in the relationship between him and the English nurse Catherine Barkley, but this love does not last long, because Catherine passes away in childbirth (Box).

Towards the middle of the story, Lt. Henry has a conversation with a guy in the hospital.

"Are you in love?"

"Yes."

"With that English girl?"

"Yes." (Hemingway 169)

This is where Lt. Henry directly tells the reader that he is in love, even though the reader can already sort of tell they he is in love with Catherine Barkley.

In both classic American novels, A Farewell to Arms and The Great Gatsby, a fight for love brings death at the end. At the end of The Great Gatsby three men die for their fight to love (Fitzgerald). The fight for love in A Farewell to Arms was that Lt. Henry had been at war and got injured, but now at the hospital he finds that he loves the nurse Catherine Barkley, but she dies during childbirth (Box).

Another way that love is portrayed in this story is that Lt. Henry is an ambulance driver and he thinks to himself, on day while at war, that he wished he was on the British side but would have most likely still been killed. He thinks that he would not have been killed in the ambulance business, but sometimes the British ambulance drivers got killed too (Hemingway 37).

Lt. Henry as an ambulance driver during the war, not only helped him grow in his relationship with Catherine Barkley, who he comes to realize he loves, but it also shows that he has a love for people. Any person who is an ambulance driver in the time of war, like Lt. Henry in WWI, has to have a love for other people, because they are putting their own life on the line.

Mentioning the following gives a better respect to both books and their theme of love. In A Farewell to Arms love is dangerous. In the heart of war, any person can be killed at any given moment without warning, and this devastates the friends and family, the loved ones left behind (Shmoop Editorial Team "Love Theme in A...).

Nevertheless, the characters jeopardize it all, to be both good romantic lovers and good lovers of human kind. Like all humans, they make mistakes, and sometimes aren't the lovers they would have liked to be, but as long as they have breath in their body, they keep on trying to be that lover they want to be. They keep on trying to love, even with tragedy exploding all around them (Shmoop Editorial Team "Love Theme in A...).

In The Great Gatsby it does not give a straight forward definition of love. Also, it does not contrast between love and romance. What the story, The Great Gatsby, does do is suggest that what people believe to be love is, over and over again, only a dream (Shmoop Editorial Team "Love Theme in The...).

Gatsby assumes that he loves Daisy, but it is not Daisy the human he loves, it is in fact a memory of her that Gatsby loves. Along with that, Daisy, as well, believes she loves Gatsby, but in reality she loves being adored (Shmoop Editorial Team "Love Theme in The...).

Nick Carraway, who is the narrator of the story, is somewhat in love with Jordan near the closing scenes of the story, but he realizes that it is not going to be possible to be with her. Love is also source of quarrel in The Great Gatsby, because throughout the story love is driving men to clash and eventually it is what causes three deaths. The Great Gatsby seems to serve as a good argument for the fact that there is a violence and destruction inherent in love. Works Cited

Box, Terry. "Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS." Literary ReferenceCenter. 2 Aug

2002. Heldref Publications, Web. 1 Dec 2009. .

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004.

Hart, Jeffrey. "Fitzgerald and Hemingway in 1925-1926." Literary ReferenceCenter. 27 Oct 1997. University of the South, Web. 29 Nov 2009. .

Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Scribner, 2003.

"John Keats." Encyclopedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 29 Nov. 2009

.

"love." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009. Merriam-Webster Online. 29 November 2009. < http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/love>.

Shmoop Editorial Team. "Love Theme in A Farewell to Arms." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 01 Dec 2009. .

Shmoop Editorial Team. "Love Theme in The Great Gatsby." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 01 Dec 2009. < http://www.shmoop.com/great-gatsby/love-theme.html>.

Stoneback, H.R. "Lovers' Sonnets Turn'd to Holy Psalms': The Soul's Song of Providence, the Scandal of Suffering, and Love in A Farewell to Arms." Literary ReferenceCenter. 8 July 2002. Hemingway Society. 1 Dec 2009. .