The Student Room Group

Gatsby and unattainable love intro

My intro, please give feedback!!!


The idea of unrequited and unattainable love has been a prevalent trope in literature extending far beyond the Renaissance era. The theme of unattainability is merely a shroud for the sub-tropes that almost inevitable lead to a poignant ending whether the protagonist was momentarily able to grasp love, or not at all. In the Great Gatsby, it’s the incompatibility of interclass love through Gatsby’s inability to perfectly mimic the habitus of the “East Eggers” that reduces him to a tragic demise similarly to the conventions of a Greek Tragedy. Like wise, both poems, “Who so list to hount…” and “Ae fond Kiss” present the idea of unobtainability through its love triangle and distant admiration due to both the speakers inability to transcend the monetary barrier that condemns their love to afar. Through this, Fitzgerald, Wyatt and Burns exemplify how such physical barriers withhold love, questioning its abstract foundations and authenticity.

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