The Importance of Loss in Scott Fitzgeralds Winter Dreams Essay

The Importance of Loss in Scott Fitzgeralds Winter Dreams In the traditional Romance narrative, there is some plummy object whose consummation is the driving preoccupation of the texts protagonist. The aspiration of the Romantic hero is to capture that elusive object that will, nevertheless, consistently step forward-strip him. These heroes are intimately acquainted with the pain sensation of the loss and suffer deeply for feeling so acutely. However, loss itself, is essential to the equation and is, in fact, a large portion of what establishes the thing as desirable. In the texts of traditional Romanticism the individual has preeminence, and his or her subjective psychological experience with the loss in question is the major concern. The realization that Romantic subjects drama plays itself out against the backdrop of a system in which the value of a thing is directly proportionate to its scarcity, is the first step beyond traditional Romanticism. Realist texts a re conscious(p) of the shaping influence that the socio-political has on the individuals ideology - They are consciousness of the impact of Capitalism. The industrialization of that era (late 19th, early 20th century), and the subsequent commodification of everything, creates the crisis of self. The central questions that arises in these contexts concerns the period to which the individual can be perceived as individual, capable of imaginative aspirations outside the economic determinism of his society. The central question to Realist authors is Are we dealing with the loss of actualized selves or merely cogs, and if the latter is the case, what have we lost? With this question still relatively unanswered, Scott Fitzgeralds Wi... ...ve (though not the grief itself). He wants to care. Fitzgerald makes his readers care about the loss of illusions that give much(prenominal) color to the world - those exquisite winter dreams (Preface, Gatsby XV). He compels us to ask th e two great Keatsian questions Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that practice of medicine- Do I wake or sleep? Ode to the Nightingale, Stanza 8 Bibliography Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Winter Dreams. in The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. 4th Edition. New York/London W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. 2125 - 2141. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York Scribner soft-cover Fiction, 1925. Hegel, G.W.F. Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. New York Continuum, 1990. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham Duke University Press, 1991.