Alienation in The Great Gatsby

For many people in America, the years immediately following World War I and World War II were characterized by anger, discontent, and disillusion. Society had been devastated by a global conflict that resulted in unmatched death, destruction and resentment. Survivors who came of age during these eras; the Lost Generation after WWI The Beat Generation after WWII, were left incoherent and alienated from both the world before and the new world that came into sight after. Unable to relate to either pre and/or postwar values, both of which, after the war, seemed deceptive and distorted, these social ways were abandoned by their country and left to rediscover and redefine themselves in a world that had silenced their hopes, dreams and beliefs. It was during these times that literature surfaced in an attempt to capture the attitudes, emotions and opinions of their generations. Similarly, in the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the main character to demonstrate he is victim to ...