Thought piece 2 - Jessica

I agree that Fitzgerald achieved his goal of writing something ‘extraordinary and beautiful’ and one of the ways he did this was making the majority of the characters he wrote unpleasant. He makes the audience acknowledge that they are horrible characters but they all individually highlight the problems of the age such as the belief of their own superiority and the lack of priorities. He has characters such as the three ‘Mr Mumbles’ that are only present when talking about Gatsby and the rumours that help make his name. Fitzgerald only identifies these characters to either drop in some information to add to the story or they are simply background noise for the setting. The characters however frustratingly pretentious and arrogant they are, are still part of what makes the writing brilliant. 

Fitzgerald wanted to write something new for the age, a novel that represented what it was about. The Great Gatsby does this perfectly . He presents the characters to be unpleasant because throughout the 1920’s that's the way people were. They idealised class social standings and the materialistic lifestyle of ‘the American Dream’. Mannerisms were simply overlooked, if they had enough money treating people with respect was not necessary.  He tested the boundaries of the presentation of people but subtly he never bluntly says the characters are crude and annoying but they are.