Summary:
Everyone has at least has one flaw in their life; nothing is perfect or else everything would move in peace and harmony. A comparison of three literary characters -- Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises, and Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan in the Great Gatsby -- reveals their various flaws and how those flaws impacted their actions and their ability to find happiness with their respective companions.
Everyone has at least has a flaw in their life. Nothing is perfect or else everything would move in peace loving harmony. If everything was perfect we wouldn't have to compete with one another. It is these flaws we have that make us unique individuals. Each of the main characters at least had a characteristic that stopped them from being with each other. It was both physical and mental problems that caused their dilemmas.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie had a beautiful vision of love when she was young. Janie's grandmother prevented her from being with boys because she was very protective. The grandmother was so protective of her that she changed her view of love. The grandmother's view of love was a man that could provide a house, some food, and have money. The woman's job was to stand by her man and do chores around the house. She made Janie marry a very older man because he had a house and money. Janie resisted this man's physical attraction to her because she was not in love with him. Eventually he got frustrated with her not taking a liking to him and made her to hard chores around the house. She grew short with him and left him with to be with another man.
Janie started a new lifestyle with Joe Starks. He swept her off her feet and made Janie's beautiful vision of love come back. As their marriage progressed it slowly began to deteriorate. Jody was running a business and it slowly began to take up all of his time. He kept buying all these little trinkets for Janie and she wasn't interested in them. She would have rather spent more time with him than receive all these little gifts. Jody was just buying her love and that's not what Janie was interested in. Their marriage got pretty bad and they ended up sleeping in different rooms but Jody's pride kept them from getting a divorce. Jody eventually died from a an illness and Janie was left with everything he had.
She was ready to move on and met another man at the store she owned. Tea Cake was his name and he had to work to win her love. Tea Cake was younger than Janie but that didn't stop him. He was in love with her and tried everything to convince her that he loved her and not her money. He made Janie feel young again and made her vision of love come back and stay with her. When they finally got married and left town she brought money with her just in case something goes wrong. The first night she stayed in Jacksonville Tea Cake took her money and left her alone the whole day. When he came back home she was furious and he told her that he spent all of her money. He truly spent it because he wanted her to have his money not someone else's money but never told her that. Tea Cake gave her this story about how he never had two hundred dollars to spend so he used it to feel like a king. He told Janie that he would have her money back plus more because there was a big poker game coming up. Tea Cake got the money back plus some from the poker game but got stabbed for it. Janie nursed him back to health and they both knew they were in love from this point. They ended up moving back to Florida and they ran into a hurricane that would be the beginning of Tea Cake's deterioration. Janie was in trouble in the hurricane and Tea Cake went to save her and he ended up getting rabies from a dog that was attacking her. Janie watched Tea Cake change as the rabies infection was growing. Eventually it took over Tea Cake and Janie was forced with no other choice but to kill him.
Janie's love for Tea Cake was strong enough that she was able to kill him. Janie probably would have been killed if she didn't overcome the vision of love that her grandmother implanted in her head. Janie is strong enough on her own now because she knows what true love is.
In The Sun Also Rises the main character Jake Barnes is a complicated man. He knows how to love a woman but cannot satisfy a woman's physical needs. Jake served in the military and was injured during the war. Cut off from love by a shell wound, he seems to suffer from an undeserved misfortune (Spilka 80). His injury is the reason he cannot fulfill a woman's physical needs. Jake is the hero who clearly approaches the ideal of courage in his conscious personal confrontation with the unknown, the man who does not turn from the harshness of reality he lives with despite the fact that he must live out his life under circumstances which would drive less courageous men to find some measure of support in an abstract ordeal (Cooperman 34). He also is too nice of a friend to Brett Ashley. He lets her jump into his life whenever she pleases.
Brett Ashley should not be the lady Jake Barnes is after. Brett is a lady that is always drinking and going around with other men. She is always using Jake as an emotional crutch. Brett gets herself into trouble and uses Jake as a life line. When Pedro left her in Madrid she sent a telegram for Jake to bring her home. Brett likes the company of men. She goes out with these men and tells Jake everything about it. She is walks all over Jake and he doesn't mind it. Brett can't pick a guy to be and stay with. Brett was rude when she visited Jake early in the morning while she was with the count.
Jake should cut off all affiliations with Brett because all he is doing is bringing himself down. He can't feel good when he has to go off and bring Brett back home because that's not his job. Jake has no responsibility for her because they are not a couple. It had to be awkward for Jake to be in the same room with Brett when she had other men with her. Brett wouldn't have met Pedro Romero without Jake. Jake lost his aficionado status from Montoya for introducing Brett to Pedro. Brett does nothing but cause headaches for Jake.
The Great Gatsby was a love story that ended in tragedy. Jay Gatsby is a great man that is always trying to improve himself. Gatsby is always throwing parties and is very friendly to his guests. The guest are people of all sorts of social classes. Gatsby is more of a showman than an artist, but he puts his heart into the show (Parker 28). In his attitude toward money he revealed the new spirit of an age when conspicuous accumulation was giving way to conspicuous earning and spending (Cowley 19). Tom Buchanan, Daisy's husband, does some research on Gatsby and finds out that works as a bootlegger. Even though Gatsby's work is mischievous he still shows himself as a high class person. He even went to Oxford just to learn how to be proper. Gatsby was also a soldier that served in the war. Daisy and Tom are invited to one of Gatsby's parties and do not have fun while they are there. They are high class people and the people there are lower class. The people at the party were probably to lewd for the Buchanan's and they left. Gatsby never threw a party again after that. When Carraway first realizes that Gatsby's mansion is situated across the bay from Daisy's home, not by "strange coincidence", but by design, the whole of Gatsby's life begins to take form and to demand interpretation anew (Minter 41). Nick figured out that Gatsby actions were not coincidence, but had a purpose to him that meant a great deal. When Gatsby had confrontation with Tom at the hotel, he chose to be the better man. If her were to mention his relations with Daisy before they met Gatsby would have won the verbal battle.
Daisy Buchanan should have never married Tom when Gatsby left for the military. If she truly loved Gatsby she could have waited for him to get back from serving time in the service. She had the opportunity to stop the wedding when she receive the letter from Gatsby. When Gatsby is let back into her life she meets him again through her cousin Nick. Tom does not like Daisy taking a liking to Gatsby. When Daisy had to choose between Tom and Gatsby she let Gatsby's status play a role in her decision. Daisy also knew that Gatsby was her first love and that didn't changer her decision to be with Tom.
Even though these characters had different problems and different lives, they all were different. Janie's was she had to try three times to find love and then she lost it. Jake's wound prevented him from loving a woman physically. Gatsby's flaw was that he tried too hard to win an old love back and it cost him his life. They all had flaws and they all did what they had to do. They took their actions because it felt like the right thing to do.
This is the complete article, containing 1,563 words
(approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page).
