The Tragic/Heroic in S. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) and E. Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929).

Abstract

The present paper is concerned with The Tragic in F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929).It shows that a common hero can evoke the tragic feeling in the audience since he is more representative of his society and shares the same problems as others. This is achieved by applying Arthur Miller’s modern theory of tragedy and the main tenets of his famous essay entitled: 'Tragedy and the Common Man’ (1949). In fact, the interest of this theory lies in the fact that it helps us to show how these two American authors seem to distance themselves from the Aristotelian principles of tragedy. The reason for the selected topic for the study is to understand F. Scott Fitzgerald’s and Ernest Hemingway’s views about tragic heroes through depicting their characteristics in their works. Our study has revealed that both these novels embody nearly all the features of modern tragedy, and both Hemingway and Fitzgerald have used contemporary themes to shape their tragedies of modern times. These two works have depicted human sufferings in the 1920s America and demonstrated how these heroes’ obsession and fanatic engagements led to their own defeat. They have collaborated with the Arthur Miller’s tragic hero.