Text Connections

In order to connect with his readers, F. Scott Fitzgerald utilizes text connections in his novel, The Great Gatsby. The first connection is text-to-world, which allows the reader to relate to the story through past and present worldwide events. During a latter part of the novel, a man named Wilson presumes that Gatsby killed his wife by running her over with his car. However, it was actually Daisy who had been driving Gatsby’s car and killed Wilson’s wife. When Nick arrives at Mr. Gatsby’s house, the next day, he finds Gatsby dead in his pool and “it was after [they] started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete” (162). The text-to-world connection uses the widely known tragedies with Hitler and World War II to the great tragedy that happened in the novel. This connection enables the reader to picture the horrible seen that Fitzgerald depicts. A second connection is text-to-text. By relating The Great Gatsby to A Tale of Two Cities, Fitzgerald allows his readers to compare the two novels and have a greater understanding of the plots. In A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton is in love with Lucie Manette while in The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is in love with Daisy Buchanan; both of these men are in love with a woman who loves them with only part of her heart for she is already married to another. Similarly, both men die for the girl that they love; Sydney Carton dies to save Charles Darnay and Gatsby dies because he took the blame for the fatal car accident. Through text-to-world and text-to-text connections, the reader is able to grasp a better understanding of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby.