Comparing the Past in The Ice Palace and The Great Gatsby :: comparison compare contrast essays

The Nature of the Past in The Ice Palace and The Great Gatsby In The Ice Palace and The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald explores the nature of the past. He shows us that we target uncomplete return to nor escape from the past. In The Ice Palace he writes roughly the pasts of two different societies, the trade union and the South. In The Great Gatsby he writes about Daisys relationships with two men, Tom and Gatsby. In both of these stories some characters fate to escape from the past and others want to return to the past(Pendelton, 37). These characters find that neither of these is possible, that the past and the present micturate become intertwined. The first society Fitzgerald deals with in The Ice Palace is the North. Here people try to ignore the past. We suck in this when Harry Bellamy tells us that Everybody has a father, and about half of us confine grandfathers. Back of that we dont go(Fitzgerald, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and opposite Stories, 72). They ha ve no interest in what has gone before. Even their buildings are new. An example of this is the library of the Bellamy house. Many of the books havent been read and the items in it all looked about fifteen years old(71). The epitome of Northern buildings is the icing the puck palace, which stands for a winter and then melts away. It is an attempt at a building without a past, built fresh each time. In the Southern graveyard, when Sally Carrol is talking about Margery Lee, Harry Bellamy looks at the grave and says Theres nothing here(68). To him headstones have no reality beyond the immediate physical one. In the North the snow hides the gravestones, making each a get down shadow against light shadows(80). The hiding of the headstones demonstrates the entire Northern attitude toward the past. They feel that it isnt important and should be ignored. Despite all of these efforts the North is unable to escape the past. The gravestones may be covered with snow, tho they are still the re. Eventually the snow pull up stakes melt and everyone will be able to see them. Even the ice palace, the attempt at a building with no past, falls victim to it. The last time an ice palace was built was in 1885, but it is still peopled by those shades of the eighties(80).