Significant Connections

The idea of illusion vs reality is widely created through the different stories written by F.Scott Fitzgerald. An illusion is a false impression on reality, and when looking from the outside, things may appear to be perfect and everything that you aspire and want to be. But the true reality is that beneath the surface, it is not all perfect and superior. The 1920s are known for women stepping out of their comfort zone, taking control, and wearing skimpy outfits that went against what others wanted them to wear. However, under the surface, the 1920s was not all fun and games. Through the following texts written by Fitzgerald ‘The ice palace’, a film inspired by the short story Fitzgerald wrote ‘The curious cases of Benjamin Button’, ‘The Great Gatsby’, and ‘Winter Dreams’ he has presented the illusion that characters make in their head, and shown the harsh reality these characters later realize. All of these stories written by Fitzgerald link to the idea of never judging a book by its cover and that not everything is as it seems from the outside.

The Ice Palace, written by F.Scott Fitzgerald is about a girl named Sally Carrol who lives in the south and meets a guy in the north. Just like the story ‘The Great Gatsby’, the north is a higher class than the south and everybody wants to live here and marry a rich guy to become wealthy and of higher class. Harry Proposes to Sally Carrol and invites her to move to the north with him. He tells her it will be “like a fairytale” exciting, fun, and romantic. From what Harry has said, Sally carrol makes up in her head how fun it will be and she is excited to become superior. Before she moves she says to her friends “Yes. I don’t mean only money failures, but just sort of– of ineffectual and sad, and– oh, how can I tell you?” this shows the fact that she is leaving everything behind to gain social status and that she doesn’t care about them as much as she did, she wants to become superior and perfect and that is all she wants. At the end of the story, Sally Carrol and Harry go to an Ice palace where she gets lost. Once Harry finds her, she says “Oh, I want to get out of here! I’m going back home. Take me home” with delirious, unrestrained passion. In the end, Sally Carrol liked the idea of living in the north, being superior and first-class, but when she started living in it she started to miss her family and friends and realized that it wasn’t all that great from what she had thought up in her head. She realizes that even though things seem to be five-star, when you actually live it, it is not always. This links back to the idea of never judging a book by its cover and that sometimes, what you see isn’t always as perfect as you may think it to be.

The curious cases of Benjamin Button, written by F.Scott Fitzgerald is about a guy called Benjamin Button who ages back in time. Just like in The Ice palace, people think that having his life that way seemed good from the outside. He got to age backward when all of his friends were old and he got to experience life from a different perspective than others, but in reality, it was not as good as it seemed. Benjamin fell in love with a girl named daisy and had kids. He knows that he would age to be a baby one day when his kids were old and that daisy would have to look after him and he hated that. He lost his friends and family throughout his life and when his caregiver died he said “she taught me how to play the piano, and what it meant to miss somebody.” this made the audience feel sympathetic towards benjamin and made us realize that he didn’t like loosing people and that aging backward may not be as good as it seems. This story ties in with the idea of time and how time can not be changed, similar to a message conveyed in The Great Gatsby. Benjamin as “a man who is unable to stop time” is similar to Gatsby when he wants to go back in time to be with daisy again. Benjamin wants to stop time so that he doesn’t age back, he wants to grow old with Daisy and watch his kids grow up. This short film, inspired by F.Scott Fitzgerald links to his other short stories, and the idea of what you see from the outside isn’t always as spectacular and fantastic as you may think it up to be, and that everybody is fighting their own battle that is unknown to the rest of us.

Another story F.Scott Fitzgerald has used to convey the idea of illusion vs. reality is The Great Gatsby. Jay Gatsby, at the age of seventeen, decided to remake himself. He decided to change what he looked like, his name, what his personality was like, and he decided to become rich. In the story, when he was in his younger years, Gatsby falls in love with a girl named Daisy. She is the golden girl that everybody wants and aspires to be and Gatsby was happy to have won her over all of the other guys. Unfortunately, he had to go to war and during this long time, Daisy had met someone else and was now married with a child. When Gatsby remade himself, he made an illusion created to make Daisy fall in love with him again. But this wasn’t who he truly was, he became rich through an illegal bootlegging business which is also an illusion as he did not follow the correct path of The American Dream and working hard for it. In the end, Gatsby ended up dying as I believe “living too long with a single dream” caught up with him. This caught up with him because he was so stuck on the idea of getting Daisy back and being in that ‘perfect life with her’ that he made up in his head and he forgot about everything else that he had left behind. Nick says in the story “There must have been moments even that afternoon when daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion” Nick is saying that Gatsby has made up an illusion of daisy being perfect and pure. But in reality, Daisy was not perfect, and that he was never going to get that perfect life with her he thought he wanted. Time had caught up with him and this resulted in his death. This links in with Dexter from ‘Winter Dreams’ as he also had his dream of being with this girl Judy Jones and gaining social class, being superior. Like Gatsby, Dexter was so also stuck on the dream of being superior and having Judy Jones that he left everything else. Overall, Fitzgerald has conveyed the idea in the Great Gatsby of illusion vs reality by Gatsby creating an illusion of himself to make daisy fall back in love with him but in reality, the perfect life with daisy was never going to happen. 

Fitzgeralds link to this idea of illusion vs. reality also appears in the short story of Winter Dreams. Like Sally Carrol, Dexter has a dream of having a better life and gaining social status. He dreams of being a golf champion and being respected and admired. Like Gatsby, he meets a beautiful girl named Judy Jones. He makes up in his head that she is perfect, lives the perfect life, and is respected and admired “the helpless ecstasy of losing himself in her charm was a powerful opiate rather than a tonic” this helps the reader to understand that he has made an illusion of her, and he loses himself in it as Gatsby did with Daisy. He puts everything on the line for her and later, at the end of the story he realizes that he didn’t get her, his dream is gone and they can never return home. “even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished” He leaves behind everything for his illusion of Judy Jones and to fulfill his winter dream, a lot like Gatsby, he had made this idea of being superior solves all of your problems and getting the ‘golden girl’ would help him to do that. But in reality, he gets left with nothing and the illusions finally catch up with him. This text helps to link the four texts written by Fitzgerald to the idea of illusion vs reality and that Fitzgerald likes the use of using illusion to convey the idea of things to never be what they may seem from the outside and that everyone is different, and everyone has a flaw.

The idea of illusion vs reality is portrayed throughout many stories written by Fitzgerald, and the idea of the illusion you make things up to be is never going to be like that. Through the following texts ‘The ice palace’, a film inspired by the short story Fitzgerald wrote ‘The curious cases of Benjamin Button’, ‘The Great Gatsby’, and ‘Winter Dreams’ he has used the beliefs of characters such as Sally Carrol, Benjamin Button, Jay Gatsby, and Dexter and what they think things up to be to convey the idea of when things seem perfect on the outside, they are not always perfect on the inside or deep down and that everyone has there own problems and flaws that people can’t always see from the outside