Roaring 20's and Great Depression novels: The Great Gatsby and its awkward opposite!

The characters in the Great Gatsby and Arturo Bandini novels are true opposites in wealth and sophistication. However, they share one trait: persisting in their romantic dreams until the end!

The Great Depression left a profound image on the memories of people. Until today, perhaps the strongest impression on people's minds is the contrast between great wealth and abject poverty from the mass unemployed living in big cities or wandering the countryside in search of work. It also captures the human spirit with irony by contrasting the golden years, peace and prosperity of the previous decade with the despair, misery and loneliness of the 1930s.

Los Angeles hill, a setting similar to Ask the Dust

One of the great literary pieces out of the Roaring Twenties is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, as popular (or more) today as in its first 1925 edition. It touches so many enduring emotions. For the American soldiers in WW2 it probably reminded them that their girlfriends may not be waiting at the end of the war. For the younger generations that did not live a military conflict, it reflects that romantic ambitions are not always fulfilled even if someones gives it all its effort. The novel's unrequited love story also tells us about class and family origins. Talent, effort and merit do not always get recognized. The main character Jay Gatsby is ashamed of his family to the point of abandoning his loving father and changing his name. Finally, the story teaches us that great wealth and luxury only feed snobbism and vanity. Noisy parties do not buy us friends. The pursuit of happiness is as elusive now as it was for the great Greek-Roman philosophers like Aristotle or the emperor Marcus Aurelius. The novel already has four amazing movie adaptations, of which I only saw the Robert Redford's and Di Caprio's versions. These movies, obviously are not exactly similar to the book, but are faithful enough to preserve all of its main motives and even lots of the same phrases and dialogues.

To me the greatest contrast comes from comparing the Great Gatsby in relation to the novels of the Great Depression such as John Steinbeck's. One such novel is Ask the Dust by John Fante, a story of sticking to one's own values and dreams in the face of adversity. It is purported to be a fictional version of some autobiographical events in the author's own life and rightfully so. Historians often say that any human persons enjoys to make up sublime versions of himself (or herself), heroic interpretations of ourselves. However, admitting to our own faults and humilliations is much more difficult! And yet the faults and humilliations are much truer to life. Fante's novel is full of humilliations inflicted upon its main character, Arturo Bandini.

If Jay Gatsby is elegant, sophisticated, wealthy, charming and a successful man, then Bandini is its very opposite. Arturo Bandini is a young and jobless writer in Los Angeles. The little money that he receives from his Mom is spent on oranges, the cheapest food he can afford, which he eats under a sorching heat while thinking that its sweet huices resembles liquid sunlight filling his empty belly. Gatsby has fame and money, but Bandini only gets a small check and his literary reputation only impresses a 14 year old neighbor and a divorced woman full of uneasy emotions. If Gatsby has the most expensive clothes, then Bandini uses the rope from cereal boxes as a belt and applies the box carton to repair his old shoes. Gatbsy throws money in luxurious parties, yet Bandini uses the little money he has to pay a steak to his neighbor. If Gatsby is the most admired person, then Bandini is utterly ignored and poor, something that he cruelly observes when he looks at the rich ladies arriving in limousines to LA's expensive hotels and then remarks that those beautiful women wear shoes that are more expensive than all the things he ever owned.

Even their personalities contrast, Gatsby being brave and noble, while Bandini is often rude and cowardly. Bandini flees from a prostitute after paying her because he feels the abject act would degrade his Christian faith. Bandini flees during the 1933 earthquake and afterwards feels so ashamed that he invents tales of brave acts and having rushed to save others, tall tales that lack such realism that none of his neighbors believe and just reveal his lack of courage more glaringly.

Yet Bandini's flaws always shine with the sincerity and simplicity of those who are poor, young, but with big dreams and loving intentions. Bandini is awkward and unable to play the seductor to his love interest, Camilla Lopez. Camilla is a waitress and a down to earth character, not at all like the attractive and dreamy socialite Daisy that is pursued by Gatsby. But Bandini shows great character and nobleness even in the most despairing situations. In fact, perhaps Bandini's lowest point is reached when Camilla reveals that she loves Sam, a waiter suffering badly from tuberculosis and a failed writer of western novels. Sam is rude, violent, and even poorer than Bandini is, yet he manages to capture Camilla's passion. Camilla tramples on Bandini's love with her feet, but Bandini is noble enough to ignore his own feelings and to be concerned for her situation. Bandini gives confort to the dying Sam, then searches the desert for Camilla and just leaves his new novel in the sand when the scorching heat forces him to give up hope.