Death of a Salesman and Gatsby - Free Essay Example

Stories can be told in many ways while still saying the same thing. Some are plays, some are novels, some are poems. Two such examples of stories which make similar statements in opposite modes of telling are those of a salesmans death and a man named Gatsby. Death of a Salesman is more confined to reality than The Great Gatsby in its strangeness of characters and in the structure in which the story is formed. The characters, such as Gatsby and Daisy, of The Great Gatsby are unrealistic ideas of themselves which easily fall apart or disappear entirely. Near the start of the novel, Gatsby vanished, leaving Nick alone in the unquiet darkness (Fitzgerald 21). Just before this, hed been trembling as though he felt that he might stop existing altogether, foreshadowing the near future of himself. Gatsby acted like little more than an apparition, the ghost of long-forgotten idea, shimmering in and out of space and time. Later, when he finally gets close to his goal, he suddenly changes and glows (Fitzgerald 89). Gatsby goes through another sudden change in who he is much like when he named himself Gatsby in the first place. Gatsby chooses a different persona to take his place whenever he sees fit. These machinations, eventually, fall apart. Gatsby dies, and Daisy, his supposed love who said she loved him, left and left no address (Fitzgerald 164). Both Gatsby and Daisy entirely disappeared, leavi ng just a trace in the memories of those who knew them, and not even much of a trace of who they really were. The characters of Death of a Salesman, unlike those of The Great Gatsby, are grounded in reality and Willys psychosis is the only thing that makes events seem unrealistic. When Willy plays a game of cards with Charley, he says that hes getting awfully tired and uses the name Ben instead of Charley with Charley asking if he was just called Ben (Miller 44). That may have sounded a bit convoluted as it was meant to be. Willy does not quite know what is really happening and what is not while Charley is fully lucid. Willy tries to fix the situation by saying that Charley reminded [him] of [his] brother Ben (Miller 45). They try to continue playing and talking but Willy keeps getting distracted by his brother who isnt there until Charley is fed up and leaves. Charley does not have time for his delusional friend; he would like to continue to live in the real world. When Willy talks to Ben, who still is not there, again, and Linda comes along, she asks, did you have some cheese (Miller 52). While Willey is off in his fantasy, his wife is thinking of something so mundane as a dairy product. She is not worrying about a hardly real brother walking into a jungle, and later coming out rich, just whether or not her husband ate cheese. When Willy loses his job, he talks about how he once averaged a hundred and seventy dollars a week in commissions in 1928 (Miller 82). His boss tries to get Willey back to reality and tell him he never did that but Willy would not listen. Willy stays in his far-off version of reality while everyone else stays earthbound. The Great Gatsby is written in a loose manner which makes the story less constrained to the real world. The narrator uses broad statements about times, such as talking about his younger and more vulnerable years (Fitzgerald 1) in the beginning, instead of starting at any specific point in time. He is not placed at specific moments, just ideas of, and allusions to, moments. Nick is unconcerned with when things happened so much as that they did. He also does not stay entirely consistent with how he tells the story. In the beginning, he almost entirely just describes things happening along with metaphors for those things. Later, he starts to add himself to the story he tells, giving himself opinions of everything and words for him to speak. He only starts to voice opinions when Gatsby thinks he has achieved his goal, and then just to tell Gatsby that he is acting like a little boy(Fitzgerald 88). The addition of such opinions adds bias to the story, making it even less bound to any trut h of reality than before. This story is all in the past tense, meaning it relies on memory to be told. Nick can say that he remembers that whole story (Fitzgerald 163) but people are often more sure about such things than they should be, thinking they remember more than they do. Death of a Salesman is written in a way that makes it deeply confined to reality. This story is a play, written with specific stage directions for how everyone should speak and where everything should be. One such stage direction, at the very beginning, talks of towering, angular shapes (Miller 11). Such strict geometry is something that anchors things down to Earth even more clearly than the geometry of curved spacetime that literally holds things in place on Earth. The fact that this story is a play, in itself, also helps hold it to reality. The characters are all meant to be played by real people on a physical stage. They are not meant to stay as words on a page; they are meant to come alive in the real world. This may have happened with The Great Gatsby in its becoming a movie but that story had to be adapted to that form; it was not written like that. Death of a Salesman is in the present tense, not relying on any memory to be told. Everything that happens is considered to be ha ppening right now even though Willy may see things a bit differently than that. Death of a Salesman and The Great Gatsby are two stories told in highly different ways that exemplify how different the stories are. They may both deal with death, The American Dream, and the recreation of the self but the stories get these themes across through perpendicular means. In the end, it does not matter how real a story is, especially a story of morals and ideals. Such a story simply needs to get its point across to you however the author deems necessary.

The history of Newspaper Essay - 825 Words

The history of Newspaper (Essay Sample) Content: The history of NewspaperNameInstitutionThe history of NewspaperA newspaper refers to a periodical publication that contains news, a wide range of informative articles and advertisements. Newspapers are usually printed daily, weekly or after every two weeks depending on the publication. Most newspaper companies print newspapers daily. Recently, due to advancements in technology, newspapers are also available online via the internet. This paper will give a history of the evolution of newspapers to date.The history of newspapers can be traced five centuries back. The earliest form of newspaper in Renaissance Europe was handwritten and was used to communicate information about social issues, wars and economic issues among others. Germany was the first to produce a printed newspaper in late 1400s in the form of broadsides or pamphlets. The content in these newspapers was highly sensitive such as the atrocities against the Germans perpetrated by Vlad Tsepes in Transylvania (Farrell Cupito, 2010). According to Mott (2000), in English speaking countries, the earliest forms of newspaper were known as corantos. These were small news pamphlets that were only produced after significant events. In 1622, The Weekly Newes became the first successfully published title followed by other similar publications but with different titles in the 1640s and 1650s. In 1666, London Gazette became the first English newspaper to be published.In 1690, the first newspaper in America was published under the name Publick Occurrences. This newspaper had been published without authority which led to the arrest of the publisher and the confiscation of all copies. The first successful newspaper was published in 1704 by John Campbell was known as the Boston News-Letter. Despite having the support of the colonial government, this newspaper proved to be a near-failure given its limited circulation. By 1720, two more papers appeared in New York and Philadelphia. Newspapers played a ve ry significant role in the American Revolutionary war (Mott, 2000). Revolutionary propagandists used newspapers as avenues to influence public opinion against Englands colonial rule. By the end of the war, forty three printed newspapers were in circulation. Newspapers were central to the conception of an independent nation. In 1791, the bill of rights gave freedom to the press and newspapers took a fundamental role in national affairs. By 1814, the number of newspapers in America was 346. Technological advancements in the 1830s contributed a massive growth in the newspaper industry. Penny press made it possible to publish newspaper that could sell for a cent for every copy. This changed the trend that had placed newspapers with the wealthy and literate minority in society. More technological advancements in the industrial revolution led to the transformation of newspaper printing. The number of newspapers, as well as circulations continued to increase. According to Mott (2000), in 1850, the number of newspapers by title was 2,526. By this time, there were advanced printing presses that had the ability to print ten thousand newspapers within one hour. Pictorials were also introduced making news more interesting and illustrative. Newspaper continued to grow in the post war years. In 1880, the number of papers had risen to a remarkable 11,314 titles. By the 1890s, circulation figures reached a record of a million copies for every issue. After the end of the World War II, most of the features present in modern newspapers were incorporated. Examples include bold headlines, extensive use of pictures, coverage of sports and funny pages. By 1910s, all the essential features of the modern paper had been incorporated (Mott, 2000). With time, newspapers companies became larger especially with the increase of advertisements as an additional source of income. Technological development such as wire services which enabled journalists to gather news from around the globe and send them via telegraph transmission. This enabled newspaper companies to report world news through wire services companies (Farrell Cupito, 2010). This connected the readers from all over the globe through newspapers. The transformations of the newspaper in terms of efficiency and technology have continued to date.In the past two decades, the evolution of newspaper has increased at a very fast pace. Advanced teleco... The history of Newspaper Essay - 825 Words The history of Newspaper (Essay Sample) Content: The history of NewspaperNameInstitutionThe history of NewspaperA newspaper refers to a periodical publication that contains news, a wide range of informative articles and advertisements. Newspapers are usually printed daily, weekly or after every two weeks depending on the publication. Most newspaper companies print newspapers daily. Recently, due to advancements in technology, newspapers are also available online via the internet. This paper will give a history of the evolution of newspapers to date.The history of newspapers can be traced five centuries back. The earliest form of newspaper in Renaissance Europe was handwritten and was used to communicate information about social issues, wars and economic issues among others. Germany was the first to produce a printed newspaper in late 1400s in the form of broadsides or pamphlets. The content in these newspapers was highly sensitive such as the atrocities against the Germans perpetrated by Vlad Tsepes in Transylvania (Farrell Cupito, 2010). According to Mott (2000), in English speaking countries, the earliest forms of newspaper were known as corantos. These were small news pamphlets that were only produced after significant events. In 1622, The Weekly Newes became the first successfully published title followed by other similar publications but with different titles in the 1640s and 1650s. In 1666, London Gazette became the first English newspaper to be published.In 1690, the first newspaper in America was published under the name Publick Occurrences. This newspaper had been published without authority which led to the arrest of the publisher and the confiscation of all copies. The first successful newspaper was published in 1704 by John Campbell was known as the Boston News-Letter. Despite having the support of the colonial government, this newspaper proved to be a near-failure given its limited circulation. By 1720, two more papers appeared in New York and Philadelphia. Newspapers played a ve ry significant role in the American Revolutionary war (Mott, 2000). Revolutionary propagandists used newspapers as avenues to influence public opinion against Englands colonial rule. By the end of the war, forty three printed newspapers were in circulation. Newspapers were central to the conception of an independent nation. In 1791, the bill of rights gave freedom to the press and newspapers took a fundamental role in national affairs. By 1814, the number of newspapers in America was 346. Technological advancements in the 1830s contributed a massive growth in the newspaper industry. Penny press made it possible to publish newspaper that could sell for a cent for every copy. This changed the trend that had placed newspapers with the wealthy and literate minority in society. More technological advancements in the industrial revolution led to the transformation of newspaper printing. The number of newspapers, as well as circulations continued to increase. According to Mott (2000), in 1850, the number of newspapers by title was 2,526. By this time, there were advanced printing presses that had the ability to print ten thousand newspapers within one hour. Pictorials were also introduced making news more interesting and illustrative. Newspaper continued to grow in the post war years. In 1880, the number of papers had risen to a remarkable 11,314 titles. By the 1890s, circulation figures reached a record of a million copies for every issue. After the end of the World War II, most of the features present in modern newspapers were incorporated. Examples include bold headlines, extensive use of pictures, coverage of sports and funny pages. By 1910s, all the essential features of the modern paper had been incorporated (Mott, 2000). With time, newspapers companies became larger especially with the increase of advertisements as an additional source of income. Technological development such as wire services which enabled journalists to gather news from around the globe and send them via telegraph transmission. This enabled newspaper companies to report world news through wire services companies (Farrell Cupito, 2010). This connected the readers from all over the globe through newspapers. The transformations of the newspaper in terms of efficiency and technology have continued to date.In the past two decades, the evolution of newspaper has increased at a very fast pace. Advanced teleco...