A New Leaf

            Both of these literature works, the novel The Great Gatsby and the short story “A New Leaf”, were written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  They have similar settings, plots and roughly similar storylines.  One theme that the two pieces story share is the inability to forget the past, and that that has a huge effect on our futures.  Both stories involve the chemical romance known as love and entail a man not being able to give up his sweat heart.

            In The Great Gatsby, the theme entails Gatsby and his love Daisy.  They are separated, and the story is about Gatsby being able to forget her. Daisy is the person from his past and the time they spent together before he went to fight in the war are the events.  Even after Daisy is no longer a part of his life, Gatsby focuses on her, and his continued love of her makes him act the way that he did. Daisy was always on Gatsby’s mind, which caused him to freeze in his life, unable to move forward, because she is always on his mind.  He buys a large expensive house, in hopes that she will be impressed.  He befriends Nick (Daisy’s cousin) in hopes that he will reacquaint the two of them.  He throws outrageous, extravagant parties all the time in hopes that she, by some stroke of luck, will attend one of them and he will be able to work his way back into her life.

            This theme also applies to “A New Leaf”, because of the relationship between Julia and Dick. Julia meets Dick while they are in Paris, and continue a relationship with each other despite the multiple warnings Julia receives about Dick’s reputation.  Throughout the rest of her stay in Paris and once she returns to America, Julia cannot forget about him. Fait seems to play in favor of this relationship as Julia and Dick meet again on the way back to New York.  Eventually they get married, but is put on hold because Dick is having an affair with another woman. She can never truly get over her feelings for Dick, and the incorrect opinion that she had formed of him.  Even though she appears to move on with her life because she marries another man, she tells him before their wedding that essentially she will always love Dick. So, like Gatsby, she never really forgets about the person from her past, and this changes her future, because she is never able to truly move on with his life.