The Great Gatsby & Enduring Love
‘Obsessive love has the capacity to drive a person to insanity, leading to irrational behaviour, alienation and despair’
Compare and contrast the ways McEwan and Fitzgerald present the complexities of human love in light of this comment.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ian McEwanpresent obsessive Idealised love as deranged and harmful.Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’, published in 1925,epitomises the euphoric atmosphere which permeated consumerist attitudes after WW1, during the period known as the ‘Roaring Twenties’ a revolutionary time associated with breaking tradition, Modernism, rapid technological change andnew definitions of the ‘modern’ woman. Fitzgerald’sfictional characters can be understood …show more content…

Both Gatsby and Jed experience forms of obsession and self-delusionwhich they believe is love. Nick’s description of Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy is that ‘...He had committed himself to the following of a grail.’ The Holy Grail metaphor portrays perfectly the idea of Gatsby’s devotion, his spiritual quest for Daisy. Gatsby is an obsessive dreamer in search of god-like perfection because of the purity of his belief in Daisy. To Gatsby she is not only the woman he loves, but also the woman he has invested all his hopes and dreams in. ‘For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.’
However his own personal heaven is just as unattainable as the Grail, which thousands of men have lost their lives in for. His world is founded on the ‘fairy’s wing’,the fragility of his dreams is irrational and when it breaks down so does his delusion; ultimately leading to his death and despair.

Jed Parry’s mental illness is a prominent theme in Enduring Love.His condition causes Joe a great deal of confusion until he can find reason to explain it,‘De Clerambault’s Syndrome. The name was like a fanfare, a clear trumpet sound recalling me to my own obsessions. There was research to follow through now and I knew exactly where