Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby revolve around a main character who serves as a vehicle that reveals the theme main of the book. The Great Gatsby chronicles Jay Gatsby's search for love, while Farewell to Arms is the story of Frederic Henry, a man caught in the middle of love and war. Both Fitzgerald and Hemingway describe these characters, respectively, as detached individuals and absorbed in an ideal, but each writer does so in his or her own distinct style. Fitzgerald exposes Gatsby sensuously and poetically primarily through intricate prose. Hemingway, on the other hand, reveals Frederic's character in a realistic and concrete sense through a combination of literary elements such as dialogue, structure and form, and through the events that transpire in the book. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The styles of the two authors are revealed immediately after each character's introduction in the novel. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald describes Gatsby as a man who had a "heightened sensitivity to life" but at the same time was so detached from everything that during the lavish parties he threw he "[stood] alone on the marble steps watching from the group clustering with eyes of approval" (Fitzgerald 6, 54). Here we immediately see that Gatsby had a sense of vitality within himself that did not imply the hedonism and pleasure with which he surrounds himself and which he himself perpetuates. Furthermore, Fitzgerald describes Gatsby's smile as having "an eternal quality of reassurance," but despite this no one interacted with him, "no one swooned over [him] and no French bob touched his shoulder" (52, 55). . Through the paradoxical description of Gatsby using poetic and unconventional diction, Fitzgerald establishes an impression of Gatsby that provides the reader with a glimpse of his detached, yet absorbed personality, which persists throughout the book. Hemingway introduces the character of Henry in a different way. The story is written from Henry's point of view; therefore, there is no explicit or formal description of Henry's character. Instead, the reader gains information through the events that happen at the beginning of the book and how they are constructed. Hemingway gives the reader a deeper look into Henry's personality as he reveals Henry's thoughts while drunk: "I had gone to no place where the snow was dry and powdery [but instead] to the smoke of the coffee houses and the nights where the room was swirling.." (Hemingway 13). This line serves two purposes. First, it reveals Henry's guilt at choosing a hedonistic escape rather than a spiritual one. As Henry describes how he “felt bad” and “couldn't understand why he didn't leave,” Hemingway reveals the slight moral conflict that occurred in Henry and how he lacked structure in his life (13). Later, this lack of structure will result in his heavy dependence on Catherine. By revealing the aimless way he lived his life before Catherine, Hemingway highlights the importance Henry placed on their relationship. Furthermore, this sentence reveals how Hemingway uses structure to reveal Henry's mindset: Henry's fragmented thought pattern while drunk was reflected in the disjointed sentences and words of the passage. Unlike Fitzgerald, Hemingway uses very simple, direct and concise language. revealing Henry's thoughts and emotions. He also uses structure to reveal an aspect of his character's mind that is raw and uncensored. Both Fitzgerald and Hemingway provide the reader with glimpses of the detachment of their fin charactersfrom the beginning, but Fitzgerald does so in a poetic and emotional way while Hemingway accomplishes the task by providing realities such as events and thoughts for the reader to draw from. conclusions.Fitzgerald andHemingway continue to develop their characters throughout the book in several distinct ways. Fitzgerald reveals Gatsby's obsession with Daisy numerous times and conveys this obsession to the reader through the character Nick, the narrator, and a character who observes the events as they occur. As the book progresses, the reader sees how much Gatsby loves Daisy, how he was so "consumed by wonder at Daisy's presence" that he "re-evaluated everything in his house by the measure of the response he drew from her beloved eyes" (Fitzgerald 97). Nick's observations provide the reader with insight into how much Gatsby was in love with Daisy, while Fitzgerald's lyrical articulation of these observations evokes related feelings in the reader. Likewise, Hemingway develops the character of Henry much like Gatsby in the sense that both characters' lives were dominated by one thing: their love for one woman. Henry's devotion to Catherine is evident in his conversations where he says he wants her to "ruin" him and when he repeatedly says that "if [she's not] with [him], [he] has nothing in the world in common" (Hemingway 250 257). The frequency of these conversations and thoughts about how he "felt faint from having loved her so much" reveals to the reader the intensity of Henry's love for Catherine. Hemingway does not focus on description to convey the emotions of the characters; instead, he expresses these emotions directly through dialogue and insight into the character's mind. Henry's love for Catherine is reminiscent of Gatsby, but each character's love is displayed in different ways: Fitzgerald's style is elaborate and poetic, while Hemingway's is direct and realistic. As both characters' stories conclude, their respective decisions to commit to a single ideal and disconnect from it all ultimately test them. In The Great Gatsby this price may seem at first glance to be Gatsby's death, but upon closer examination, what struck him most was the crumbling of his dream: the loss of Daisy. Even as “the dead dream continued to struggle…trying to touch what was no longer tangible,” Daisy “[drew] further and further into herself,” leaving Gatsby with nothing despite having invested everything (Fitzgerald 142). Gatsby's death was actually the fitting conclusion of his enormous dream. Fitzgerald reveals how Gatsby "paid a high price for living too long with a single dream" through Gatsby's final corruption and his vivid, profound, and slightly elegiac description (167). Henry's story also ended on a tragic note, and his and Gatsby's fates bear a slight resemblance to each other. In the end both men were left with nothing because they invested everything they had in one thing. When Henry abandoned the war, he did not do so solely for Catherine; however he poured all his attention on her, including those he had already committed to the war. To Henry, “all other things were unreal” except him and Catherine (Hemingway 249). As Catherine neared death, Henry rambled in his head, "What if she should die? She won't die... yes, but what if she should die? She won't die" (320). These lines reveal the vague distortion in Henry's head and, once again, Hemingway's style of reflecting the characters' thoughts in the structure of the novel which provides the reader with explicit insight into what is in the character's head. Upon Catherine's death, Henry left her as if leaving a "statue," then "went back to his hotel in the rain" (332). Henry emerges from the rain, a clear symbol of death and.