A prevalent feature of both The Great Gatsby and A Streetcar Named Desire is the importance of the past in defining and shaping the lives of the protagonists, Jay Gatsby and Blanche Dubois, where the past refers to events belonging to a former time. There is a difference in writing technique between these two in that A Streetcar Named Desire, a play, is based on conversation whereas The Great Gatsby, a novel, is based mostly on narration. The authors were both American writers and as a Southerner, Williams was affected by the events of the American Civil War. Following their defeat by the Northern states, the South suffered economically. However, this air of decaying grandeur added to the romantic appeal for many writers, including himself. Tennessee Williams saw the South as a broken and damaged place in which the decay was somehow charming, he once said "I write about the South because I think the war between romanticism and the hostility to it is very sharp there". Women in the Old South had a social and symbolic role and were expected to be passive and chaste. Blanche DuBois, the protagonist in A Streetcar Named Desire, is portrayed as an aging Southern debutante who arrives at her sister's home in New Orleans hoping to start a new life and rewrite her past after losing her ancestral mansion, her job, and her reputation in her hometown of Laurel, Mississippi. The truth behind the reasons for Blanche's withdrawal from Mississippi are slowly revealed throughout the course of the play and the reality of the happenings at Hotel Flamingo are revealed. Blanche's brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, represents the new, heterogeneous America in which Blanche does not belong, because she is a relic from a defunct social hierarchy. Stanley embodies the American Dream that all men are born equal and can succeed equally, whilst Blanche represents the old world, where class and race are still important issues. Stanley's intense hatred of Blanche is motivated in part by the aristocratic past she represents. He also sees her as untrustworthy and does not appreciate her attempts to fool him and his friends into thinking she is superior to them, which ultimately provokes him to cause Blanche's downfall. Fitzgerald wrote and set The Great Gatsby in the 1920s, a time of great change in U.S. society. Fitzgerald explores topics of morality, love and class struggle in The Great Gatsby, of which were of intense relevance following America's success in World War I. The victory resulted in an economic expansion for America as well as an advancement in the fight for women's independence. In response to the emerging liberalism in the cities the U.S. government restricted the manufacture and distribution of liquor. However, this had little impact on the public and resulted in the emergence of speakeasies across the nation. In the novel, despite the prohibition, Gatsby does not cease throwing his illegal elaborate parties. One Fitzgerald critic, Nicolas Tredell, observed that the Prohibition "fuelled the rapid growth of organized crime networks engaged in bootlegging… and fostered the emergence of wealthy and powerful gangsters who- like Gatsby- were also active in other criminal fields, such as gambling and bond fraud" . The narrator, Nick Carraway, writes and describes Jay Gatsby's quest from a low-class farmer's son to a millionaire throwing extravagant parties. Gatsby has centred his life around one yearning, to be regain Daisy Buchanan's love. He manipulates his past such that those around him believe that he has lived an elaborate lifestyle and that he is part of the old rich. Throughout the novel, the bootlegger throws a number of parties in the hope that Daisy will show up. Gatsby's dreams are soon shattered when Tom Buchanan begins his quest to bring him down, uncovering the truth about his past. Ultimately, despite all Gatsby's efforts to be successful in his pursuit of love, Daisy's carelessness and the death of the American Dream leads him to an arguably untimely death.
Fitzgerald and Williams both suggest that a manipulation of the past is necessary for survival in the present through the use of illusion portrayed through their protagonists, Jay Gatsby and Blanche DuBois. The authors create illusions about the past in both texts which their characters carry around in order to survive the present. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche creates an illusion in order to fool the surrounding characters into believing that she is a respectable woman when in reality on a few months before she had been selling her body in order to keep her childhood house, Belle Reve. For Blanche, appearances are vitally important in order for the illusion to hold. Consumed with her need to appear younger and more innocent than she actually is, every personal interaction is a series of machinations and contrivances designed to conceal the truth, regarding both looks and reputation. Blanche's fear of showing her true age is shown when she states, "And turn that over-light off! Turn that off! I won't be looked at in this merciless glare!". Blanche's aversion to the light demonstrates its power to illuminate both her current physical state and past activities, both of which are eventually brought into the light. Tennessee Williams and Fitzgerald both use symbolism in the form of light imagery, in A Streetcar Named Desire it is used to help suggest the idea of unpleasant reality versus the attractive dreams of the characters, this emphasises Blanche's need to manipulate her past so that she can successfully survive in the present. Significantly, Fitzgerald links young James Gatz's dream world with moonlight, contrasting them both in turn with the harsh reality of time, as he does on other occasions too. Kathleen Parkinson wrote that "Moonlight is traditionally associated with the romantic imagination, with an intense subjective experience of solitude, with reverie and desire for the unattainable ideal." Tennessee Williams describes Blanche as the 'Southern Belle' although we, as the audience, can see that she is on the verge of a mental breakdown at any point during the play. Blanche does not want to be a part of a world in which actions have consequences and in which the logic of relationship pulls her into a narrative of history, she wishes to freeze time. The relationship between her sister Stella and her Polack husband, Stanley, must be destroyed not only because he threatens to cast her out from her last refuge but because otherwise the clock will be turned back to the past when Blanche was selling her body. Ultimately, fantasy has an inability to overcome reality.
Gatsby manipulates the past by simply inventing a whole new, made-up one in which he was born into money whereas Blanche succeeds in rewriting her past to disguise the truth that she has tried desperately to escape from. The green light which Gatsby is seen to reach out for in his first appearance in the novel represents the American Dream and in the view of critic Tony Tanner "[it] offers Gatsby a suitably inaccessible focus for his yearning" . Jordan Baker gives Nick the first clue to the relationship between Gatsby and his past when she explains to him, "Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay". Nick then comprehends something that had previously puzzled him about his neighbour's absorbed pose and obvious desire for solitude on the first night he saw him. Once Jordan has told him this Nick claims "He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendour", in which imagery of birth is used to explore Gatsby's rebirth in the eyes of Nick as if he is a completely new man. Gatsby is continually troubled by the past, a key quotation is brought about when Nick tells Gatsby that you cannot repeat the past, to which Gatsby replies "Why of course you can!". Gatsby has dedicated his entire life to recapturing a golden, perfect past with Daisy Buchanan. His all-consuming vision is totally egocentric to which Daisy is the object of his worship. Although, she is not allowed any warm humanity, no autonomous life of her own as a woman. As Nick realises at the tea party, the green light has more meaning for him than it does for Daisy with her frivolity and chatter. The green light symbolises Gatsby's dream of winning Daisy back and to successfully complete this would be to fulfil his 'American Dream'. The colour green is a symbol of hope for Gatsby although the green light at the end of Daisy's dock is distant and fading which signifies the disillusionment of his dream. Fitzgerald's utilisation of light in the novel by can be compared to the mention of light being used a device to uncover Blanche's true past in A Streetcar Named Desire. Gatsby is depicted by Fitzgerald as "overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves" However, Gatsby mixes up "youth and mystery" with history and he believes that the few weeks that he spent with Daisy can be compared to the amount of time she has been married to Tom and the experiences she has been through with him. Just as 'new money' is money without social connection, Gatsby's connection to Daisy exists outside of history. Gatsby is part of the "new rich" and so threatens Tom's old order of 'old money'. He creates a whole new life and world for himself since he was not born into wealth in San Francisco as Jay Gatsby but rather he was born James Gatz to an impoverished farmer in North Dakota rather. Nick describes Gatsby's early life and it reveals his sensitivity to status that provokes him, and so he develops an intense obsession with social position and wealth: "The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg sprang from his Platonic conception of himself" as written by Nick. The Greek philosopher Plato suggested that the material world the we live in is a merely an outline of the ideal world which constitutes reality. Therefore, the identity of Jay Gatsby as an ideal conception of himself is cherished by young James Gatz as he beats his penniless way along the shore of Lake Superior. When meeting Dan Cody he presents a ready-made identity produced by his fantasies with which his imagination has fed his craving for a different kind of life. Gatsby rechristens himself, symbolising how he wishes to abandon his lower-class past. Although, this desire is that of a "seventeen-year-old" boy and Gatsby's naive ideas never mature. He bought a large mansion, designed it with many lavish rooms and threw incredible parties all to draw the attention of Daisy Buchanan. However, Fitzgerald describes to the reader that Gatsby's "bedroom was the simplest room of all". Gatsby's grand and elaborate house is a symbol of the deception and the lies that he tells. His room is ordinary and simple and so represents his true self despite his frivolous attempts to give the impression that he is worthy of Daisy's love. He feels that he must manipulate his past in order to achieve his one goal in life; Daisy. His seemingly elaborate house demonstrates the lengths he feels he must go to in order to impress her. Gatsby's deceptive nature and the fabrications about his past are ultimately what define him.
Fitzgerald and Williams both only portray that the manipulation of the past is necessary for survival of the protagonists, whereas this idea of the past is developed by Edward Albee further in his play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? through the presentation of all four characters as they try and escape their past. Ruth Meyer suggested that Albee's play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is about the 'necessity for illusion' which is adequately shown throughout the play by George and Martha's marriage being based on the illusion that they have a son. Albee himself said that the phrase, 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' really connotes to 'Who is afraid to live without illusion?' within the play. The phrase is used repeatedly but at the end of the final scene Martha states that she is scared. This is because George had recently smashed that illusion of a son when Martha brings it too far into reality. Albee employs the idea of the manipulation of the past through George and Martha as they have created this illusion of having a son in order to survive the present due to the fact that they could not have children. While they are manipulating the past, by inventing narratives, they are also creating a mythical present and future. The 'necessity for illusion' is also shown as Nick and Honey's lives and pasts are also based on illusion. Nick is described by Albee to be strong and forceful but he is impotent. He did not marry Honey for love but because of the illusion of a pregnancy and Honey, throughout their marriage, has been deceiving him by using birth control to prevent pregnancy because she is terrified at the thought of giving birth. Albee believed that 'a life of illusion was wrong because it created a false content for life', just as the hollow marriage of George and Martha centres around a fictional son. Albee also considered 'reality lacks any deeper meaning' and Martha and George must face this by exorcising their delusions. Neither Gatsby nor Blanche are given the opportunity to banish illusion from their lives but George and Martha are able to consciously abandon their manipulation of the future, they voluntarily expel themselves from paradise and so have exorcized all of the illusions of the past and the present which leaves them to experience an unmediated existence. Near to the end of Who's Afraid George explains to a mesmerised Honey, "When you get down ¬¬to bone, you haven't got all the way, yet. There's something inside the bone… the marrow… and that's what you gotta get at". The reference to the "marrow" is vital as this allusion indicates a key dramatic moment and a controlled emotional high point for George, for at this moment George realises what he has to do in order to save his marriage as well as Martha and his existence: the illusion of their son that is crippling their world must be confronted and exorcised, hence the title of the third act. The "marrow" allusion signifies George's awareness that stripping away the illusion governing their lives is necessary for survival. Therefore, Albee takes the audience on a journey from a time in which George and Martha believe that a manipulation of the past is necessary to survive to a time that it is shown to be causing their devastation. In the final scene,
"Martha: It was…? You had to?
George: (Pause) Yes.
Martha: I don't know.
George: It was… time.
Martha: Was it?
George: Yes."
Albee exercises the use of aporia which is an expression of uncertainty by George and Martha as they are left at the end of the play with their lives torn apart. Albee uses this aporia to indicate an impasse and to stimulate the audience to conceptualise different possibilities for resolution. Matthew C. Roudane wrote that "Albee deliberately reduces, deflates the mystical encounter, his technique for spotlighting his heroes' inclination to repair the ruins of their past by confronting the present unfettered by any illusions" . Albee's uses ellipses and pauses in the final stretch of conversation to give the audience time to perceive what the future could hold since the manipulation of their past has failed to aid them in the survival of the present. The audience can also pull parallels to this scene from the opening conversation of the play through Martha's continuous questioning. However, at the beginning of the play her questions were lined with gamesmanship and sarcasm and towards the conclusion of the play they are filled with anxiety yet unbound by tension.
Tom Buchanan and Stanley Kowalski can be compared as both are seen to have the similar roles in each text. They play the role of the hyper-masculine, aggressive, unsympathetic man who is the protagonist's rival. In The Great Gatsby, Tom is Gatsby's rival for Daisy's love and stops at nothing to prove to Daisy that Gatsby is not worthy of her love. These two characters also have the role of destroyer of dreams and illusion, Tom dismantles Gatsby's life right in front of Daisy as he states, "He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter". He shows Daisy that Gatsby's money was dirty as well as that her he was part of the 'new rich'. Daisy desires stability and security and Tom can provide this which is how he eventually wins her over in the scene in a Manhattan hotel. This shows to the reader how shallow Daisy is, she does not care about love or, in fact, anyone but herself. Stanley is also seen as Blanche's rival as she tries to convince Stella to leave Stanley after he had beaten her during his poker night. Blanche had come to Chicago to get away from her old life and she rewrites her past to help her do this, just as Gatsby does, but Stanley does not let her. He destroys Blanche's illusions and ruins her dreams of beginning again and starting a life with Mitch.
Richard Yates describes that Frank Wheeler, a character from his novel Revolutionary Road, wants to be a suburban rebel, his own man, but he can't stop feeling his world as a diminished place next to his father's. "He continued to believe that something unique and splendid lived in his father's hands," as Yates explains, and although the reader is eventually provided insight into the threatening environment his father lived in, the continuing burden of the past is explored. However, in contrast to The Great Gatsby and A Streetcar Named Desire, Yates also uses a manipulation of the future in order for the couple, April and Frank Wheeler, to survive their present. Throughout the novel, April desperately wishes to get away from their repetitive lifestyle, the life that was planned out for them by their parents, and move to Paris. Yates evokes beautifully the way that the 1920's Lost Generation instilled the dream of escape to Europe in its sons and daughters growing up in the 50's. Frank and April believe that fleeing to Paris will provide them with the spark that they require in order to escape their hopelessness and emptiness, which they incur in the present. Gradually, as the plans for Paris collapse, the future of their marriage collapses with it as Yates bases their entire relationship on the possibility of a better future. The manipulation of the future had been critical in the survival of the present and since it has been destroyed, just as in The Great Gatsby and A Streetcar Named Desire, their lives are torn apart with it.
Fitzgerald and Williams imply that a manipulation of the past is necessary for survival however, both Blanche and Gatsby end up in a situation of misfortune. Despite their efforts to manipulate their past and survive the present, their past remains inescapable and Fitzgerald writes, at the end of The Great Gatsby, that "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us… So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" in order to summarise this. Both Fitzgerald and Williams imply that there is a connection between manipulating the past and the theme of the inescapable past. The characters perceive manipulating their past to be a tool to succeed, but when put to test they both struggle. Therefore, the writers use their texts to suggest that a manipulation of the past through deceit only causes more tribulation as the characters around Blanche and Gatsby successfully unpick their maze of deceptions.