Dissilusionment

Disillusionment
Illusion plays a major role in the two works The Great Gatsby and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". In each piece of literature, the narrator has some fantasy about a specific person or themselves and continues to believe throughout the literature. As the truth eludes the character, it aggravates the reader more and more until the narrator finally comes back to reality. This key point in the poem or novel is called disillusionment. Disillusionment and illusion played a major role in the novel The Great Gatsby and the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by allowing certain characters to formulate a realistic opinion of the people and world around them.
One of the prevailing themes in these two works is the illusion of time. In "Prufrock", the illusion is the narrators sense of time he has left for his aspirations. This is similar to illusion in The Great Gatsby when Jay Gatsby believes he can repeat the past with him and Daisy. In both situations, the characters are basically in a denial of reality. Jay Gatsby loves a woman he once had many years ago and is determined to have her. When Nick tried to advise to him "You can't repeat the past", Jay's reply was "Why of course you can"(pg. 110). This illusion of time is similar to Prufrock's initial belief that he "had time yet for a hundred visions and revisions"; implying that he still had time to live out his dreams and aspirations(Eliot 33). Prufrock was just in denial of his age and like Jay Gatsby; he was living in an illusion of time. After this disillusion, both characters had a completely changed view on the concept of time.
Disillusionment of time is an important part of these two pieces of literature. Both of the characters that had the false illusion of time eventually came to realize the truth. In both character's situations, other people brought them out of their false belief of time. The woman who finally brought Jay Gatsby back to reality was also the woman whose love...