The Relationship between Heathcliff’s and Gatsby’s Love.doc

the relationship between heathcliffs and gatsbys loveafter reading wuthering heights, i recall myself of the novel the great gatsby we read last term and find that there is something similar between two male protagonists, gatsby and heathcliff. first of all, heathcliff and gatsby are all poor and have low status. gatsby was born from a poor farm family; heathcliff was an orphan and illiterate. secondly, they all fall in love with girls who come from rich family and girls love them, too. thirdly, their girls married other men who are real gentlemen, educated and having high status. fourthly, they left and pursued wealth because of their love to girls they love. fifthly, they all realized their dream of wealth and came back to their girls. sixthly, they all died because of their love.besides these surprising similarities, there are also some differences.firstly, although heathcliff and gatsby are all poor, gatsby has a family but heathcliff is an orphan who was raised up in a rich family. i think its one of the reasons why heathcliff has a distorted personality because he couldnt feel familys love and he was always despised by other children in his childhood. even when he grew up, he was teased by his own brother-in-law. however, gatsby was never treated like that and he had a benevolent father. secondly, although the girls they adored loved them, daisy and catherine were totally different. daisy was a girl who pursed material life so much that she married to tom who was very rich when gatsby went to the battlefield; and felt regretful and came back to gatsby after she realized how rich gatsby became. however, catherine was really falling love with heathcliff and she realized this, “my love for heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. im heathcliff! hes always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than i am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.” she married edgar because heathcliff misunderstood her and left her. of course, she loved edgar, but it was another kind of love. from this point of view, gatsbys love for daisy was lamentable; heathcliffs love for catherine was worthy. thirdly, the reasons why they pursed wealth were totally different. gatsby pursed it because of love, but heathcliff pursed it due to revenge more than love. after they succeed, gatsby tried his best to show daisy how rich he became and asked her to come back to him, but heathcliff just tormented catherine and started his revenge plan. these two stories are all amazing. the two kinds of love they demonstrated are unbelievable and touching. as the saying tell us “in one thousands readers eye, there are one thousand hamlet.” i couldnt tell i prefer which one. i just wish that my love could have a happy ending, not a tragedy like these two love stories. i. introductiona. introduction to catherine earnshaw and heathcliff the hero and the heroine of the novel wuthering heights are heathcliff and catherine. the main point of my thesis is to analysis the relationship between heathcliff and catherine, the fate of catherine whose betrayal of heathcliff just brought her endlessly pain and love tragedy. first their established relations are found by the relationship during the darkness. they meet by fate and are ended by their different choice of love. heathcliff was brought to the heights by old earnshaw for he was an abandoned child. after his death, his son, hindly deprives heathcliff of all the human rights and treats him cruelly. during the years of oppression, only catherine offers him warmth and friendship. little by little, they fight against hindlys tyranny, and support each other and their friendship becomes stronger. their same interest and life concept make a bond of the two. when they are both in dilemma, they take each other as spirit and the sunshine of life, just as catherine says: “he is more myself than i am. what ever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” “i am heathcliff. he is always in my heart; not as pleasure, but as my own being.” (emily bronte, 1999: 32) heathcliff is more of the value of her life. in choosing edgar, she is cheating to herself, just as what heathcliff comments. a love oak is planted in a flower-pot. so when heathcliff returns she is eager to see him love her all the same and maybe more. she tries to compromise her feelings with what linton claims, but that can never be done at all. she cannot bear such suffering, falls ill and never recovers.b. introduction to wuthering heights wuthering heights is the only novel of emily bronte who died of tuberculosis in 1884 at the age of thirty. the story of her life, just like that of her brothers and sisters, has long since taken place among the great literary legends of britain and possesses an almost mythic quality. the uniqueness and brilliance of her imagination, which leads her to producing novel unique in english literature, provide a fascinating subject for critical inquiry. it is not without evidence of considerable power. on the contrary, it is a strange book which is wild, confused, disjointed and improbable. the narration tells the tale of the colorful and passionate, yet frustrated love between heathcliff and catherine earnshaw, and how their different attitudes towards love has finally destroyed both themselves and many around them. it is a love tragedy. emily presents a life of a deformed society and draws the outline of humanity that was warped by the abnormal society, and a series of terrible events caused by it. from this angle we can learn that its romantic ingredient is rare especially. ii. analysis of different attitudes towards love reflected in wuthering heightsa. catherine and heathcliffs attitudes toward love1. the attitude of catherinein the novel, catherines love of her life is not presented directly, but through her body language and her soul struggling painfully, the expression love is performed.on one hand, catherine marries linton for social status. in order to realize the value of herself, and in the face of status, she chooses to marry linton. by marrying handsome and rich linton, she can become a lady, live a happy life in the thrushcross grange. every person can do the math. on the other hand, catherine marries linton as a sacrifice for the happiness of her true love. she loves heathcliff so deeply that she would like to do everything for him, including sacrificing her own happy life. so after the decision is made to marry the wrong person, her soul is struggling to moan “i know clearly i was wrong, if in heaven i will be painful desperately, my marrying edgar linton is like in paradise in that kind of ill-match.”(bronte 418). if she marries heathcliff, heathcliff will always be under the oppression and torture from her brother hindly and can never get real liberty. it will be the biggest pain in heathcliffs life, as she knows deeply in her heart that he is an ambitious man. to catherine, the meaning of the whole world is her love to heathcliff, and to prove her deep love, help heathcliff to raise his head again and avoid the insult from her brother, she married linton in pain, with her mind breaking the spirit of soul.2. the attitude of heathcliff heathcliff adopts the attitude towards love, which is moving and pitiful, that is, devotion. he deeply loves catherine, and when he knows the incentive for catherines marriage with linton, he shows his devotion to love.heathcliff is an abandoned child who has seldom got warmth and help from the world except catherine. he does not understand what catherine has done for him, and he is away from home until he gets the message that catherine will be married. heathcliffs love to catherine is both deep and crazy. he thinks that lintons 8-year love to catherine cannot be compared with the devotion that he makes to catherine and the childhood they have spent together. when he hears the news that cathy dies, the world for him turns hell. he moans and roars, hits his head on the trunk full of blood, almost crying out of himself until out of sense. he suffers from the pain so much that he cannot hold his breath not to do things. on the snowy night when cathys body is buried, in order to glance at his lovers face for the last time, he digs the grave. the heart to cathy with passion and impulsion makes him shake the coffin firmly, creaky. the love between heathcliff and catherine makes him feel illusion in anguish and eagerness, so he endlessly torments himself, no eating and drinking and finally dies. after catherine dies, her ghost has been in the desert and unwilling to leave, waiting for heathcliff. the hero and heroines love is full and their souls are born together. their love and longing for each other is strong and thrilling with great artistic appeal. b. factors contributing to the differences in attitude towards lovethe fate of the major characters in wuthering heights is tragic and pitiful. many factors contribute to the differences in attitude towards love, which contain external factors and internal factors.1. external factorsone of the main factors leading to the differences in attitude toward love is from the external perspective. the background functions greatly in this aspect. the story happened in the early 19 century, when uk was a classic patriarchy society. at that time people lived with a strong sense of social status, and were divided into several levels. the working people were not only exploited and oppressed by the upper-class of society, but also ruled by the emerging middle-class nobles. meanwhile, women and proletariats had a low status, whose personal rights had been deprived of.“at law women were equal to male criminals, madman and minors, in whichever class they were”. (bronte 27) the middle class were in worse condition, because their wives and daughters were not regarded as the symbol of or status, they had to cling to manfather, husband, brother or son for life and became others dolls. as far as they were concerned, marriage was the best they turned to, on which their all success or failure depended. but “women were equivalent of jetton that was used for consolidating their rank of families and promoting their families wealth. it was the ones wealth and status that decided the success or failure of ones marriage, which should be well-matched rather than allowed by families.” (bronte 449)if the marriage was against by families, it was more likely to be failure. to elope with his or her lover was the last choice for youth who loved each other so much and would not abandon each other forever. while elopement means losing everything. they not only had to break with their own families and give up the right of inheriting the rank of families and wealth, but also they had to bear heavy social pressure.in victorian times, elopement and adultery were regarded as a shame, which would be spat on by society. as a result, they would live an unhappy life, struggling to themselves against the rude and wild life. family owned so many rights on marriage that many hated it but had no idea to solve it. at that time, though marriage was not arranged or force, it was still far from being free, which is well illustrated by the love between catherine and heathcliff in the novel. 2. internal factorsthe internal factors also play a significance role in the differences in attitude towards love in the novel, which undoubtedly involve both heathcliff and catherine. heathcliffs inner world changed with the unfair life, misery experience and loss of her beloved catherine. heathcliffs identity of being an adopted son and gypsies made him suffer lots of attack from his living environment during his growth. after the death of old earnshaw, he lost shelter forever. the eldest son of earnshaw hindly treated him cruelly with deep hatred. in the meantime, catherine loved him heartily and extremely. all these factors gave birth to his extremely strong self-protecting and revenging consciousness. to take it good, he has a clear cut stand on what to love and what to hate; to take it bad, he has a split personality. then no wonder that when hindlys wife died of dystopia, catherine was resentful to his smile, and heathcliff replied that everything that made hindly feel sorrowful makes him happy. indeed, this is terrible, and it is an important factor in bringing about the tragedy. however, it is more noticeable that what really leads to so many evil thoughts in people is the inequality in the prevailing circumstances, as well as peoples hypocrisy and cruelty. but heathcliff is not to be hated but to be sympathized. he is a typical man of personals in which self emotion and freedom can break through everything. to him, whatever things betray or depress him is worth cursing and hating. as a result, it is destined that heathcliff and catherine must suffer from their fruitless love enduringly.in addition, catherine also adopts her own attitude towards love, which leads to the tragedy of both her and heathcliff. in the heart of catherine, although she used to betray heathcliff because of the old conception, heathcliff took a quite important position. her love towards her husband and heathcliff was different in nature. on that rainy night when heathcliff left home, catherine exposed her in the rain doggedly and cried so hard. her monologue tells us who her true love was: in this world, my biggest sorrow is heathcliffs grief, and from the beginning, i have realized and felt it. in my life, he is the center of my thoughts. if all other things were destroyed, but he still stays, i can continue to live; if all other things to stay but him, the world for me will become a very strange place. (bronte 197) i am not a part of it. my love towards edgar is like the leaves in woods: “i completely know, the coming of winter changes trees while time changes leaves. but to heathcliff, my love is as the constant rock, although it seems that it cannot give you much pleasant, but those a bit is necessity. nelly, i am heathcliff, he lives in my heart forever and forever.”. (bronte 200). she missed heathcliff every second, she said: “he will never know how much i love him: we know and feel the love from the very beginning because he knows me better than myself. whatever our souls are made from, his and mine are the same.” (bronte 348). iii. conclusionthe charm of the novel comes from its deep beauty of tragedy, from the pursuit of human power in spiritual world, from the unique natural wilderness, from the free, restless vigor that is undisciplined like the wind on the wild places in yorkshire. in the novel, catherines love is not presented in combination of life emotionally, but through the body and the soul struggl