Comparative Essay between Jay Gatsby and Macbeth

"Ambition" is a difficult trait to pin down because it is so human: On the one hand, we want to reward ambition, yet on the other hand, we want to warn against it. Literature, especially, has taken the latter interesting approach to examining ambition; however, the term itself was originally relatively neutral, coming from the Latin ambito or ambitus, meaning "going around, circuit, edge, border." Initially, this referred to a "going around" in the early Roman republic as a means of collecting votes or of canvassing for various political positions. Over time, however, the word ambition would take on other connotations, such as when the Roman poet Lucretius stated, "Angustum per iter luctantes ambitionis," referring to ambitious men who were "struggling to press through the narrow way of ambition," usually in a desire for honor, popularity, and power. It is perhaps because of these very human qualities—to desire love, honor, knowledge, and power—that the theme of ambition has been so prevalent in literature. Whether in Greek mythology or a 20th-century novel such as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, literature often highlights the consequences of ambition gone awry.

The dangers of ambition have been a popular theme not only in literature, but also through religious and mythological texts. In the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, for example, ambition is given much attention. The earliest consequence of ambition occurred when Adam and Eve decided to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge, so that their "eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:5), even though God had warned them that they would die if they ate of the tree. The result of such ambition? Adam and Eve were granted knowledge, but they were banished from the Garden of Eden. Later in Genesis, ambition is once again punished when the Tower of Babel is constructed, so that the people may "build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth" (11:4). The result of the Babylonians' ambition was exactly what they had built the tower to defend against: God causes them to speak in different languages and to be scattered across the land, resulting in confusion.

No examination of ambition would be complete without considering potentially the ...