The Green Eyed Monster

Taking a break from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I shall be exploring literature in which authors manipulate emotions in order to delve into the complications of the human heart. I shall be honing in on the emotion of jealousy. Jealousy is a want for what you do not possess, but which you can obtain through stealing it from someone else. In Shakespeare's Othello, most of Iago's actions are out of jealousy. He is jealous of Othello for his rank and wife, so he plots to take those away from Othello. In Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Gatsby had everything in the world except for Daisy. The one thing he couldn't buy with money belonged to Tom, so Gatsby vowed to "repeat the past" and attempt to win her back from Tom. In The Lord of the Flies, Jack and Ralph were constantly jealous of the power that the other had accumulated. This jealousy put them at odds with each other, and burnt down the island figuratively and literally. Such amazing work for one little emotion.