Assignment 1:  Critical Response-  Quote Identification Ch. 1

In no more than 600 words (roughly one typed, MLA-formatted page) of writing for each, respond to each of the following quotes.  Focus on what they reveal of character and how they support a statement of theme for the novel (significance is more important than length.  Concentrate on the important aspects of each quote):

1.  "I am still afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth." (Ch. 1, p. 6)

2.  "The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon.  They were both in white and their dresses where rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house.  I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.  Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor." (Ch. 1, p. 12)

Assignment 2:  Critical Response (Due 10/6/08)  Critical Response: In about 1-1/2 pages per question, answer both of the following:

1.  Discuss Fitzgerald’s use of Greek god imagery at various points throughout the portion of the novel you have read thus far.  Specifically, how does Fitzgerald further one or more of the novel’s themes using this imagery?

 2.  Gatsby spent his adolescence learning about a tawdry way of life on Dan Cody’s yacht (Ch. 6).  How might it be said that the adolescent Gatsby is in some ways more worldly than the adult Gatsby?  Be sure to cite examples to support your answer.

Modernism and the Modern Novel

The term modernism refers to the radical shift in aesthetic and cultural sensibilities evident in the art and literature of the post-World War One period. The ordered, stable and inherently meaningful world view of the nineteenth century could not, wrote T.S. Eliot, accord with "the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history." Modernism thus marks a distinctive break with Victorian bourgeois morality; rejecting nineteenth-century optimism, they presented a profoundly pessimistic picture of a culture in disarray. This despair often results in an apparent apathy and moral relativism.

Modernist writers, in their attempt to throw off the aesthetic burden of the realist novel, these writers introduced a variety of literary tactics and devices:

Modernism is often derided for abandoning the social world in favour of its narcissistic interest in language and its processes. Recognizing the failure of language to ever fully communicate meaning ("That's not it at all, that's not what I meant at all" laments Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock), the modernists generally downplayed content in favour of an investigation of form. The fragmented, non-chronological, poetic forms utilized by Eliot and Pound revolutionized poetic language.

An Outline of American Literature

by Kathryn VanSpanckeren

Modernism and Experimentation: 1914-1945: Modernism

The large cultural wave of Modernism, which gradually emerged in Europe and the United States in the early years of the 20th century, expressed a sense of modern life through art as a sharp break from the past, as well as from Western civilization's classical traditions. Modern life seemed radically different from traditional life -- more scientific, faster, more technological, and more mechanized. Modernism embraced these changes.

In literature, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) developed an analogue to modern art. A resident of Paris and an art collector (she and her brother Leo purchased works of the artists Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, and many others), Stein once explained that she and Picasso were doing the same thing, he in art and she in writing. Using simple, concrete words as counters, she developed an abstract, experimental prose poetry. The childlike quality of Stein's simple vocabulary recalls the bright, primary colors of modern art, while her repetitions echo the repeated shapes of abstract visual compositions. By dislocating grammar and punctuation, she achieved new "abstract" meanings as in her influential collection Tender Buttons (1914), which views objects from different angles, as in a cubist painting:

A Table A Table means does it not my
dear it means a whole steadiness.
Is it likely that a change. A table
means more than a glass even a
looking glass is tall.

Meaning, in Stein's work, subject was often subordinated to technique, just as subject was less important than shape in abstract visual art. Subject and technique became inseparable in both the visual and literary art of the period. The idea of form as the equivalent of content, a cornerstone of post-World War II art and literature, crystallized in this period.

Technological innovation in the world of factories and machines inspired new attentiveness to technique in the arts. To take one example: Light, particularly electrical light, fascinated modern artists and writers. Posters and advertisements of the period are full of images of floodlit skyscrapers and light rays shooting out from automobile headlights, movie houses, and watchtowers to illumine a forbidding outer darkness suggesting ignorance and old-fashioned tradition.

Photography began to assume the status of a fine art allied with the latest scientific developments. The photographer Alfred Stieglitz opened a salon in New York City, and by 1908 he was showing the latest European works, including pieces by Picasso and other European friends of Gertrude Stein. Stieglitz's salon influenced numerous writers and artists, including William Carlos Williams, who was one of the most influential American poets of the 20th century. Williams cultivated a photographic clarity of image; his aesthetic dictum was "no ideas but in things."

Vision and viewpoint became an essential aspect of the modernist novel as well. No longer was it sufficient to write a straightforward third-person narrative or (worse yet) use a pointlessly intrusive narrator. The way the story was told became as important as the story itself.

Henry James, William Faulkner, and many other American writers experimented with fictional points of view (some are still doing so). James often restricted the information in the novel to what a single character would have known. Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury (1929) breaks up the narrative into four sections, each giving the viewpoint of a different character (including a mentally retarded boy).

To analyze such modernist novels and poetry, a school of "new criticism" arose in the United States, with a new critical vocabulary. New critics hunted the "epiphany" (moment in which a character suddenly sees the transcendent truth of a situation, a term derived from a holy saint's appearance to mortals); they "examined" and "clarified" a work, hoping to "shed light" upon it through their "insights."

 Features of Modernism

 according to Marjorie Perloff, “Modernist Studies,” in Redrawing the Boundaries, ed. by Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn.  New York: MLA, 1992, p. 158

 1.  The replacement of representation of the external world by the imaginative construction of the poet’s inner world via the mysterious symbol.

 2.  The superiority of art to nature.

 3.  The concept of the artist as hero.

 4.  The autonomy of art and its divorce from truth or morality.

 5.  The depersonalization and “objectivity” of art.

 6.  Alogical structure

 7.  The concrete as opposed to the abstract, the particular as opposed to the general, the perceptual as opposed to the conceptual.

 8.  Verbal ambiguity and complexity; “good writing” as inherently arcane.

 9.  The fluidity of consciousness (or stream of consciousness)

 10.  Increasing importance attached to Freudian unconscious and to the dream work.

 11.  The use of myth as organizing structure.

 12.  The emphasis on the divided self, on mask vs. inner self.

 13.  The malaise of the individual in the “lonely crowd,” the alienated self in the urban world, the “Unreal city” of the Waste Land or Ulysses.

 14.  The internalization of modernism:  free flow of ideas all over the world.

Essay: Modernism in The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby, the first truly Modernist novel to find success in the United States, set the tone for the movement that defined American literature well into the present day. In Modernism, Fitzgerald found a way to define his world that would have been impossible in the Nineteenth-century Victorian style that still dominated American writing. In his style, portrayal of American morality and treatment of his characters, Fitzgerald left the Victorian era behind, creating a Modernist masterwork that still serves as a model for American fiction.

The gritty realism of William James and his contemporaries, and even the light-hearted tone of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, was too limited to allow Fitzgerald to portray the Jazz Age, a period in which dark fantasy reigned. Modernism offered a broader palette, a self-consciously surreal landscape in which life is viewed more metaphorically than meticulously detailed. Only through this lens could a central theme of the novel emerge:

Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, just out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. (9)

The eggs are more a product of Nick’s imagination than a realistic geographical description; by mixing in metaphor, Fitzgerald not only described the setting of his novel, but alludes to the area as a breeding ground for the events to come without revealing what will “hatch.”

The darker side of New York, which Victorian writers would render as dirty and ugly as Dickensian London, becomes softer and more vague in Fitzgerald’s description:

[A] fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. (27)

The image, although of the underbelly of society, is still oddly beautiful. Fitzgerald creates a fantasy world in which anything is possible, an approach later used by writers ranging from Hemingway and Joseph Conrad to John Barth and Raymond Carver. By removing his narrative from pure reality, Fitzgerald is able to take a more impressionistic approach to New York, effectively making the Eggs and the Valley of Ashes characters in their own right.

In such an unreal setting, the old rules no longer apply; some can be bent, others broken. The Nineteenth century’s insistence on accountability and adherence to moral guidelines in its fiction had begun eroding before Gatsby was written – Fitzgerald completed the process with his portrayal of a world that is less immoral than amoral – less rebelling against moral codes than having no concept of them.

Change was, after all, in the air. Jay Gatsby dies, not as a result of his criminal activities, but from being the wrong place at the wrong time. Myrtle Wilson dies, not from a jealous wife’s rage over her adultery, but from that wife’s drunken incompetence. Tom and Daisy, responsibly for both deaths, simply leave the Eggs – Nick’s later meeting with Tom suggests they have no remorse. Jordan drifts away, never revealed as a cheater on the pro tour. Only Nick seems to have retained a conscience from their shared Midwestern heritage, but it is tempered by his exposure to Gatsby’s world:

One night I did hear a material car [at Gatsby’s house] and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I didn’t investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been away at the ends of the earth and didn’t know that the party was over. (188)

Nick will carry what he has seen at the parties, culminating in the fateful “party” at the Plaza Hotel, with him forever.

Gatsby’s parties themselves set the stage for the amoral activities to follow. Again, the definition is important – nothing immoral seems to go on at the parties in detail. What Fitzgerald gives us is a glamorous sheen of decadence. Note the lack of specific detail in Nick’s account of the aftermath of one party:

Most of the remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands…One of the men was talking with curious intensity to a young actress,    

and his wife after attempting  to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent way broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks – at intervals she

appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond and hissed “You promised!” into his ear. (56) 

All we see of the husband is his “curious intensity,” with no description of what physical form that intensity might take; all we see of the wife is her “angry diamond” attack style, another metaphor for wealth, but no obvious description of drunkenness or any other condition that might have escalated her anger. We see nothing of the actress’s response to any of this. Is she flattered? Sexually interested? Plotting a way to take advantage of any money the man might have? Fitzgerald doesn’t tell us. The scene is portrayed as if it is a normal course of events for the sad, insecure, amoral crowd that parties at Jay Gatsby’s house.

Of course, the party guests are merely sketches compared to the full-blown main characters of the novel – or would “caricatures” be a more appropriate term? Using characters as symbols of human behavior is as old as literature itself, but Nineteenth-century American writers tended toward more individual character studies and deeper character development. “Minimalizing” a step further than Mark Twain, Fitzgerald brings a European allegorical feel to his Gatsby characters, prompting later Modernists from William Faulkner to Philip Roth to do the same.

Fitzgerald’s cross-fertilization of traditionally American and traditionally English elements, specifically in characterization, allows him to distill his characters to their core qualities – Nick the innocent, Gatsby the ambitious, Daisy the beautiful fool, Tom the ruthless capitalist, Jordan the unscrupulous socialite – and to make locations like the Eggs, the Valley of Ashes, even the Eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg into characters in their own right.

Those who criticize Wolfsheim and Gatsby’s father as under-developed characters miss the point; both are merely aspects of Gatsby he leaves behind when he dies. Neither criminal ambition (Wolfsheim) nor pure love (Mr. Gatsby) can die; as a combination of these qualities, all this is lost of Gatsby is the body in which Fitzgerald placed him. This is fitting, considering that Fitzgerald uses his characters to criticize elements of his society that are also deathless. 

Open social criticism is another Modernist hallmark Fitzgerald exploits to its fullest in his characters. In the Nineteenth century, essayist and poet Henry David Thoreau advocated Civil Disobedience from jail; Fitzgerald’s response is a near-parody of 1920s American urban life. His world is close enough to the real world to be recognizable, yet it is blurred enough to serve his purposes. All of Gatsby’s characters, human and nonhuman, participate in Modernism’s open examination of such American institutions as industry, power and class and their by-products. Gatsby’s open critique, already in use by poets of the time, is the most blatant yet, beginning an almost century-long tradition of social commentary in American literature.

The Great Gatsby set the tone for literature to come in its blending of various post-nineteenth century ideas into what would become known as Modernism and its offshoot, Postmodernism. Fitzgerald, influenced by the social and artistic changes going on all around him, developed a vision that has persisted into fiction of the twenty-first century; his concerns are our concerns, and American life has changed little from Modern to Postmodern. Only the terms have changed. In defining what fiction could become, Gatsby is as important today as in 1926 as an example of what Modernist literature can, and still does, accomplish.

Introduction to The Great Gatsby

In 1925, The Great Gatsby was published and hailed as an artistic and material success for its young author, F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is considered a vastly more mature and artistically masterful treatment of Fitzgerald's themes than his earlier fiction. These works examine the results of the Jazz Age generation's adherence to false material values. In nine chapters, Fitzgerald presents the rise and fall of Jay Gatsby, as related in a first-person narrative by Nick Carraway. Carraway reveals the story of a farmer's son-turned racketeer, named Jay Gatz. His ill-gotten wealth is acquired solely to gain acceptance into the sophisticated, moneyed world of the woman he loves, Daisy Fay Buchanan. His romantic illusions about the power of money to buy respectability and the love of Daisy—the "golden girl" of his dreams—are skillfully and ironically interwoven with episodes that depict what Fitzgerald viewed as the callousness and moral irresponsibility of the affluent American society of the 1920s. America at this time experienced a cultural and lifestyle revolution. In the economic arena, the stock market boomed, the rich spent money on fabulous parties and expensive acquisitions, the automobile became a symbol of glamour and wealth, and profits were made, both legally and illegally. The whirlwind pace of this post-World War I era is captured in Fitzgerald's Gatsby, whose tragic quest and violent death foretell the collapse of that era and the onset of disillusionment with the American dream. By the end of the novel, the reader slowly realizes that Carraway is transformed as he recognizes Gatsby's moral superiority to the Buchanans. In fact, the triumph of Gatsby's legacy is reached by Nick Carraway's ruminations at the end of the book about Gatsby's valiant, however futile, attempts to regain his past love. The discrepancy between Gatsby's dream vision and reality is a prominent theme in this book. Other motifs in the book include Gatsby's quest for the American Dream; class conflict (the Wilsons vs. the Buchanans and the underworld lowbrows vs. Gatsby); the cultural rift between East and West; and the contrast between innocence and experience in the narrator's life. A rich aesthetic experience with many subtleties in tone and content, this novel can be read over and over again for new revelations and continued pleasure.

The Life and Work of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, now regarded as the spokesman for the “Lost Generation” of the 1920s, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. His childhood and youth seem, in retrospect, as poetic as the works he later wrote. The life he lived became “the stuff of fiction,” the characters and the plots a rather thinly-disguised autobiography. Like Jay Gatsby, the title character of his most famous novel, Fitzgerald created a vision which he wanted to become, a “Platonic conception of himself,” and “to this conception he was faithful to the end.”

Fitzgerald was educated at parochial prep schools where he received strict Roman Catholic training. The religious instruction never left him. Ironically, he was denied burial in a Catholic cemetery because of his rather uproarious lifestyle which ended in depression and alcoholism. In the fall of 1909, during his second year at St. Paul Academy, Fitzgerald began publishing in the school magazine. Sent East for a disciplined education, he entered The Newman School, whose student body came from wealthy Catholic families all over the country. At The Newman School he developed a friendship and intense rapport with Father Sigourney Webster Fay, a trustee and later headmaster of the school and the prototype for a character in This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald’s first novel, published in 1920.

Upon his grandmother’s death, Fitzgerald and the family received a rather handsome inheritance, yet Scott seemed always to be cast into a society where others enjoyed more affluence than he. However, like Gatsby, a self-made man, Fitzgerald became the embodiment of the American Dream—an American Don Quixote.

Thanks to another relative’s money, Fitzgerald was able to enroll in Princeton in 1913. He never graduated from the Ivy League school; in fact, he failed several courses during his undergraduate years. However, he wrote revues for the Triangle Club, Princeton’s musical comedy group, and “donned swishy, satiny dresses to romp onstage” alongside attractive chorus girls. Years later, after enjoying some literary fame, he was asked to speak at Princeton, an occasion which endeared the school to him in new ways. Today, Princeton houses his memoirs, including letters from Ernest Hemingway, motion picture scripts, scrapbooks, and other mementos.

He withdrew from Princeton and entered the war in 1917, commissioned a second lieutenant in the army. While in Officers Candidate School in Alabama, he met and fell in love with Zelda Sayre, a relationship which is replicated in Jay Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy and her fascination with a military man. He never made it to the European front, but he did come to the attention of New York publishers by the end of the war. Despite Zelda’s breaking their engagement, they became re-engaged that fall. Their marriage produced one daughter—Scottie, who died in 1986. In 1919 his earnings totaled $879; the following year, following the publication of This Side of Paradise, an instant success, his earnings increased to $18,000.

By 1924 it was clear that Fitzgerald needed a change. He, Zelda, and Scottie moved to Europe, near the French Riviera, where he first met Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Edith Wharton. Before long, Zelda met and had an affair with Edouard Josanne, a relationship which Fitzgerald at first ignored but ultimately forced to a showdown. His writing may have profited because of her affair—according to biographer Andrew Turnbull, Fitzgerald’s jealousy “sharpened the edge of Gatsby’s and gave weight to Tom Buchanan’s bullish determination to regain his wife.”

To increase earnings he wrote some 160 short stories for magazines, works which, by his own admission, lacked luster. After Zelda’s alcoholism had several times forced her commitment to an institution, Scott went to Hollywood to write screenplays, and struggled unsuccessfully to complete a final novel, The Last Tycoon. He died in December of 1940 after a lifelong battle with alcohol and a series of heart attacks.

As early as 1920, Fitzgerald had in mind a tragic novel. He wrote to the president of Princeton that his novel would “say something fundamental about America, that fairy tale among nations.” He saw our history as a great pageant and romance, the history of all aspiration—not just the American dream but the human dream—and, he wrote, “If I am at the end of it that too is a place in the line of the pioneers.” Perhaps because of that vision, he has been called America’s greatest modern romantic writer, a purveyor of timeless fiction with a gift of evocation that has yet to be surpassed. His works reflect the spirit of his times, yet they are timeless.

One cannot fail to notice how much of himself Fitzgerald put into all his work; he spoke of writing as a “sheer paring away of oneself.” A melange of characters replicate or at least suggest people in his acquaintance. Gatsby seems almost to be an existential extension of Fitzgerald’s posture, a persona created perhaps as a premonition of his own tragic end.

The almost poetic craftsmanship of Fitzgerald’s prose, combined with his insight into the American experience, presented an imperishable portrait of his age, securing for him a permanent and enviable place in literary history.

Historical Background

The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, pictures the wasted American Dream as it depicts the 1920s in America. It speaks to every generation of readers, its contemporaneity depending in part on its picturesque presentation of that decade Fitzgerald himself labeled the “Jazz Age” and in part on its commentary concerning the human experience. The externals change—the attire, the songs, the fads—but its value and nostalgic tone transcend these externals. The novel provides the reader with a wider, panoramic vision of the American Dream, with a challenge to introspection if the reader reads sensitively and engages with the text.

The novel paints a vivid picture of America after World War I. From the postwar panic and realism evolved a shaking of social morés, a loss of innocence, a culture shock. Values of the old generation were rejected, with fashions including skirts above the knee and bobbed hair; a Bohemian lifestyle appeared with little moral or religious restraint; and innovative dances and musical forms that were considered by some to be obscene became the rage. It was a time of high living and opulence.

At the same time, the popular carpe diem (“seize the day”) lifestyle and frivolity reflected an extreme feeling of alienation and nonidentity. A sense of melancholy and nostalgia existed, a discontent characterized by longing for conditions as they used to be. Americans were disenchanted. The war had promised so much; the results were disillusioning.

In addition, the availability of the automobile contributed to a carefree moral stance. No longer did young people have to court in the parlor, under parents’ watchful eyes, for the car provided an escape from supervision. Historian Frederick Lewis Allen, in a study of “why the younger generation runs wild,” refers to the automobile as a “house of prostitution on wheels.” Prohibition, created by the Eighteenth Amendment, was violated widely, the results being the bootleggers, speakeasies, and underworld activities now commonly associated with the 1920s. These elements typify the decade Fitzgerald pictured in his novels.

As a result of this distance between expectations and reality, a chasm illustrated in the novel’s scenario, a social satire develops. The etymology of satire, originally meaning “a dish of mixed fruit” or “potpourri,” figures into the story as Fitzgerald fills the tapestry with every conceivable type in society. None of them seems happy. Acquiring a fortune by illicit means, Fitzgerald implies, will produce little happiness. A strong case can, therefore, be made that The Great Gatsby is social satire. The zeitgeist, the temper of the times, becomes extremely important: the milieu in which Fitzgerald lived and wrote shapes the content and the message of the book.

Fitzgerald’s picture parallels that of The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot, a poet whose beliefs and poetry influenced Fitzgerald as he wrote The Great Gatsby. As a purveyor of the belief that we have wasted our dream, that we have turned our green continent into a veritable waste land, Fitzgerald was, perhaps, a prophet, a seer.

In one way, this novel is a Horatio Alger story with the conventional rags-to-riches motif; and, as such, it presents the unspoiled, untainted original American Dream. Jay Gatsby rises like Icarus above his rather shiftless parents to the riches of Midas, first witnessing a flamboyant lifestyle as cabin boy on the yacht of Dan Cody, a setting replete with alcohol, women, and ubiquitous parties. Such is the presentation of the American Dream. Ironically, the only ways to achieve such dreams are sordid and degraded.

The conclusion of his experience convinces Nick that we have made a mess of the “green breast of the New World,” the world that the Dutch settlers saw when they came to this continent. A tawdry dream of self-love, greed, and corruption replaced the wholesomeness of the original dream founded on virtues and moral standards. A reliable picture of America in the 1920s, and at once a glamourized presentation of such meretricious living, The Great Gatsby has become a touchstone by which we measure quality of life in present-day America.

Although he was an artist, not a historian, he produced one of the most timeless and reliable pictures of this time in America’s past, a veritable historical document. This “lost generation,” to use Gertrude Stein’s famous phrase, found a spokesman in Fitzgerald.

Master List of Characters

Nick Carraway—the narrator. Thirty years old, he is a moralist who becomes a foil to every other character. He lives next door to Jay Gatsby and, thus, becomes Gatsby’s link to Daisy, his cousin.

Jay Gatsby—the title character. A romantic idealist, he devotes his life to amassing wealth which he believes will win Daisy and thus fulfill his dream.

Daisy Buchanan—Nick’s cousin, Tom’s wife, and Gatsby’s dream girl. Incapable of love, she represents the idolized upper class.

Tom Buchanan—Daisy’s husband. Incapable of feeling guilt or any other emotion, he represents brutality, the moral carelessness of the rich, pseudo-intellectualism, and racism.

Jordan Baker—a friend of Daisy’s from Louisville. A young and compulsively dishonest professional golfer, she is ironically involved with Nick, whose identifying characteristic is honesty. She, too, has no emotions and represents the coldness and cruelty of the rich.

George Wilson—proprietor of a garage in the Valley of Ashes. He represents the fate of the common working man, an “every man” who believes a strong work ethic will eventually capture for him the American Dream.

Myrtle Wilson—George’s wife. Her vitality attracts Tom. She wants to escape her lower class status, yet has no sense of values.

Owl-Eyes—a middle-aged “fair-weather” friend of Gatsby’s.

Pammy Buchanan—daughter of Tom and Daisy. She appears as a possession to be displayed. Always dressed in white like her mother, she represents the shallowness of her parents.

Henry C. Gatz—Gatsby’s father. He is proud of his son’s prosperity.

Meyer Wolfsheim—a representative of the underworld. He has used Gatsby as a front man and is proud of his connections. Gatsby tells Nick that Wolfsheim is the man who fixed the 1919 World Series.

Catherine—Myrtle’s sister. She is always available to have a good time.

Mr. and Mrs. McKee—tenants in a New York City hotel; they attend a party with the main characters.

Ewing Klipspringer—a “boarder” at Gatsby’s house.

Michaelis—owner of a coffee shop near George Wilson’s garage, who befriends George.

Mr. Sloane—a neighbor of Gatsby’s who stops by while horseback riding.

Structure of the Novel

In the tradition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, this novel is structured as a frame tale. From as early as the Middle Ages, writers of English have employed the device of framing a story with another story. The experience in The Great Gatsby is actually Nick Carraway’s, not Jay Gatsby’s. He relates Gatsby’s story. Because Nick is a moral exemplar from start to finish, the reader sees him as a reliable narrator; we can believe his account of Gatsby.

By the second page of the novel, the story becomes an account of Gatsby’s story as told in flashbacks through Nick’s point of view. This flashback structure can make it difficult to place the events of the novel in their proper time sequence. For an explanation of the proper sequence of events, see the Appendix at the end of this book.

The dominant effect of this literary convention is veracity: the reader can believe that what Nick says is truth. The end of the story appears in the beginning, for immediately the reader becomes aware that Nick is disenchanted with the immorality of the East and wants to return to the West. After his “privileged glimpse into the heart,” a journey he does not wish to repeat, the story turns to Nick’s perceptions of Gatsby and of Long Island. Gatsby’s dream almost replicates that of the “Dutch sailors,” who, in their discovery of the New World, found a latter-day Camelot. Such a similarity justifies Nick’s belief that Gatsby’s dream made him “worth more than the whole damn bunch put together.” He had “an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness,” that almost justified his illegal doings in the eyes of Nick.

Built upon the conventional rags-to-riches motif, this novel fits the mold of a Horatio Alger story. Typically, the poor boy risks himself to save the “damsel in distress” in a wagon pulled at breakneck speed by a runaway horse. As a result of saving the young lady, he works for her father, usually a man of means, and ultimately inherits her father’s business and marries her. In a sense he raises himself by his “own bootstraps.” Such is the ideal American Dream—an innocent, pure form of Thomas Jefferson’s “pursuit of happiness.” In Fitzgerald’s parallel, “the poor boy,” Gatsby, naïvely determines to amass wealth in whatever ways necessary, the implication being that nothing can preclude or obstruct his winning the damsel’s hand. Like the archetypal Cinderella story, the most deserving must always win Prince Charming and become heir to a massive fortune. Tragically, Gatsby had learned well from American society that dishonesty and illicit means of procuring a fortune will win what pure love and resolve cannot.

Historical Context

The Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties

The Jazz Age began soon after World War I and ended with the 1929 stock market crash. Victorious, America experienced an economic boom and expansion. Politically, the country made major advances in the area of women's independence. During the war, women had enjoyed economic independence by taking over jobs for the men who fought overseas. After the war, they pursued financial independence and a freer lifestyle. This was the time of the "flappers," young women who dressed up in jewelry and feather boas, wore bobbed hairdos, and danced the Charleston. Zelda Fitzgerald and her cronies, including Sara Murphy, exemplified the ultimate flapper look. In The Great Gatsby, Jordan Baker is an athletic, independent woman, who maintains a hardened, amoral view of life. Her character represents the new breed of woman in America with a sense of power during this time.

As a reaction against the fads and liberalism that emerged in the big cities after the war, the U.S. Government and conservative elements in the country advocated and imposed legislation restricting the manufacture and distribution of liquor. Its organizers, the Women's Christian Temperance Movement, National Prohibition Party, and others, viewed alcohol as a dangerous drug that disrupted lives and families. They felt it the duty of the government to relieve the temptation of alcohol by banning it altogether. In January, 1919, the U.S Congress ratified the 18th Amendment to the Constitution that outlawed the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors" on a national level. Nine months later, the Volstead Act passed, proving the enforcement means for such measures. Prohibition, however, had little effect on the hedonism of the liquor-loving public, and speakeasies, a type of illegal bar, cropped up everywhere. One Fitzgerald critic, Andre Le Vot, wrote: "The bootlegger entered American folklore with as much public complicity as the outlaws of the Old West had enjoyed."

New York City and the Urban Corruption

Prohibition fostered a large underworld industry in many big cities, including Chicago and New York. For years, New York was under the control of the Irish politicians of Tammany Hall, which assured that corruption persisted Bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling thrived, while police took money from shady operators engaged in these activities and overlooked the illegalities. A key player in the era of Tammany Hall was Arnold Rothstein (Meyer Wolfsheim in the novel). Through his campaign contributions to the politicians, he was entitled to a monopoly of prostitution and gambling in New York until he was murdered in 1928.

A close friend of Rothstein, Herman "Rosy" Rosenthal, is alluded to in Fitzgerald's book when Gatsby and Nick meet for lunch. Wolfsheim says that 'The old Metropole.... I can't forget so long as I live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there." This mobster also made campaign contributions, or paid off, his political boss. When the head of police, Charles Becker, tried to receive some of Rosenthal's payouts, Rosenthal complained to a reporter. This act exposed the entire corruption of Tammany Hall and the New York police force. Two days later, Becker's men murdered Rosenthal on the steps of the Metropole. Becker and four of his men went to the electric chair for their part in the crime.

The Black Sox Fix of 1919

The 1919 World Series was the focus of a scandal that sent shock waves around the sports world. The Chicago White Sox were heavily favored to win the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. Due to low game attendance during World War I, players' salaries were cut back In defiance, the White Sox threatened to strike against their owner, Charles Comiskey, who had refused to pay them a higher salary. The team's first baseman, Arnold "Chick" Gandil, approached a bookmaker and gambler, Joseph Sullivan, with an offer to intentionally lose the series. Eight players, including left fielder Shoeless Joe Jackson, participated m the scam. With the help of Arnold Rothstein, Sullivan raised the money to pay the players, and began placing bets that the White Sox would lose. The Sox proceeded to suffer one of the greatest sports upsets in history, and lost three games to five. When the scandal was exposed, due to a number of civil cases involving financial losses on the part of those who betted for the Sox, the eight players were banned from baseball for life and branded the "Black Sox." In the novel, Gatsby tells Nick that Wolfsheim was "the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919 " Shocked, Nick thinks to himself, "It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people¡ª¡ö with the single-mmdedness of a burglar blowing a safe." Gatsby himself is tied to possibly shady dealings throughout the course of the book. He takes mysterious phone calls and steps aside for private, undisclosed conversations. It was said that "one time he killed a man who found out that he was nephew to von Hindenburg and second cousin to the devil."

Critical Overview

Just before The Great Gatsby was to appear— with a publication date of April 10, 1925—the Fitzgeralds were in the south of France. Fitzgerald was waiting for news from Max Perkins, his publisher, and cabled him to request "Any News." The 29-year-old author had won critical acclaim for his first novel, This Side of Paradise but had faltered with the less-than-perfect The Beautiful and the Damned. He was earnest aboul being considered one of the top American writers of his time, and needed the boost that his third novel might give him to achieve that status.

During his lifetime, Fitzgerald was generally praised for The Great Gatsby; it is usually considered to be his finest accomplishment and the one most analyzed by literary critics. The established opinion, according to biographer Arthur Mizener in The Far Side of Paradise, is best represented by renowned critic Lionel Trilling: "Except once, Fitzgerald did not fully realize his powers.... But [his] quality was a great one and on one occasion, in The Great Gatsby, it was as finely crystallized in art as it deserved to be." Saturday Review critic William Rose Benet said that the book "revealed matured craftsmanship." Even harsh critics like Ernest Hemingway and H. L. Mencken praised the writer, as quoted by Mizener. Said the notoriously abrasive Mencken in a letter to the author: "I think it is incomparably the best piece of work you have done." Nevertheless, he qualified this compliment with a complaint that the basic story was "somewhat trivial, that it reduces itself, in the end, to a sort of anecdote." Ring Lardner liked it "enormously" but his praise was too thin, for Fitzgerald's tastes: "The plot held my interest ... and I found no tedious moments. Altogether I think it's the best thing you've done since Paradise." Some of the initial reviews in newspapers called the book unsubstantial, since Fitzgerald dealt with unattractive characters in a superficially glittery setting. His friend, Edmund Wilson, called it "the best thing you have done—the best planned, the best sustained, the best written." All reviews, good and bad, affected Fitzgerald deeply.

From an artistic perspective, Fitzgerald's third novel was as close to a triumph as he would ever get. Financially, however, the book was a failure since he was over $6200 in debt to Scribners, his publisher, and sales of the book did not cover this by October of 1925. By February, a few more books were sold and then sales leveled out. The summer of 1925 for Fitzgerald was one of "1000 parties and no work." His drinking continued to affect his work. For the rest of his life, nothing he wrote quite measured up to Gatsby. In fact, when he walked into a book shop in Los Angeles and requested one of his books, he discovered they were out of print.

In the early 1950s, Fitzgerald's works began to enjoy a revival; in addition to Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, with its psychological bent, appealed to readers. Critics found similarities between Fitzgerald and English poet John Keats and novelist Joseph Conrad. Joseph N. Riddel and James Tut-tleton analyzed American-born novelist Henry James's impact on Fitzgerald, since both men wrote about the manners of a particular culture. Gatsby was compared to T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land" and to Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises. The mythic elements of the novel have been studied by Douglas Taylor, Robert Stallman, and briefly by Richard Chase in The American Novel and Its Tradition.

Symbolism in Gatsby focuses on Dr. T. J. Eck-leburg's eyes, the Wasteland motif, and the color symbolism. Gatsby has ironically been likened to Christ, and Nick Carraway, the storyteller, to Nicodemus, in a Christian interpretation of the novel. Relatively speaking, most of Fitzgerald's short stories have been sorely neglected by critics, though a steady stream of critical comment appears every year. It has been difficult for critics to detach Fitzgerald the writer from Fitzgerald the legend. Sociological, historical, and biographical approaches to teaching literature have predominated in past decades. Now, more attention is being given to a close reading of Gatsby for its artistry.

The Corruption of the American Dream

Whilst The Great Gatsby explores a number of themes, none is more prevalent than that of the corruption of the American dream. The American dream is the concept that, in America, any person can be successful as long he or she is prepared to work hard and use his natural gifts.

Gatsby appears to be the embodiment of this dream – he has risen from being a poor farm boy with no prospects, to being rich, having a big house, servants, and a large social circle attending his numerous functions. He has achieved all this in only a few short years, having returned from the war penniless.

On the surface, Fitgerald appears to be suggesting that, whilst wealth and all its trappings are attainable, status and position are not. Whilst Gatsby has money and possessions, he is unable to find happiness. Those who come to his home do not genuinely like Gatsby – they come for the parties, the food, the drink and the company, not for Gatsby. Furthermore, they seem to despise Gatsby, taking every opportunity to gossip about him. Many come and go without even taking the time to meet and few ever thank him for his hospitality. Even Daisy appears unable to cope with the reality of Gatsby’s lower class background. Gatsby is never truly one of the elite – his dream is just a façade.

However, Fitzgerald explores much more than the failure of the American dream – he is more deeply concerned with its total corruption. Gatsby has not achieved his wealth through honest hard work, but through bootlegging and crime. His money is not simply ‘new’ money – it is dirty money, earnt through dishonesty and crime. His wealthy lifestyle is little more than a façade, as is the whole person Jay Gastby. Gatsby has been created from the dreams of the boy James Gatz. It is not only Gatsby who is corrupt. Nick repeatedly says that he is the only honest person he knows. The story is full of lying and cheating. Even Nick is involved in this deception, helping Gatsby and Daisy in their deceit and later concealing the truth about Myrtle’s death. The society in which the novel takes place is one of moral decadence. Whether their money is inherited or earnt, its inhabitant are morally decadent, living life in quest of cheap thrills and with no seeming moral purpose to their lives. Any person who attempts to move up through the social classes becomes corrupt in the process. In Gatsby’s case this corruption involves illegal activities, for Myrtle it is an abandonment of others of her own background.

A parallel theme of the book is that of love and its fleetingness. There are no stable relationships in the book. Daisy and Tom’s marriage has been damaged by affairs from early in its life. Soon after their honeymoon Tom has been caught out, when a hotel chambermaid is injured in a car crash where he is the driver. By the time the novel begins, daisy is well aware of Tom’s regular affairs, seeming to suffer in silence until Gatsby offers her a way out. Myrtle’s relationship with Tom is no stronger, obviously based on a physical attraction, especially on the part of Tom who has little time for Myrtle outside the bedroom. Myrtle appears to be loved by Wilson, but is unhappy in this relationship, apparently because he is unable to provide materially for her, although his actions in the latter part of the book suggest his love may be oppressive, causing her to seek escape even before the last events.

Other characters in the book are no more successful in relationships. Nick, the narrator, is unable to make commitments in his relationships. One of his reasons for coming East has been to escape a potential engagement, he has a brief affair in New York which he ends when there are signs of commitment, and he cannot commit to Jordan either. Jordan herself has had no lasting relationship, discarding men when she has no further for them – Nick’s rejection of her provides her with ‘a new experience’. Partygoers are seen fighting with spouses or else attend with mistresses or lovers.

Only Gatsby seems capable of lasting love – his love for Daisy is unshaken till the end. Yet this love is unrealistic – based not only on a relationship started on a lie, but also needing a turning back of time to make it complete. At times even Gatsby himself seems to realize that the reality is not as good as his dream has been.

In the end we meet the only person capable of true love in the final chapter. It is Mr Gatz, Gatsby’s father, who has an unshaken love for his son, believing in him to the end, and blind to his failings as only a parent can be.

A third theme in the novel is that of optimism. It is Gatsby’s almost unwavering optimism which guides him through life. His belief that dreams can true has been with him since a lad, and the dream represented by the green light on Daisy’s dock holds incredible promise for him. Even when the dream starts to unravel, when Daisy’s feelings have wavered as his past is revealed, Gatsby remains optimistic. He does not take his chance to leave the area, certain that Daisy will come back to him. In this way his untimely death is merciful – his life has so long been based on a dream that Daisy’s desertion would have been crippling to him. In closing Nick realizes that what Gatsby did not see was that his dream was already behind him – his opportunity had been missed and could not be recaptured.

The Role of Women

Women play a paradoxical role in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a novel dominated by the eponymous hero and the enigmatic narrator, Nick Carraway. With the background of Gatsby’s continual and lavish parties, women seem to have been transformed into “flappers,” supposedly the incarnation of independence following WW1.

After all, Daisy Fay, obviously modeled on Fitzgerald’s free-spirited wife, Zelda Sayre, is hardly portrayed as the proper southern belle. Her friend, Jordan Baker, seems openly sarcastic when speaking of their “white girlhood”—referring to their youth spent in Louisville, KY. As Fitzgerald conveys through a series of flashbacks, Daisy has been flirtatious, even at one point discovered packing her bag to travel alone to New York City in order to say good bye to a sailor. But her rather scandalous behavior does not sully her at all in the eyes of the smitten Gatsby. Indeed, as Nick comments , “It excited him . . . that many men had already loved Daisy—it increased her value in his eyes.” (Ch. 8)

Jordan Baker, whom some critics regard as little more than a device to bring Nick Carraway into the plot, is neither married nor engaged and apparently lives largely on her own except for a shadowy aunt who serves as a titular chaperone. Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, might pontificate that their house guest should have more supervision, but Daisy ridicules her husband’s comment.

So on one level, these characters appear to be free-spirited, scorning norms of what the nineteenth-century would have considered proper female behavior. It’s worth investigating, however, just how independent they really are. Ultimately, their “place” may be indicated most exactly by using the title from a pioneering book of feminist criticism by Francoise Basch: “Relative Creatures.” Daisy, Jordan, and Myrtle exist in relationship to their husbands, lovers, or boyfriends, and none undergoes a significant change during the course of the narrative. Thus, according to the most common definitions of flat versus round characters in literature, none of the women can be considered “round” or multidimensional characters. Each functions—at least for a time-- as the cynosure of Gatsby, Nick and Tom Buchanan. Perhaps the ultimately pathetic condition of women is most accurately conveyed in a conversation between Nick and Daisy in which Daisy discusses the birth of her daughter:

“Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl , and so I turned my head away and wept. `All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’” (Ch.1)

Beyond the glittering, upper class world of East Egg, inhabited by Daisy and Tom Buchanan and Jordan Baker is the squalid area Fitzgerald refers to as the “Valley of Ashes,” where George and Myrtle Wilson live. Myrtle, obviously bent on escaping this Waste Land where George ekes out a living as a mechanic, has become Tom’s mistress. Fitzgerald portrays her unflatteringly as crass, tasteless, overweight, and ostentatious.

At a drunken party in New York City, when Myrtle oversteps one of Tom’s dubious moral lines by mentioning Daisy, he hits his mistress, breaking her nose. Later in the novel, she is imprisoned in the garage when her pathetic and obtuse husband finally realizes that she has been having an affair with someone. Significantly, however, Tom Buchanan walks away unscathed from this affair, while Myrtle dies in the Waste Land, “mingling her thick dark blood with the dust.” (Ch 7) Myrtle’s executioner is the “careless” Daisy who has been driving Gatsby’s expensive gold car.

With Myrtle’s death her “tremendous vitality” is extinguished. While she differs from both Jordan and Daisy because of her socioeconomic class , this vitality is also a crucial point of difference. For Fitzgerald has pointedly characterized both young women by their profound ennui, their vacillation, and their carelessness. The discussions between Daisy and Jordan parallel passages from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land where the spiritually bankrupt representatives of all social classes wonder forlornly:

“What shall we do/what shall we ever do?” Jordan and Daisy, spiritually and physically enervated, differ drastically from Myrtle “staring at the garage pump with a panting vitality.” (Ch 4)

In their own ways, each woman functions as “proof” of her husband’s or lover’s success. At several points in the novel, Gatsby is described by Nick as a knight. Traditionally, knights go off on a quest; often their “price is the hand of a king’s daughter in marriage. Gatsby’s quest during his life has been to recapture the past, those moments in WWI when it seemed to him that Daisy, the wealthy, sought-after belle of Louisville, would agree to be his wife. Daisy , however, hardly constant , is swept off her feet by another suitor, Tom Buchanan. But Gatsby clings to his peculiar notion of the American Dream:

if he achieves monetary success, he will regain Daisy. Thus, Gatsby constructs his ostentatious house in West Egg, directly across the Bay from Tom and Daisy’s more sedate mansion. Nick warns him, “You can’t repeat the past,” but Gatsby, incredulous, states “Why of course you can!” (Ch. 6)

It would be ingenuous to ignore the parallels between the F. Scott Fitsgerald/Zelda Sayre marriage and the relationship of Daisy and Gatsby. Both Daisy and Zelda were considered “belles" of southern cities; Zelda was the youngest daughter of a judge in Montgomery, Alabama. Fitzgerald courted Zelda, but she broke her engagement because of Fitzgerald’s lack of funds. As Matthew J. Bruccoli points out in A Brief Life of Fitzgerald, writing his first successful novel, This Side of Paradise (originally called the Romantic Egoist), was part of Fitzgerald’s own quest to obtain Zelda’s hand in marriage. The fictional Gatsby was less successful with Daisy, though it is difficult to conclude that the real life union was much of an improvement with Fitzgerald practically drinking himself to death, and Zelda languishing in a variety of mental hospitals.

In assessing Fitzgerald’s three principal female characters, the reader must keep in mind that all appraisals are filtered through the eyes of Nick Carraway. Thus, the question of whether he is a reliable narrator assumes paramount importance. Nick of course, boldly asserts, “I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.” (Ch.3)

But Nick seems to embody a double standard in his judgments of the behavior of men and women as feminist critic, Judith Fetterley, demonstrates in The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction. Nick castigates Jordan for relatively minor dishonesties but accepts with equanimity the massive dishonesty that has characterized Gatsby’s entire life. Fetterly concludes that the female characters in the Great Gatsby function as symbols—not persons.

If Gatsby is a love story, it is one centered in hostility toward women. Gatsby thinks of Daisy in relation to the objects with which she is surrounded. Her value for him is increased by the fact that she has been desired by so many men. Indeed, Tom’s gift of a string of pearls valued at $350, 000 the night before the two are to be wed only increases his estimation of her worth. One might ask if indeed there is an actual emotional relation between Gatsby and Daisy or if Daisy has become for Gatsby simply an “unutterable vision.”

The Green Hope of Gatsby

It is arguable that Jay Gatsby values two things above all others – love (particularly his love for Daisy Buchanon) and money (the means by which he hopes to win Daisy’s heart). The two motivations converge in Fitzgerald’s use of the color green, a symbol that represents both love and money as well as Gatsby’s ultimate goal – a spring-like renewal that would put his past behind him and plant the seeds for a future with Daisy. Fitzgerald shows green in its many incarnations, from the promise of a new bud to the decay of a stagnant pond, as Gatsby’s dream progresses from a dim light in the distance to the reality of lovely illusions left in ruins.

Our first glimpse of green in the novel comes in the first chapter, as Nick stumbles upon Gatsby with his arms outstretched toward “a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock” (25). The light marks the end of the Buchanons’ pier, and the beginning of Gatsby’s green hope. He stands, stares and reaches out to the light as if reaching out to Daisy herself. At this point, even with all the money and power at his disposal, he can’t directly address the object of his affection; the light represents what could have been and what could be.

By chapter four, green takes the recognizable form of money, or at least the things money can buy. As described by Nick, the car is cream-colored and bright. The upholstery, however, the car’s center and the point at which is connects with the people inside, is a deep green, “a sort of green leather conservatory” (68). What better than a “green leather conservatory” for watching stars, particularly the bright green star across the bay? Even Gatsby’s car is a reminder of Daisy, and of her place in his universe. He buys the car to impress her if he can, and the green leather interior is a nod to decadent consumption as well as a symbol of the evolution Gatsby must undergo to make his dream a reality.

The color green’s connection to nature, growth and renewal first appears in chapter 5 as Nick prepares for Gatsby and Daisy’s rendezvous at his house. Gatsby not only sends flowers to impress Daisy, he has a “greenhouse” shipped in (89). The word “greenhouse” suggests incubation, like the love Gatsby has let incubate as he built his fortune. Having convinced Daisy to meet with him, Gatsby wants her surrounded with fresh greenery to symbolize the renewed love he hopes their interlude will inspire.

A few pages later, as Gatsby dazzles Daisy with his freshly laundered seasonal shirts, Fitzgerald slips in an apple-green one. This lighter green foreshadows a crucial light green later in the novel, and alludes to the Adam and Eve story in the Bible. Perhaps Fitzgerald wants us to see Daisy as an Eve figure, tempting Gatsby back in Louisville to bit the apple that led to his criminal activities, opening him up to decadence and deceit in the name of love. Also, the green of money (the expensive shirts), the green of renewal (the apple) and the green promise at the end of Daisy’s pier coincide in this brief but important scene. (97)

Immediately following the apple reference, Gatsby tells Daisy that he has been watching the light at the end of the dock. He has Daisy in his hands, literally, and he reconsiders his attachment to the light. From here the color green begins to take on a different cast as Fitzgerald shows us the underside of love, money and renewal. Compared to the physical presence of Daisy,

Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever…it had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one. (98)

Green is no longer an enchanted color for Gatsby, and Fitzgerald’s references change accordingly. “Now it was a green light on a dock” today might read “Now it was nothing more than a green light on a dock.” Reality shows itself, and for that moment, the reality is what Gatsby has been seeking since his own transformation years earlier.

A flashback shows James Gatz in “a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants” (104), just prior to beginning his life as Jay Gatsby. The jersey is significant both because it symbolizes the green renewal Gatz experiences and because it is torn; Gatsby will pay dearly for the rebirth and wealth he seeks. From the moment his transformation takes place, the die is cast for Gatsby’s fall. Fitzgerald allows his green references to wither as well, parallel to Gatsby’s own slow demise. The cynicism typical of the Jazz Age also intrudes; the idealism that led Gatsby to remake himself for such a simple dream can’t be allowed in a world with no place for idealism, where green means only money, and the more, the better.

Tom accompanies Daisy to one of Gatsby’s parties in chapter six. Daisy’s attitude has already changed; she tells Nick she is passing out green cards for kisses. Why are the cards green? Perhaps to celebrate her own small renewal-- the beginning of a new relationship with Jay Gatsby and his fortune. Green cards suggest green paper – dollars, perhaps – and Fitzgerald seems to be saying that Daisy may be willing to trade her love for money. In the end, after all, she chooses the stability of Tom’s “old money” to Gatsby’s “new money,” in a sense preferring the security of a more comfortable faded green than the possibility of a brighter, more ambitious green.

The birth of love and the death of love can both be represented by the color green, and Fitzgerald seems to be suggesting that they are intertwined as he moves toward the end of the novel. In a brief reference in chapter 7, George Wilson, suffering from both the heat and from suspicion of his wife’s infidelity, gasses up Tom’s car. Fitzgerald tells us, “In the sunlight his face was green” (129). Wilson is literally sickened by his situation, and the destruction of his marriage cascades into the novel’s other relationships. By the end of the book, everyone’s face is figuratively as green as George’s.

George’s wife Myrtle is killed later in chapter 7, and the first thing Michaelis, the Wilsons’ neighbor, tells police the “death car” is light green. Later reports suggest a blue or yellow car. Just as yellow and blue make green, Myrtle’s blood mingles with the dust in the Valley of Ashes (144).

Fitzgerald breaks green down into its component colors cleverly, possibly suggesting that the other couplings in the novel are as tainted as Myrtle’s blood in the road. This blurring takes the pinpoint of green light in chapter 1 and stretches it into a world that has no place for it, one in which the purity suggested by the light must coexist with darker forces. By Fitzgerald’s reckoning, there is no purity in the world of the Jazz Age; the green light is a symbol not only of the past, but of a past that may never have existed, both in Gatsby’s life and in American life in general.

By the novel’s final chapter, both Myrtle and Gatsby are dead, the Buchanons and Jordan have disappeared, and Nick prepares to leave as well. Before leaving, he returns to “that huge incoherent failure of a house once more” (188). He considers the place and its once-proud heritage:

…I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world. (189)

Green has become a sad color for Nick and for Fitzgerald; long before Gatsby, the verdant land of Long Island represented something new and fresh, a true renewal. Once the desire for other “green,” particularly money, came into the mix, Fitzgerald suggests the possibility for purity and rebirth, and finally love, prove unattainable.

In the last paragraph of the novel, as in chapter 1, the green light appears, bringing the symbolism full circle. Nick says Gatsby “believes in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (189). With the events of the novel behind him, Nick reiterates the fact that the light Gatsby counted on and followed was, as Gatsby saw in chapter 5, no more than a green light. Gatsby invests a great deal of hope and love in the color green throughout the novel; at the end green is simply green, as magical and powerful as Gatsby’s apple-green shirts, which can’t hold Daisy’s interest long enough to make her stay.

Fitzgerald’s use of the color green in The Great Gatsby reflects the arc of Gatsby’s dream – in the beginning it is fresh, bursting with desire and imagination as if his dream were a newly blossoming flower. As reality sets in – the irritants of attitude and deceit and the collision of damaged lives – the green fades, or it weathers like a sick face. Finally, the same bright green of the past becomes no more than a memory, and not necessarily a clear one.

Gatsby’s green hope rests on the light at the end of Daisy’s dock more than the reality of Daisy, past or present. She proves herself to be not the fulfillment of his dream, but as elusive and uncertain as the flickering green glow barely visible across an expanse of water. Gatsby dies pursuing that light, blinding himself to the other colors that exist all around him.

The Style of Gatsby

One of the simplest yet most profound reasons The Great Gatsby is considered an American classic is its use of language, more particularly the emerging “American Idiom.” Writers of the 20s and beyond sought to find a way of using English that was more than simply a rehash of the great British writers, a style of writing that was distinctly American. Fitzgerald not only tapped into the “American Idiom,” influencing writers to come, but elevated the language above street slang and regional distinctions into a truly artistic form that reflects the high and low of American society. The beginning and ending passages of the novel clearly illustrate the way Fitzgerald creates a uniquely American expression from the basic building blocks of the English language.

The beginning of the novel sets the bar immediately, as Fitzgerald speaks with Nick’s voice, a “typical Midwesterner” with, one would assume, a typically Midwestern accent:

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

He didn't say any more, but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.

Most of the confidences were unsought – frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. (5-6)

One of the first features that stands out in this passage is Nick’s almost conversational tone. Fitzgerald freely uses contractions and independent clauses separated by commas and articles like “and so” and “because.” Here, the sentences retain much of the length common in the British novel, but what may be the most resonant sentence in the first chapter – “Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope” – is remarkably short in comparison. The short sentences that characterize the work of Hemingway and generations to follow weave into Gatsby, usually to set off particular ideas as important ones.

Fitzgerald’s figurative language in the opening passage is similarly reserved, but equally telling. Nick is faced with “veteran bores,” and “privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men,” and he is aware of “intimate revelation[s] quivering on the horizon.” And of course, one of the central themes of the novel revolves around the idea of “infinite hope.” The notion of “reserving judgment” is skewered as well in Nick’s comparison between “normal” and “abnormal” minds; in fact, the entire section devoted to reserving judgment passes judgment on “wild, unknown men” by describing them in figurative terms.

Fitzgerald opens the novel strongly, asserting Nick’s unique voice through his informality and hints that he is hardly as fair-minded as he would like to be. Through language alone, Fitzgerald is able to establish Nick as an unreliable narrator. In essence, Nick betrays himself before the novel even begins.

As one might expect, the ending passage of The Great Gatsby builds on the language – voice, tone, figurative devices – used throughout the novel. It also expands on them as the story expands beyond the confines of Long Island. Just before Nick boards the train to return to the Midwest, he visits the beach at Gatsby’s house one last time:

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world.

Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then,
but that's no matter – to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . and one fine morning – So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. (189)

In this long passage, Fitzgerald develops a much broader metaphor, one that is perhaps appropriate to the major characters of The Great Gatsby and their experiences. The Midwestern transplants themselves are “Dutch sailors” of a sort, and their experience of New York was undoubtedly as magical when they first arrived. Their wonder, coupled with a focus on the “inessential houses…melt[ing] away,” provide an excellent, sly recap of the novel’s themes – the Dutch sailors’ wonder is substituted for Gatsby’s wonder at the green light on Daisy’s dock, and (in a nice bit of juxtaposition) Gatsby’s dream is as dead and long-past as the trees that the sailors enjoyed, and which were cut down to build Gatsby’s house. In a sense, Gatsby was the architect of his own demise, as are we all. Fitzgerald expertly builds comparison upon comparison to make this point.

As in the opening of the novel, this passage makes extensive use of independent clauses connected by commas and articles, but additional punctuation – dashes and ellipses – added to the mix. Like Emily Dickinson in Poetry, Fitzgerald allows his punctuation to make the piece “breathe.” The result is the illusion of shorter, more distinctive sentences, which inevitably leads to others’ use of the shortest sentences possible. Fitzgerald opens a door for writers to experiment with sentence length, and with the possibilities of different rhythms that could in retrospect be called American.

The language in the conclusion is actually elevated beyond that used in the introduction. The passage itself is longer and more dramatic, the scene is wispy and almost unreal, and Fitzgerald’s language choices allow a shift from a more conversational tone to a more refined, almost poetic expression. The conversational tone had been used in the writings of Mark Twain; in using it, Fitzgerald was merely adopting popular 19th Century American style. However, by elevating the language at the end, by appealing to something more, he leaves us hanging on his last words. Indeed, the last sentence – in fact one long sentence “chopped up” by punctuation as described above – is one of the best-known sentences in American literature.

Fitzgerald used The Great Gatsby as a vehicle for his ideas on social change and corruption; along the way he changed the way Americans write novels. By using genuine American language, he was able to truly show American life and its concerns even in a story that could best be described as a sort of 20th-Century allegory. Fitzgerald’s experiments in the music of American language worked, and his literary descendants continue to explore the linguistic ground he laid at the beginning of the century.

The Jazz Age

The Great Gatsby’s most obvious reference to “The Jazz Age” revolution taking place in American Arts in the 1920s occurs in the party scene in Chapter 3:

“Ladies and gentlemen,” [the orchestra leader] cried, “At the request of Mr. Gatsby we are going to play for you Mr. Vladimir Tostoff’s latest work…’Vladimir Tostoff’s Jazz History of the World.’” (Fitzgerald 54)

Gatsby’s request for a work that defies tradition, and certainly defeats the purpose of having a full symphony-sized orchestra on the grounds, is in fitting with his character. He himself has defied tradition, becoming a “self-made man” regardless of his methods; is it any wonder his choice of music would reflect both the “newness” of his money and the means by which he came to it?

The spirit of recreation and renewed vision echoes through the art of the period, particularly in its music. It makes sense that such music would provide a background for Gatsby’s story. Like Jay Gatsby, composers and musicians of the 1920s charted new territory for themselves, changing the American musical landscape as drastically as Gatsby’s transition from the starkness of North Dakota farmland the glitz of a West Egg mansion.

Fitzgerald experienced a similar transition just spending time around the burgeoning New York Jazz Scene, according to Arnold Shaw: “Riding down Fifth Avenue one day in the 1920s, F. Scott Fitzgerald ‘bawled’ because, he later said, ‘I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again’” (Shaw 3). He and his wife Zelda were fixtures in Jazz Age social circles, and Fitzgerald was well-qualified to talk about not only the new music of the time, but also the decadence that often accompanied it.

Prior to the 1920s, mainstream American music mostly consisted of folk tunes – nothing less tame than Scott Joplin’s Ragtime piano pieces. The emphasis was on everyday people learning to play for themselves and their families and friends at home. By the twenties, the humble (and recent) tradition of the Mississippi Delta bluesmen had begun to filter through the “hot towns” of Chicago and Kansas City, producing a potent music not everyone could play. The relatively new phonograph and radio allowed previously regional music like the blues to be heard nationwide, creating the first Jazz Age stars. The bands of Bix Beiderbecke,. Tom Brown and Joe “King” Oliver introduced the hybrid music to young New York society, who immediately embraced it. As the music grew more popular, jazzmen like Louis Armstrong and Jellyroll Morton became household names.

The big band as it came to be known in the 1930s and 40s also began during this period, under the direction of Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman and others. The big band differed from its large ensemble predecessors by playing complex arrangements of familiar tunes, displaying the talents of not only the entire band, but of fiery soloists like Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter.

Had jazz stayed in bars and dance clubs, it may have disappeared as ragtime and the other styles of music that preceded it; thanks to Paul Whiteman’s foresight, the music would endure through the efforts of a young composer named George Gershwin. Whiteman staged a show on February 12, 1924 that featured the premiere of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the composer himself on piano. Both the jazz and “serious music” camps sat up and took notice. By successfully merging traditional symphonic themes and instrumentation with the energy and familiar American quality of jazz, Gershwin had made jazz into a serious art form, and its influence spread even further (Shaw 47-53).

As Gershwin was merging the worlds of jazz and orchestral music (possibly the source for Fitzgerald’s “Jazz History of the World”), musicians and writers in Harlem, New York were emerging as important fixtures in American artistic life and history. Writers Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer and their peers injected their work with the new strains of blues and jazz; Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown experimented with blues lyric forms in their poetry. Harlem was the place to be, and both black and white artists from all art forms were influences by its energy, derived from a proximity to jazz.

Change was in the air, and the Broadway stage was not immune. Out of the decadence and protofeminism of the time (Think Jordan Baker from Gatsby) came the revues of Florenz Ziegfeld and his contemporaries. The revues were not story-driven, but contained a variety of entertainment forms – music, comedy, and particularly half- or mostly-nude women, for which Ziegfeld became famous. Ziegfeld’s Follies revived and “elevated” the earlier Vaudeville theatre and provided a showcase for legendary figures like composer Irving Berlin (“A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody,” 1919), comedian Eddie Cantor, and singers like Fannie Brice (Shaw 232-35).

George White and John Murray Anderson’s shows aspired to the level of sophistication Ziegfeld had mastered. White’s Scandals ran successfully into the 1930s; Anderson is perhaps best known for employing Cole Porter before Porter became a star in his own right (236-39).

Irving Berlin was a triple threat – he wrote both music and lyrics, and after breaking away from Flo Ziegfeld, he became a producer himself. His Music Boxes produced such hits as “Say It With Music,” “Everybody Step,” “What’ll I do,” and the ubiquitous “Yes, We Have No Bananas.”

Richard Rodgers and Moss Hart, along with Berlin and Jerome Kern, carried the changes begun in their revues well beyond the decade. Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Show Boat, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! and Annie Get Your Gun all originated in the atmosphere created in the Jazz Age (Shaw 254-56).

Vincent Youmans’ name might be absent from an accounting of the Jazz Age if not for his singular hit No! No! Nanette and its centerpiece “Tea for Two.” Nanette, the only true “flapper” musical, best captures the spirit of the 1920s with its decadent nature, vibrant atmosphere, and changing roles for men and women. Nanette is still performed today, keeping a small part of the Jazz Age alive onstage.

Fitzgerald’s exposure to the music of his time fuels not only Gatsby’s parties, but the general feel of the novel. Mayer Wolfsheim recalls the growl of Louis Armstrong and hard Chicago Jazz; Gatsby is a cross between a plaintive blues and an elaborate big band arrangement; Jordan is the embodiment of Nanette in the play of the same name, and Tom and Daisy conduct their lives as if they are part of an ongoing musical theatre piece. Nick is the emcee, or even an old-style troubadour, commenting on the “acts” and observing their behavior as Fitzgerald did from his convertible. Like Fitzgerald, Nick becomes caught up in the music of the time and his rendering of it seems accurate but flawed.

The Great Gatsby works on a number of levels. On one level, it is a jukebox of 1920s hit songs and themes. In this sense, Fitzgerald’s commentary also preserves his music in the unmistakable flavorings of both story and style. On another level, the Jazz Age influences Fitzgerald’s storytelling to a point at which his objectivity is brought into question. This heavy influence is one of the novel’s saving graces; in its refusal to be totally “objective,” the novel shows the 1920s, and America, as it really is.

Fitzgerald's use of Time in The Great Gatsby

Time is one of the most pervasive themes in The Great Gatsby, weaving between characters and situations, slowing and speeding the action until the entire novel seems almost dreamlike. Fitzgerald not only manipulates time in the novel, he refers to time repeatedly to reinforce the idea that time is a driving force not only for the 1920s, a period of great change, but for America itself. We will see Fitzgerald also turns a critical eye to the American concept of time, in effect warning us all to avoid becoming trapped in time.

The Past

Fitzgerald strongly connects time in the novel with location, as if time were an entire setting in itself. Fitzgerald tips his hand early; after Nick provides a description of himself and what we assume are his motives in coming to New York, he makes an immediately important time reference:

        Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over 

        there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. (10)

Nick wants to relate the “history” of the summer, not its events, its characters, or “just” a story. This is to be a history, events frozen in time and examined and re-examined. Nick sets the stage for the novel’s treatment of time – despite the often frivolous characters and situations, this story bears more than a superficial reading. The Eggs gain enough historical importance to rival New York City itself. Fitzgerald shrinks his focus to a geographical area while simultaneously expanding its meaning in time.

The past plays a major role, perhaps the most major role, in the concept of time presented in Gatsby. Tom was a “Big Man on Campus” in the past, while Gatsby was both a poor farm boy and Daisy’s lover; Daisy was a flighty socialite with no family to tie her down; all of them were naïve Midwesterners whose lives, they now believe, were far better in a past they can’t help but romanticize. It is precisely this romanticizing of the past that enables Fitzgerald to write such a powerful novel – in allowing his characters to wallow around in their pasts, he reminds later generations of readers that neither the 20s nor his books should be romanticized. They should be taken for what they are, and made relative to the present day. The (possibly unintentional) consequence of this attitude is an audience that extends beyond the 20th Century.

Characters

Fitzgerald’s characters are not only obsessed with time, they seem to embody it. Tom Buchanan is obsessed with history, reading books like The Rise of the Colored Empires that offer historical explanations for his inability to rise above the life he lives. Tom is Old Money, hopelessly stuck in the past, trying to live up to his ancestors’ wealth by amassing his own. He can never recapture his youth, so he seeks to recreate the excitement of those days by having a mistress on the side.

Daisy, too, is stuck in the past, a pre-feminist remnant of an age in which women were expected to act “a certain way.” She tolerates Tom’s affair, and stands out in stark contrast to Jordan Baker’s contemporary “flapper” persona. Daisy is as confined as Jordan is liberated, and she can’t live a life without a man to run it for her. Her true complication comes when two opposite aspects of her past – Tom and Gatsby – compete for her affection. In each, she sees qualities lacking in the other. For a woman who is defined by men, her own definition of herself comes into question.

Myrtle Wilson seems to have a fairly solid definition of herself, and she and her husband George are fully in the present. Living in the Valley of Ashes, they can’t help but see the world as it is, as it goes by the windows of their garage. Myrtle is usually willing to put up with the complications of seeing a married man in exchange for the material possessions George can’t give her. However, when she complains in her “secret” apartment in the city, the past literally smacks her in the face. Presumably, George would never do that to her, devoted as he is. That devotion, and the reality of his situation, causes George to snap at the end of the novel.

Gatsby, of course, the victim of George’s misplaced rage, represents the future. His past is colorless and best forgotten; James Gatz got to where he is in the beginning of the novel by focusing on the future and building toward it, by any means necessary. He desperately wants to make Daisy part of his future (He is, after all, building it to share with her, which hopelessly entangles his past with his future), but she can’t commit to his far-reaching vision. Gatsby’s world falls apart when he realizes the future he envisions simply can’t happen.

Nick’s progression as a narrator provides a yardstick by which the other characters’ relationships to time can be measured. In the beginning, he is purely a product of his Midwestern past; by the time he acclimates himself to New York and meets Myrtle Wilson, he is very much in the present. At the end of the novel Nick must reconcile his own future by returning to the site of his naïve past a wiser, more jaded person. Nick, in this sense, shares all the other characters’ perspectives of time, allowing us to watch time unfold.

Images

Fitzgerald uses a number of repeated images to represent time in Gatsby; one of the most telling is the clock in Chapter 5. Gatsby and Daisy are meeting at Nick’s house for the first time, and the three are sharing an awkward conversation:

        Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even of boredom. His head leaned back so far

        that it rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position his distraught eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sitting, frightened but        

        graceful, on the edge of a stiff chair.

        "We've met before," muttered Gatsby. His eyes glanced momentarily at me, and his lips parted with an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily the clock took this            

        moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers, and set it back in place.

        Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm of the sofa and his chin in his hand.

        "I'm sorry about the clock," he said.

        My own face had now assumed a deep tropical burn. I couldn't muster up a single commonplace out of the

        thousand in my head.

        "It's an old clock," I told them idiotically.

        I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor. (91-2)

The clock is a symbol of many things – Gatsby’s dream of having Daisy for himself, Daisy’s hope for a better life, Nick’s desire for the dramatic change that never comes, or even just their lives slowly ticking away. When Gatsby almost breaks it, the moment is shattered. None of the three characters will be the same again after the clock drops. Gatsby becomes uncharacteristically clumsy around Daisy, who has no idea what to say or do. Nick, too, is at a loss, coming up with something “idiotic” to say just to keep the conversation moving. The last line, though, foreshadows the ending of the novel: “I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor.” In this one moment, past, present and future all seem to meet and crash together in an impossible explosion of emotion and loss. From here, all is downhill.

In a very important sense, The Great Gatsby is all about time – its effects on people, its importance in our lives, and most particularly its status in the American consciousness. We see time in a linear fashion – broken up into discrete units for appointments, life plans, meetings and goals. Fitzgerald shows us lives all along that line, perhaps suggesting that the most successful American life is one that should see time in more flexible terms. As such, Nick may be seen as the only true successful character in the novel, as he is able to move across the various timelines, interact with the characters who inhabit them, and retain his sense of self in the end. Nick, as it turns out, is not a slave to time. Fitzgerald seems to be encouraging his readers to break their own chains and take the time to enjoy the lives they have while they have them.

 The Greatness of Gatsby

The Great Gatsby's fundamental achievement is a triumph of language.

I do not speak merely of the "flowers," the famous passages: Nick's description of Gatsby yearning toward the green light on Daisy's dock, Gatsby's remark that the Buchanans' love is "only personal," the book's last page. Throughout, The Great Gatsby has the precision and splendor of a lyric poem, yet well-wrought prose is merely one of its triumphs. Fitzgerald's distinction in this novel is to have made language celebrate itself. Among other things, The Great Gatsby is about the power of art.

This celebration of literary art is inseparable from the novel's second great achievement—its management of point of view, the creation of Nick. With his persona, Fitzgerald obtained more than objectivity and concentration of effect. Nick describes more than the experience which he witnesses; he describes the act and consequences of telling about it. The persona is—as critics have been seeing—a character, but he is more than that: he is a character engaged in a significant action.

Nick is writing a book. He is recording Gatsby's experience; in the act of recording Gatsby's experience he discovers himself.

Though his prose has all along been creating for us Gatsby's "romantic readiness," almost until the very end Nick insists that he deplores Gatsby's "appalling sentimentality." This is not a reasoned judgment. Nick disapproves because he cannot yet affirm. He is a Jamesian spectator, a fastidious intelligence ill-suited to profound engagement of life. But writing does profoundly engage life. In writing about Gatsby, Nick alters his attitude toward his subject and ultimately toward his own life. As his book nears completion his identification with Gatsby grows. His final affirmation is his sympathetic understanding of Gatsby and the book which gives his sympathy form: both are a celebration of life; each is a gift of language. This refinement on James's use of the persona might be the cause of Eliot's assertion that The Great Gatsby represented the first advance which the American novel had made since James.

In Nick's opening words we find an uncompleted personality. There are contradictions and perplexities which (when we first read the passage) are easily ignored, because of the characteristic suavity of his prose. He begins the chronicle, whose purpose is an act of judgment and whose title is an evaluation, by declaring an inclination "to reserve all judgments." The words are scarcely digested when we find him judging:

The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality [tolerance] when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.

The tone is unmistakable—a combination of moral censure, self-protectiveness, and final saving sympathy that marks Nick as an outsider who is nonetheless drawn to the life he is afraid to enter. So when he tells us a little later in the passage that "Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope," we know that this and not the noblesse oblige he earlier advanced explains his fear of judging. Nick cannot help judging, but he fears a world in which he is constantly beset by objects worthy of rejection. He is "a little afraid of missing something"; that is why he hears the promise in Daisy's voice, half-heartedly entertains the idea of loving Jordan Baker, and becomes involved with the infinite hope of Jay Gatsby—"Gatsby, who represented everything for which [Nick had] an unaffected scorn."

When Nick begins the book he feels the same ambivalence toward Gatsby that characterizes his attitude toward life: a simultaneous enchantment and revulsion which places him "within and without." When he has finished, he has become united with Gatsby, and he judges Gatsby great Finally he has something to admire; contemplating Gatsby redeems him from the "foul dust [which had] temporarily closed out [his] interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men."

The economy with which Fitzgerald presents those sorrows and short-winded elations is another of the book's major achievements. In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald contrived to develop a story by means of symbols while at the same time investing those symbols with vivid actuality. Everything in the book is symbolic, from Gatsby's ersatz mansion to the wild and aimless parties which he gives there, yet everything seems so "true to life" that some critics continue to see that novel primarily as a recreation of the 20's. The Great Gatsby is about the 20's only in the sense that Moby Dick is about whaling or that The Scarlet Letter is about Puritan Boston. Comparing the liveliness of Fitzgerald's book with Melville's or, better still, with Hawthorne's (which resembles its tight dramatic structure and concentration), you have a good indication of the peculiar distinction in Fitzgerald's work.

Of the novel's symbols, only the setting exists without regard to verisimilitude, purely to project meaning. The Great Gatsby has four locales: East Egg, home of the rich Buchanans and their ultra-traditional Georgian Colonial mansion; West Egg where the once-rich and the parvenus live and where Gatsby apes the splendor of the Old World; the wasteland of the average man; and New York, where Nick labors, ironically, at the "Probity Trust." East and West Egg are "crushed flat at the contact end"; they represent the collision of dream and dreamer which is dramatized when Gatsby tries to establish his "universe of ineffable gaudiness" through the crass materials of the real world. The wasteland is a valley of ashes in which George Wilson dispenses gasoline to the irresponsible drivers from East and West Egg, eventually yielding his wife to their casual lust and cowardly violence.

Fitzgerald's world represents iconographically a sterile, immoral society. Over this world brood the blind eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg: the sign for an oculist's business which was never opened, the symbol of a blindness which can never be corrected. Like other objects in the book to which value might be attached, the eyes of Dr. Eckleburg are a cheat. They are not a sign of God, as Wilson thinks, but only an advertisement—like the false promise of Daisy's moneyed voice, or the green light on her dock, which is invisible in the mist.

These monstrous eyes are the novel's major symbol. The book's chief characters are blind, and they behave blindly. Gatsby does not see Daisy's vicious emptiness, and Daisy, deluded, thinks she will reward her gold-hatted lover until he tries to force from her an affirmation she is too weak to make Tom is blind to his hypocrisy, with "a short deft movement" he breaks Myrtle's nose for daring to mention the name of the wife she is helping him to deceive. Before her death, Myrtle mistakes Jordan for Daisy. Just as she had always mistaken Tom for salvation from the ash-heap, she blindly rushes for his car in her need to escape her lately informed husband, and is struck down. Moreover, Daisy is driving the car; and the man with her is Gatsby, not Tom. The final act of blindness is specifically associated with Dr. Eckleburg's eyes. Wilson sees them as a sign of righteous judgment and righteously proceeds to work God's judgment on earth. He kills Gatsby, but Gatsby is the wrong man. In the whole novel, only Nick sees. And his vision comes slowly, in the act of writing the book.

The act of writing the book is, as I have said, an act of judgment Nick wants to know why Gatsby "turned out all right in the end," despite all the phoniness and crime which fill his story, and why Gatsby was the only one who turned out all right. For, in writing about the others, Nick discovers the near ubiquity of folly and despair.

The novel's people are exemplary types of the debasement of life which is Fitzgerald's subject. Daisy, Tom, and Jordan lack the inner resources to enjoy what their wealth can give them. They show the peculiar folly of the American dream. At the pinnacle, life palls. Daisy is almost unreal. When Nick first sees her she seems to be floating in midair Her famous protestation of grief ("I'm sophisticated God, I'm sophisticated") is accompanied by an "absolute smirk." Her extravagant love for Gatsby is a sham, less real than the unhappy but fleshly bond with Tom which finally turns them into "conspirators." Her beauty is a snare. Like Tom's physical prowess, it neither pleases her nor insures her pleasure in others. Tom forsakes Daisy for Myrtle and both for "stale ideas." Jordan's balancing act is a trick; like her sporting reputation, a precarious lie. They are all rich and beautiful—and unhappy.

Yearning toward them are Myrtle and Gatsby. Like Gatsby, Myrtle desires "the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves ... gleaming ... above the hot struggles of the poor." Unlike him, her "panting vitality" is wholly physical, merely pathetic; whereas Gatsby's quest is spiritual and tragic. Myrtle is maimed and victimized by Daisy's selfish fear of injury (Daisy could have crashed into another car but, at the last minute, loses heart and runs Myrtle down); Gatsby's death is but the final stage of disillusionment, and he suffers voluntarily.

Gatsby is, of course, one of the major achievements I have been noting. Although we see little of him and scarcely ever hear him speak, his presence is continually with us; and he exists, as characters in fiction seldom do, as a life force. He recalls the everlasting yea of Carlyle, as well as the metaphysical rebellion of Camus. His "heightened sensitivity to the promise of life" is but one half of his energy; the other being a passionate denial of life's limitations. Gatsby's devotion to Daisy is an implicit assault on the human condition. His passion would defy time and decay to make the glorious first moment of wonder, which is past, eternally present. His passion is supra-sexual, even super-personal. In his famous remark to Nick about Daisy's love for Tom, he is making two assertions: that the "things between Daisy and Tom [which Tom insists] he'll never know" are merely mundane and that the Daisy which he loves is not the Daisy which Tom had carried down from the Punch Bowl but the Daisy who "blossomed for him like a flower," incarnating his dream, the moment he kissed her. Gatsby's love for life is finally an indictment of the life he loves. Life does not reward such devotion, nor, for that reason, does it deserve it. Gatsby is great for having paid Me the compliment of believing its promise.

When Hamlet dies amidst the carnage of his bloody quest for justice, he takes with him the promise that seeming will coincide with being and the hope that man can strike a blow for truth and save a remnant of the universe. When Ahab dies a victim to his own harpoon, he kills the promise that man may know his life and the hope that knowledge will absolve him. When Gatsby dies, more innocently than they (since, though a "criminal," he lacks utterly their taste for destruction), he kills a promise more poignant and perhaps more precious, certainly more inclusive than theirs: Gatsby kills the promise that desire can ever be gratified.

Significant Quotes

Quote #1
p. 8 (your page # may not correspond, based on the Scribner paperback)
[Narrator describes Jay Gatsby.]

“If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,…[Gatsby had] …an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.”

In the introduction to the story, narrator Nick Carraway describes Gatsby as he, retrospectively, perceives him. Immediately, Fitzgerald establishes Gatsby as an exceptionally romantic hero and a hopeful dreamer. The narrator tips his hand and reveals his favoritism for Gatsby. This quote is important because it not only establishes the essence of the Gatsby character but it also foreshadows the very nature of the story and its primary themes: idealism, aspiration, and loss.

Quote #2
p. 25
[Establishes the domain of the working poor.]

“This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-gray men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air…. [And the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg] …brood on over the solemn dumping ground.”

In this dramatic description, Fitzgerald sets the scene for the world of the working poor, where George and Myrtle Wilson live. The ‘valley of ashes’ provides a sharp, poetic contrast to the cool, lush estates of East Egg. What would normally be signs of life—wheat fields and gardens—are merely forms in a smoldering, colorless landscape. Importantly, this scene immediately follows a genteel luncheon at the Buchanan mansion. Sea breezes are replaced by “rising smoke,” extensive green lawns by “grotesque gardens.”

This scene also establishes the class conflict that permeates the book, and is a foreboding allusion to the death that occurs here. We become aware for the first time of the symbolic eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg who watches over this “solemn dumping ground” as a God-like witness to the despair and hopelessness that emanates from the place.

Quote #3
p. 48
[In the midst of his own party, Gatsby is alone.]

“When the Jazz History of the World was over, girls where putting their heads on men’s shoulders, … swooning backward playfully into men’s arms, … but no one swooned backward on Gatsby, and no French bob touched Gatsby’s shoulder, and no singing quartets were formed with Gatsby’s head for one link.”

This passage serves to capture a sense of Gatsby’s parties, as well as his place in them. Fitzgerald references a “sensational” piece of music of the day, describes the playful, affectionate nature of the guests, and casually notes the hairstyle that practically defined the “flapper.” In the middle of this scene, a scene that Gatsby himself created (he even requested the song), he stands alone, alienated from his own guests. We are reminded that this whole performance is just that—a show put on for everyone but himself.

Quote #4
p. 84
[Gatsby impresses Daisy with his shirt collection.]

“… he began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel …While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, [Daisy] began to cry stormily.

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed … “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such –such beautiful shirts before.”

This quote, which comes at the climax of Gatsby’s tour of his mansion, highlights Daisy’s shallow, materialistic nature and Gatsby’s pathetic, transparent efforts to impress her. Gatsby has acquired the trappings of wealth and privilege to the point of absurdity. It’s clear that the shirts, like all of Gatsby’s possessions, exist for the sole purpose of convincing Daisy of his worth. Importantly, Daisy is not moved by the fact that Gatsby has dedicated his life since they parted to winning her back, that he has kept a constant vigil for their lost love. No, Daisy is crying because the shirts are beautiful.

Quote #5
p. 107
[Gatsby describes Daisy’s voice.]

“Her voice is full of money,” [Gatsby] said suddenly.

That was it. … that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbal’s song of it…”

Much is made throughout the book of Daisy’s voice, the musical quality of it, its allure, and its seductive power. At one point it is described as a “deathless song.” In this quote, Gatsby finally and simply captures the essence of it: money. Fitzgerald has succeeded in fully internalizing Daisy’s exalted position not only through her appearance and manners, but also in the very sound of her voice. This also reinforces the strong musical theme that runs through the book.

Quote #6
p. 132
[Gatsby idealizes wealth.]

“…Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealthy imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.”

This quote is important for two reasons. First it demonstrates the idealization that Gatsby maintains of the rich. It’s a fantastic, fantasy view of money—pure imagination. And this concept of wealth, that Gatsby formed at an early age, has stayed with him throughout his life, unspoiled by life’s realities, including even war.

Second, this quote foreshadows what’s to come. Gatsby imagines Daisy, because of her position, to be above the struggles of the poor. In fact, she becomes a central player in these struggles, when she accidentally kills Tom’s mistress, Myrtle Wilson, as Myrtle tries to escape her husband and her miserable life.

Quote #7
[Exchange between Nick and Gatsby.]

“You can’t repeat the past.”

“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”

There is no end to Gatsby’s romantic idealism. He never matures, or moves beyond his 17-year old conception of the world. He does not permit incidental facts, like the passage of time, to dampen his dreams. He honestly believe that he can return to the past and to his short-lived affair with Daisy.

Quote #8
p. 141
[Wilson recognizes the eyes of “God”.]

Wilson: “God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!”

Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night.

“God sees everything,” repeated Wilson.

“That’s an advertisement,” Michaelis assured him.

This exchange between the distraught Wilson, and Michaelis, a local restaurant owner, is important because it finally brings to light the full impact of the billboard, the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. At various points throughout the story, we are reminded that the watchful eyes of Dr. Eckleburg keep vigil over the sad happenings of the valley of ashes. Now the eyes are most explicitly equated with the eyes of God, the omniscient witness to the tragic incident that forms the novel’s climax.

Quote #9
p. 159
[Gatsby believes in the future.]

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us…tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning—“

At the close of the book, Nick tries to describe the nature of Gatsby’s hope and draws the parallel to all of our hopes.

Quote #10
p. 159
[America is a vast land of possibility.]

“…gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. … for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”

Possibly, one of the most quoted passages in the book, Fitzgerald likens the hopes and dreams of the first European settlers to those of Gatsby. The virgin continent, with all of its untouched potential, is symbolic of the vast opportunity that continues to fuel the American dream. The “capacity for wonder” reminds us of Gatsby’s “extraordinary gift for hope.” We realize that Gatsby is not unique in his romantic idealism. We understand that so many of us are lured by the promise of something great, something equal to our ability to dream. And in many ways this quality is uniquely American.

Assignment 1:  Study Questions:  Address the following questions.  Please type your responses (MLA format), save your work as a Microsoft Word document, and e-mail it to me by class time on the date due.  If for some reason you are incapable of submitting your assignment in this manner, please be sure to bring a typed hard copy to class on the date due.  PLEASE NOTE: IT IS PREFERRED THAT YOU SUBMIT YOUR ASSIGNMENT VIA EMAIL.

Chapter 1

1. Consider the references to people in literature or history in the chapter. What purpose(s) do they serve?

2. Write a character sketch of Daisy (or Tom or Jordan), focusing on the recurring “tag” used to describe them. Daisy leans forward and talks in a low voice; Tom is restless and hulking; Jordan balances something on her chin almost in an athletic stance. What is Fitzgerald’s purpose in thus describing them?

3. Explain how the first chapter of this novel is critically important in the development of plot, characters, and themes.

Chapter 2

1. Consider the possibilities of an agrarian society being the epitome of the American Dream. Find evidences of farming or pastoral scenes and diction in the first two chapters which suggest the belief that such a society fulfills the ideal American Dream.

2. Contrast the green light at the end of Chapter 1 and the gray images in the Valley of Ashes in Chapter 2. What thematic statement do the contrasting images reveal?

3. How can George Wilson be said to symbolize the American Dream? Consider the Horatio Alger (“rags-to-riches”) motif, as well as his undying desire to better his situation.

4. Write about Fitzgerald’s poetic style, focusing especially on the vivid metaphors and images, such as this description from Catherine: “Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle, but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face.” How is Fitzgerald a disciplined writer with great control of his prose?

5. Research descriptions of archetypal heroes, including their mysterious beginnings associated with rumors and mythical power. Consider Gatsby as such a hero, based upon the rumors surrounding him.

Chapter 3

1. Trace references to music in the Jazz Age—specific songs, types of instruments, description of the sounds—and draw a conclusion about their purpose(s). Discuss the dominant musical types of the 1920s.

2. Find a list of the seven deadly sins and the seven cardinal virtues. Write a paper in which you analyze some or all of the characters in regard to these sins and virtues. Which vice or virtue does each manifest?

3. Study Nick as a symbol of honesty and Jordan as a symbol of dishonesty. Write a character sketch which reveals their likenesses and differences in terms of veracity and credibility.

Chapter 4

1. Show how the American Dream associated with America’s past has succumbed to mercenary, almost exclusively materialistic values, derived from get-rich-quick schemes. Find evidence of the historical basis in fact and corresponding evidence in the novel.

2. Elaborate on the epigram: “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.” Show how it contributes to the development of plot, character, and theme in the novel. Give justification for its being the single most important line in the novel.

3. Determine where this chapter fits on the pyramid of dramatic structure: antecedent action (or what has taken place before the action of the novel begins), inciting moment (or the catalyst which creates interest in the actions and conflicts which follow), rising action (or the intensifying of interest and suspense), climax (or most intense moment from which there is no turning back for the protagonist), reversal (or falling action), and denouément (or tying up of loose ends). Defend your decision.

4. Select one or more of the names Nick lists on his timetable, and research to discover their stories and to comprehend Fitzgerald’s choice of those names. How were they involved in American history?

5. Research Montenegro and discern its role in World War I. Gauge Gatsby’s account of wartime activity by these historical findings.

Chapter 5

1. Consider ways in which Gatsby might be a counterpart to Don Quixote. Research the characteristics of this fictional Spanish dreamer, and write an essay in which you show their likenesses and, of course, differences.

2. Consider ways in which Tom Buchanan and George Wilson are alike, in that the wives of both men are capable of being lured away by another man. Therefore, both men, different as they are, are cuckolds (a Middle Ages term, defining men whose wives are unfaithful. In the legendary account, such husbands were said to grow horns, thus becoming monsters).

3. The reunion of Daisy and Gatsby, a rather sordid relationship, signals simultaneously the beginning and the end of Gatsby’s dream and of his success. Justify this statement.

Chapter 6

1. Study the various parties and guests at the parties in order to construct a thesis and arguments that typify America and Americans at play in the 1920s. What do the parties reveal about these guests?

2. Consider all the meanings of Daisy’s admiration for the movie director leaning over his wife. Does she see herself in that image? Is Fitzgerald simply magnifying film, a new medium in the 1920s?

3. Gatsby grew into adolescence after being introduced to a tawdry lifestyle on Dan Cody’s yacht. Show how the boy on the yacht was ironically more worldly and realistic than the unrealistic adult gazing longingly at the green light.

4. In what ways can Nick be said to be the real hero of the story? Prove your answer.

5. Select a line or a passage about time and show its thematic significance.

Chapter 7

1. Write an essay analyzing the Gatsby-Trimalchio connection and its importance. Compare Trimalchio, the hero or protagonist of The Satyricon, to Gatsby. Refer to William Rose Benét’s The Reader’s Encyclopedia for concise background information.

2. Trace the recurring image of eyes, and ascertain the purposes of those images. Consider blindness on any level as well as sight.

3. Compare the two passages below from T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland with remarkably similar ones from The Great Gatsby. Better still, find a copy of the poem and discover other passages which correspond. What do the similarities suggest?

“I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones . . . ”

“What shall I do now? What shall I do?
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
With my hair down, so, What shall we do tomorrow?”

and from Gatsby, Chapter 2:

“It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head.”

and from Chapter 7:

“What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and the day after that, and the next thirty years?”

4. Explain the significance of the comments: “They weren’t happy . . . and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.”

Chapter 8

1. Some of the characters in the novel symbolize a production ethic; others symbolize a consumption ethic. Classify the characters accordingly, and draw a conclusion about the American Dream, as you understand it, from Fitzgerald.

2. Eyes and sight recur frequently in the novel. What is Fitzgerald’s statement about the ability to distinguish between illusion and reality?

3. How is this story an ironic inversion of a knightly quest for the grail?

Chapter 9

1. Why does Nick compare the Dutch sailors to Gatsby? How does the comparison help to state Fitzgerald’s conclusion?

2. How is the story an ironic twist of the American Dream? Consider Daisy and Gatsby, Daisy and Tom, Myrtle and George Wilson, Myrtle and Tom, Nick and Jordan.

3. Nick speaks of the “corruption” of Gatsby’s guests and Gatsby’s “incorruptible dream.” How do these phrases begin to pull all the threads of the story together?

4. How does Fitzgerald make statements about pseudo-intellectualism?

5. Fitzgerald demonstrates the power of proper names. Prove this statement.

6. Compare the beginning and the ending of the novel. Has Gatsby changed? Has Nick changed? Explain and justify your responses.

Assignment 2:  Log Assignments:  In at least one page for each, address all of the following questions.  Please type your responses (MLA format), save the assignment as a Microsoft Word document, and e-mail it to me by class time on the date due.  If for some reason you are incapable of submitting your assignment in this manner, please be sure to bring a typed hard copy to class on the date due.  PLEASE NOTE: IT IS PREFERRED THAT YOU SUBMIT YOUR ASSIGNMENT VIA EMAIL.

1.  Consider the following quote.  What does it reveal about the character of Gatsby and the novel’s themes?  Your analysis should be deep.  Take into account what you know about the character from your reading thus far, as well as class discussion and analysis. Your response should be no longer than 250 words. 

“When the Jazz History of the World was over, girls where putting their heads on men’s shoulders, … swooning backward playfully into men’s arms, … but no one swooned backward on Gatsby, and no French bob touched Gatsby’s shoulder, and no singing quartets were formed with Gatsby’s head for one link.”

2.  Discuss Fitzgerald’s use of Greek god imagery at various points throughout the portion of the novel you have read thus far.  Specifically, how does Fitzgerald further one or more of the novel’s themes using this imagery?

3.  Gatsby spent his adolescence learning about a tawdry way of life on Dan Cody’s yacht (Ch. 6).  How might it be said that the adolescent Gatsby is in some ways more worldly than the adult Gatsby?  Be sure to cite examples to support your answer.

Assignment 3:  Essay.  Choose one of the following prompts on which to complete a formal essay.  Please follow MLA guidelines for the format of your finished paper. 

Keep in mind the following:

1. This is a formal essay assignment.  Take it seriously.

2. Although you are encouraged to refer to class notes and Assignment 1 presentations in your essay, THIS IS AN INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT, AND YOU MUST DO YOUR OWN WORK.

3. You must use direct quotes from the text in the body of your essay.  Use a combination of block (at least 4 lines) and in-text quotes.  Be sure to incorporate the quote into the text of your sentence (no floated quotes).

4. Forget the term "attention-getter" or "hook" for the first sentence of your introductory paragraph.  Consider it instead a topic sentence for the paragraph containing your thesis.  This means that your topic sentence should reference not just the work but present an indication of the direction of your analysis.

5. Your thesis statement MUST reference the prompt.  In this case, you must indicate the presentation of/ workings of/ significance of the particular element on which you choose to write this essay.  If you do not, your thesis statement will not satisfy the requirements for this assignment, and, therefore, neither will the essay as a whole.

6. In order to receive a high grade, you must avoid generalizations.  In other words, make no unsupported statements about the work that lack specificity or significance.

7. This is a formal essay.  Therefore, your essay should be written in the present tense and be free of personal pronouns and mechanical (grammatical and spelling) errors.

Essay Prompts

1.   What comment does Fitzgerald make about class-consciousness (old money vs. “nouveau riche”, the economic underclass, the middle class, etc.) in The Great Gatsby?  How is each  socio-economic class characterized in the novel, and what is the nature of their interrelation?  How might this element relate to the theme of the decay of America’s promise?  Be sure to use quotes and/ or specifics to support your thesis.  

 2.  Explain how Fitzgerald presents the theme of the corruption of the American dream in The Great Gatsby.  Be sure to look specifically to individual characters to support your thesis.

 3.  Trace Fitzgerald’s use of one of the primary symbols/ motifs in the novel (time, color, flowers, automobiles, eyes, geographical landmarks [Valley of Ashes, The Eggs, New York City] etc), and explain how the author’s use of the symbol supports his presentation of one or more of the novel’s themes.  Be sure you use specific examples/ quotes to support your thesis.

 4.  Analyze Fitzgerald’s choice of narrator for the novel’s action.  Specifically, how can it be said that, while Nick proclaims himself non-judgmental, he serves as the novel’s “moral center”?  Be sure to use specific examples/ quotes to support your thesis.

 5.  Explain how The Great Gatsby is an example of the modernist novel, and, therefore, how it stands as a refutation of older, more traditional ideas.  Be sure to use specific examples/ quotes to support your thesis.

 6.  Explain how Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is the “great American novel.”  Be sure to address the primary elements of literature in your response:  theme, character, imagery, point-of-view, symbolism, and to use examples/ quotes to support your thesis. 

Assignment 4:  Exegesis: 

What is an Exegesis?

 An exegesis is a critical commentary/interpretation/close reading of an extracted passage.  This commentary/interpretation/close reading is an isolated activity: the text is extracted from the work and so removed from its original context, allowing it to be discussed as a “complete” text in and of itself—its placement in the context of the work is no longer relevant.  The toughest duty performed in producing an exegesis is to determine the lens/ focus through which the passage will be read.  Once the lens/focus is determined, the act of “reading” becomes the act of moving through the passage pulling only and all that validates that chosen lens/focus.  Do not explicate: do not give a line by line reading of the extracted text.  The lens/focus is to be a controlling idea much like a topic sentence of a paragraph, stating essentially, “this is what I will prove is true and I will do it with the text I have extracted and nothing else.”  There is no summary in an exegesis just as there are no citations.  There are, however, almost always words and phrases presented in quotation marks—there is a deconstruction of the extracted text, thus potions of it will be restated so to provide the reader with absolute clarity as to what is referenced. 

An exegesis is to rely on an extracted piece of text about 100 words in length.  You may remove incremental pieces of text, dialogue for instance, by incorporating an ellipsis, but must, overall, choose the extracted text for its fullness without having to skip whole paragraphs, pages, and so on.  The body of the exegesis is to be between 250 and 400 words, about the size of a larger paragraph, as called for by the controlling idea purported at the open of the exegesis body.

The lens/focus of an exegesis, the controlling idea or topic sentence-like statement, most commonly considers issues pertaining to style analysis—a sharp look at authorial decisions regarding inclusions and exclusions (and so presence and absence) of literary devices—and how such choices work to convey an idea, authorial comment, or an aspect of the literary time period, though this list is anything but exhaustive.  The action of style analysis is honing in on devices such as diction, syntax, description, imagery, metaphor/simile, alliteration, juxtaposition, irony/tone, personification, verb type, symbolism, punctuation, transitions, and so on.  An exegesis will never take all or even many of these devices into consideration in a single “reading.” 

Formatting an exegesis is simple.  The heading is MLA standard format.  The title is Exegesis, though you may title your exegesis something sassier if you wish.  The paper begins with the extracted text, formatted as an extended quotation as prescribed by MLA (see the handout given at the open of the year, or the sample Exegesis for model).  The body of the exegesis then begins at the left margin, not indented.  All that follows is blocked—there are no indentations unless called for through the natural progression of the “reading.”

 Sample Exegesis

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land.  This is the valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.  Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.  (opening paragraph, Chapter II)

 In his description of the valley of ashes in the opening of Chapter II, Fitzgerald uses paradoxical diction and imagery in order to reveal his themes of moral corruption and decay in American society.  The road itself “shrinks” from his “ghastly” wasteland, devoid of life and color.  All is covered in grey ash, from “grey cars” to “ash-grey men,” and is thus indistinguishable.  In other words, everything lacks identity or purpose just as America, too, has lost its meaningfulness, purpose and hope.  This lack of purpose and meaning is reaffirmed by the reader’s inability to see or understand:  the cloud of ash is “impenetrable.”  Yet even if one could see through it, it masks operations which are themselves “obscure.”  This “desolate area” is ironically called a valley; valleys often connote fertility and lushness, the exact opposite of this decaying, useless dump.  Fitzgerald then begins a series of alliterations:  “fantastic farm,” “grotesque gardens,” and “obscure operations.”  Alliteration is often the language of poetry; it is musical and playful.  This lilting language, however, juxtaposes what it describes.  The beauty and lushness of poetry have been perverted into something rotting and sterile, reflecting America’s loss of innocence and purity.  Form and content are incongruous in that this valley of ashes is referred to as a farm, something usually associated with growth and productivity.  In the same vein, this “garden,” instead of being Edenic, pure, and full of life, is now “grotesque” and “ghastly,” diction which conjures up images of death and decay.  Continuing the mockery of what American idealism and purity have become, “crumbling” men move “dimly” and with a “transcendent effort.”  Transcendence ironically implies loftiness and elevation, that which is beyond human knowledge or godly.  There is nothing godly, however, in this ashen, meaningless wasteland.  Finally, there is a notable lack of punctuation in the passage.  For instance, the lack of commas in the first sentence leaves the reader a bit disoriented and confused, mirroring the confusion of a superficial, meaningless, godless world.  The lack of punctuation reflects the loss of order, stability and meaning in modern American society.