Background
Notes for
The Great
Gatsby
Published in 1925
 Set in 1922
 WW1 ended in 1918
 16 million dead, 20 million wounded
 People questioned values that allowed such a war
to happen.
 WW1 meant to be the ‘war to end all wars’.
 Reject the past and replace with a modern culture
United States in 1920s
 Economy boomed in 1920s
 Not damaged by the aftermath of WW1, unlike
Europe
 Money allowed lifestyle based on parties and
spending
 Known as ‘Roaring Twenties’
 Stockmarket crash in 1929 triggered the Great
Depression, a period of high unemployment and
great poverty.
Jazz Age
 Thousands of African Americans moved to the North.
 NY’s black population increased 66% between 1910 and
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1920.
Jazz music seen as true American form of music and in
spirit of the time—breaking conventions.
Jazz music in GG, but very few African Americans
Energetic sound and complex rhythms
New dances to accompany music
Women
 WW1 meant many men had gone to fight and women had
filled some of the jobs.
 1920 women allowed to vote
 Short hair, loose fashions, shorter dresses allowed freedom of
movement ‘flappers’
 Jordan Baker modern woman
Rise of Celebrities
 Illustrated Daily News and other tabloid newspapers focused
on scandal and celebrities.
 Gossip magazines—Myrtle buys a gossip magazine
 Rise of film stars
 Phonograph—rise of music recording stars
Prohibition
 1920 18th Amendment made it illegal to
sell, manufacture or transport alcohol.
 Intended to control alcohol abuse and decrease
corruption and crime.
 Illegal trafficking of alcohol increased
organized crime--Al Capone
 Bootlegging--illegal manufacture of alcohol
 In GG, bootlegging is one possibility as a
source of Gatsby’s wealth
 Meyer Wolfsheim--Capone figure in GG
 Wolfsheims’s cufflinks ‘human molars’
Wealth
 Technology produced new opportunities for Americans
to acquire possessions automobiles, motions pictures,
electric appliances.
 Gatsby has trappngs of wealth, lavishly furnished house,
cars, boats, plane, clothes.
 Newness and excess of wealth his mansion
 ‘spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy’.
Race Relations
 GG almost every character is white, Protestant.
 Tom “it’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch
out or those other races will have control of things.”
 Fear of black people, anti-Semitism (fear of Jewish
people)
 Portrayal of Wolfsheim
 Anti-Semitism and racism reflection
of the times
What’s in a Title?
 Fitzgerald considered the following titles:
 Among the Ash-Heaps and Millionaires
 Gatsby
 Gold-Hatted Gatsby
 The High-Bouncing Lover
 On the Road toWest Egg
 Under the Red,White and Blue
 Trimalchio
 Trimalchio in West Egg
*Trimalchio is a character from a Roman story who made a great
show of his new money by throwing lavish parties.
Cover
 Art Deco designed by Francis Cugat
 Art deco fashionable in 20s and 30s.
 Highly stylized, symmetry, abstract shapes such as sunbursts.
 Fitzgerald pleaded with his publisher not to give the cover to
another author.
Narrative Technique
 Narrator tells story with specific perspective informed by his
beliefs and experiences.
 Can be minor or major characters, or exist outside story
 Weaves his point of view, including ignorance and bias into
telling the tale.
Narrator cont.
 GG told in first person by Nick
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Carroway.
Begins with an older Nick,
reminiscing on events.
Nick’s perspective entangled in
action subjectively depicts a
series of events.
P 59 ‘I am one of the few honest
people I have ever known’. Is
Nick a reliable narrator?
Nick’s voice is not Fitzgerald’s
voice.
Can we tell when Fitzgerald’s
voice breaks through?
Themes
 Themes are central, recurring subjects.
 Exploration of themes within a novel
poses fundamental questions for the
reader about human life, social
pressures, societal expectations.
 Age-old debates will be presented from
new points of view or in new
contexts.
Class Conflict
‘Old money’ versus ‘new money’
Compare East Egg and West Egg
Gatsby represents ‘new money’
Tom Buchanan represents ‘old
money’. He is snobbish about
Gatsby’s pink suit and his ‘circus
wagon’, his yellow car.
 Working class people in Valley of
Ashes--seen as indistinct and
colourless
 Different rules for different people.
 Tom and Daisy smash things then
leave, they face no real
consequences for their actions.
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Materialism
 GG generation threw away old
values but did not replace them with
lasting values of its own.
 There is the idea that material
possessions can give value to
people’s lives.
 Myrtle connects material things
with fulfilment and identity--but she
is killed by expensive car, ultimate
symbol of materialism and wealth.
 Gatsby defines himself by his
possessions, but has no true friends.
The American Dream
 Ability of a person to achieve success
through hard work
 Idea of the ‘self made man’
 Gatsby’s list of self-improvement goals in
ch 9
 G builds a new world for himself and
Daisy complete with new name and
fortune.”So he invented just the sort of
Jay Gatsby that a 17- year-old boy would
be likely to invent, and to this conception
he was faithful to the end.”
The American Dream contd.
 The American Dream replaced by materialism and lack
of core values.
 G’s dream is shallow, obsessive, materialistic and
tainted by crime.
 GG about smashing the American Dream?
East versus West
 West seen as frontier and not
corrupted in the same way as the
East.
 Dan Cody--pioneer from the
frontier
 West seen as rooted in its past ‘a
little complacent from growing up
in the Carraway house in a city
where dwelllings are still called
through decades by a family’s
name’.
 ‘I see now this has been a story of
the West after all”.
Alienation
 People appear and disappear
in the novel or cannot be seen
clearly.
 Fitzgerald uses parties to
highlight his characters’
failures to relate to one
another.
 Nick is the only person who
attends G’s funeral (and Owl
Eyes). Is it true friendship, or
is it pity?
Identity
 Gatsby reinvents himself as a new
man, but is he judged for this?
 Was Gatsby doomed as long as he
disguised his origins as a midWestern boy?
Symbols and Motifs
 Persons, places or things in a
narrative that have
significance beyond the
literal. Symbols present ideas
and point to new meanings.
Motifs are recurring symbols
that produce narrative
elements such as theme or
tone or mood.
.
Motif: Eyes of T.J. Eckleburg
 Advertising hoarding looms over the action including scene of
Myrtle’s death.
 All-seeing like the ‘eyes of God’, but in fact an advertisement.
 Longing for traditional values, but replaced with materialistic
values.
 Links to the motif of shifting, blurred identities ‘distorted beyond
my eye’s power of correction’
Some Symbols and Motifs
 Green light at end of Daisy’s dock--the unattainable
 Cars--powerful, destructive, separate the careless from the
working class in Valley of Ashes. Self-centered and careless and
do not take responsibility for the power of a car--Jordan
expects others to take care, she is allowed to be careless.
 Valley of Ashes
 Flowers--beauty, but often overripe, excessive, heavilyscented, trampled.
 Colour--yellow, blue, green, white
The Cover to the novel
 The Great Gatsby has been published with many different
covers. Go to:
http://www.thefoxisblack.com/2011/01/10/re-coveredbooks-the-great-gatsby/
to see new interpretations.
Bibliography
 “The Great Gatsby Reader’s
Guide”. The Big Read. Arts
Midwest, Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
http://www.neabigread.org/bo
oks/greatgatsby/ggatsby09.php
 Hensley, Laura J. F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby.
Oxford: Harcourt Education,
2007. Print. 813.52 HEN