Ms Isabella Marinaro
The Great Gatsby
(publ. 1925)
Ms Isabella Marinaro
The Great Gatsby
author: Francis Scott Fitzgerald
type of work: novel
genre: “modernist” novel, Jazz Age novel and novel of
manners
time & place written: 1923-24, USA and France
date of first publication: 1925
publisher: Charles Scribner’s Sons
narrator: Nick Carraway; his own point of view, as if he were
the author
Ms Isabella Marinaro
type of narration: both in the first and in the third person (as it
is always Nick’s voice which tells the story). In some points he
observes the situations giving his own interpretations, some other
times he presents facts objectively
tone: it depends on Nick’s attitude toward Gatsby => ambivalent /
contradictory. Sometimes he disapproves Gatsby for his excess,
sometimes he admires him for his heroic romanticism
tense: past
setting (time): Summer 1922
setting (place): Long Island (East & West Egg) and New York
protagonist: Gatsby and / or Nick
Ms Isabella Marinaro
major conflict: in a mysterious way, J. Gatsby has got a huge
fortune to win back her former girl friend, the aristocratic Daisy,
who has married a wealthy man, Tom Buchanan, who does not love
her. She seems to fall in love with him again, but in the end she
shows all her cynical behaviour.
climax: (a) Gatsby’s meeting with Daisy – chapters 5-6;
(b) the confrontation between Gatsby and Tom at the Plaza
Hotel (7)
falling actions: (a) Daisy’s final rejection of Gatsby;
(b) Myrtle’s accidental death;
(c) Gatsby’s murder
themes: (a) the decline of the “American dream”;
(b) the atmosphere of the Twenties;
(c) the gap between social classes;
(d) how much past dreams may influence the future;
(e) the hollowness of the upper class
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motifs: (a) connection between events & weather;
(b) connection between geographical location & social values;
(c) images of time;
(d) extravagant parties;
(e) crazy quest for wealth
symbols: (a) the green light on Daisy’s dock (= Gatsby’s and American
dream);
(b) the eyes of doctor Eckleburg (= a sort of modern God’s
eyes);
(c) the Valley of Ashes (= like Eliot’s “Waste Land”, what
remains of old good values after WW1 and the other side
of Twenties’ wealth);
(d) Gatsby’s parties (= post war frantic desire for wealth);
(e) East & West Egg (= cold and old aristocracy vs new
people).
Ms Isabella Marinaro
SYMMETRY & ASIMMETRY
in The Great Gatsby
chapter 1: presentation of the narrator, Nick; setting of the scene; Nick
quotes his own father
chapter 2: adulterous relation
chapter 3: party at Gatsby’s house / there’s an accident
chapter 4: gossips, details of relationships, courtship
chapter 5: pivot point of the novel => reunion of Daisy and Gatsby;
two songs quoted
chapter 6: gossips, details of relationships, courtship
chapter 7: meeting at plaza Hotel / there’s the accident
chapter 8: adulterous relation
chapter 9 : conclusions of the narrator, Nick. Nick meets Gatsby’s father
Ms Isabella Marinaro
The Great Gatsby
analysis of characters
Jay Gatsby
-about 30 y.o.
-impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota
-despises poverty, longs for wealth and sophistication
-acquires a huge fortune in a mysterious way (ch. 7 we know how) above all to
win Daisy back
-meets Daisy as a young military officer in Louisville before leaving for WW1 in
1917
-he lies to her about his background; Daisy promises to wait for him to marry him
but she marries Tom Buchanan in 1919, while Gatsby is studying at Oxford to
improve his education
-he buys a magnificent mansion on West Egg and gives lavish weekly parties to
get a fame and get Daisy back (who lives on East Egg)
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-surrounded by powerful men and beautiful women
-all New York gossips around him
-in the novel his fame precedes him: Fitzgerald
delays his main character to underline the theatrical
style of life of the hero and to increase also the
reader’s curiosity for him
- his real name is James Gatz and he changes his name to reinvent himself – even
through criminal activity to make his fortune, gain a new social position
necessary to win Daisy.
- nobody knows his real past
-he is “great” as great was “The Great Houdini”, e.g.
He believes in the “green light” (coming from Daisy’s
house on the other side of the harbour), that “orgastic
future” that any human being struggles for to get a
better tomorrow by re-creating a past
= THE AMERICAN DREAM
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-Gatsby is an innocent, hopeful young man who has the courage to believe in
his own dreams
Gatsby is SMILE
-he symbolizes one of the main themes of the novel, which is the
SUPERIORITY OF IMAGINATION AS OUR REALITY IS ALWAYS DISAPPOINTING
-Gatsby’s dream of Daisy disintegrates => reveals the corruption of wealth,
just like Fitzgerald sees the US’s dream crumbling in the 1920s
-Gatsby is the contary of Tom Buchanan who
is “muscle”, cold-hearted, aristocratic bully,
but unfaithful to everyone and selfish
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Nick Carraway
- the narrative voice of the novel
- he plays the same role as
Marlow in Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness (F. was very fond of
Conrad); his thoughts /
perceptions give shape to the
story
- young man, turns 30 during the narration
- he reflects one part of Fitzgerald’s personality; sometimes expresses F.’s point
of view
- he is the reflective Midwesterner adrift in the East; he is from Minnesota
- educated at Yale – where he meets Tom Buchanan – fights in WW1
- goes to NY to learn the bond business and lives on the West Egg next door to
Gatsby
- tolerant, open-minded, honest, quiet, good listener, people treat him as a
confidant.
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- a romantic affair with Jordan Baker, Daisy’s friend
- Daisy’s cousin, he helps Gatsby to meet Daisy again
- attracted by NY’s style, at the same time he finds it grotesque and dangerous
- one of the few people who partecipates at Gatsby’s funeral
- at the end of the book he
realizes the lifestyle on the
East Coast is a cover for the
terrifying moral emptiness
symbolized in the book with
the Valley of Ashes.
- got his maturity, goes back to
Minnesota, where life is still
according to traditional values
Ms Isabella Marinaro
Nick sees Gatsby as a man full of
defects, deeply dishonest and even
vulgar
but
Gatsby’s extraordinary optimism, his will and power
to transform his dreams into reality make him “great”
nonetheless.
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Daisy Buchanan
Tom Buchanan’s wife; loved by
Gatsby
partially based on Fitzgerald’s
wife, Zelda Sayre , for her
desire for wealth, fun and her
delaying their marriage until
Fizgerald became rich and
famous.
Just like the novel’s two heroes, Fitzgerald met Zelda during his military service
beautiful young woman from a rich family of Kentucky
Gatsby lied to her about his background to convince her to marry him
Ms Isabella Marinaro
they made love before he left for
the WW1
she promised to wait for his
return to get married
but while he was studying at
Oxford to make a learning, in
1919 Daisy marries Tom
Buchanan, from an aristocratic
family and who promised her a
very wealthy lifestyle
she behaves superficially to mask her disillusionment with Tom’s constant
infidelity
Gatsby dedicates his life to win Daisy back = she becomes his single goal of all
his life and dreams => he needs an immense wealth even if through criminal
activity (maybe bootlegging during “Prohibitionism” – 18th Amendment to
the Constitution, from 1919 to 1933)
Ms Isabella Marinaro
Daisy becomes a myth for J. Gatsby: perfection, charm, wealth, sophistication,
grace, aristocracy.
Daisy represents all that he had longed for when he was a poor boy in North
Dakota
but how is Daisy actually?
In spite of her charm and beauty,
she is fickle, shallow, sardonic,
cynical, bored, indifferent, pitiless,
with her “voice full of money”…
…Daisy is the metaphor of America,
Fitzgerald’s idea of the US in the
1920s, a country marked by those
amoral values of the aristocratic
East Egg set.
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Tom Buchanan
Daisy’s wealthy husband, he
betrays her with Myrtle Wilson
arrogant, hypocritical, racist and sexist
Tom is MUSCLE
he shared Nick’s social club at Yale University
he has no qualm about his love affair with Myrtle –
who he does not actually love, but being male
chauvinist, he gets angry when he suspects about
Daisy and Gatsby’s affair
Ms Isabella Marinaro
Jordan Baker
Daisy’s best friend, a famous golf player
Nick has a romantic involvement with
her
the symbol of the “new woman” of the Twenties: boyish, self-centred, cynical
beautiful but dishonest; she cheats during golf matches, she bends the truth
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Myrtle Wilson
Tom’s lover, she carries out a
double life, one in a NY flat
belonging to Tom, the other with
his lifeless husband running a
garage in the Valley of Ashes
her husband, George, has idealized her: even if he knows she betrays him,
he is helpless
she is a desperately unsatisfied woman, longing for improving her situation
for Tom she is simply an object of desire as she is vital, fierce, beautiful
she will be killed in an awful accident while Daisy was driving Gatsby’s yellow car
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George Wilson
Myrtle’s husband
lifeless man, unhappy, in love with his
woman. He has idealized her, he is
devastated by her affair with Tom Buchanan
he gets mad when Myrtle has the accident and he looks for his revenge against
her killer. Opportunely misadvised by Tom himself,
he tries to get rid of his wife’s killer. But he is wrong
George kills Gatsby, the yellow car’s owner, without knowing Daisy was the driver
then he commits suicide maybe because his life without Myrtle is meaningless
the victim (Gatsby) and his killer (George) have something in common:
both of them are dreamers in love with women that Tom Buchanan “owns”
Ms Isabella Marinaro
Meyer Wolfsheim
Gatsby’s long-standing friend
an important man in organized crime
it is Wolfsheim who has helped Gatsby
to become so rich by bootlegging illegal liquor
in the novel Gatsby still meets him frequently, that suggests he is still involved
in some illegal business
he does not attend Gatsby’s funeral, like all the others, because
a “dead friend” is useless
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Klipspringer
a strange character who lives at
Gatsby’s mansion, a sort of
freeloader who takes
advantage of Gatsby’s richness
he does not attend Gatsby’s funeral, but he cannot help phoning Nick
to get back a pair of tennis shoes he has left at Gatsby’s house
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Dr Eckleburg’s eyes
a fading bespectacled blank stare painted
eyes to advertise the activity of that oculist
they are situated just in front of the Wilsons’
house, in the hollow Valley of Ashes
George Wilson is particularly obsessed by that picture,
seen his grief-stricken mind and depression
they may represent a modern God staring and judging that waste land that
the US have become
Ms Isabella Marinaro
What is the real meaning of The Great Gatsby?
beyond a thwarted love between two people
there is a less romantic goal:
a meditation on 1920s US as a
country which has started the
disintegration of its dream
in a period of excessive
material prosperity
newfound materialism, social climbers,
ambitious speculators, the clash
between old money and new money
a portrait of a historical
moment of decayed social
and moral values, of
cynicism, of search for
wealth at any cost which
overcomes any noble goal
Gatsby’s dream fails for the
unworthiness of his object just like
the American dream fails for the
unworthiness of its object = MONEY
& PLEASURE and the “ dream” finally
collapses on October 23rd 1929,
the “Black Thursday” of Wall Street
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DISPLACED SPIRITUALITY IN
THE GREAT GATSBY
Fitzgerald tackles over the theme of
SPIRITUALITY in a subtle way:
NOT WHAT IS THERE
but WHAT IS MISSING
WHY?
Ms Isabella Marinaro
Fitzgerald reflects on the US society BEFORE & AFTER WW1, its values
the novel takes place in summer 1922, “the jazz age” (F.S.F.),
published in 1925
after
before
traditional religious teachings
growing moral decrepitude
misreading the material world
basic tenets of human compassion
busy life which makes people lose
touch with any sort of morality:
charity
timeworn values
staid conservatism
breaking
laws
cheating
killing
Ms Isabella Marinaro
So The Great Gatsby ‘s partiers live in
a world lacking order and structure represented by
East Egg
East Eggers are an élite out of touch
with reality, treating people as objects.
They lack pureness.
(the Buchanans, Jordan Baker)
West Egg
West Eggers are somewhat
above the East Eggers
(Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway)
Fitzgerald seems to suggest that the Midwest is the land of
promise, the land Nick and James Gatz both came from,
( the former from Minnesota, the latter from North Dakota)
“We possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable
to Eastern life” (Nick Carraway)
Ms Isabella Marinaro
After the Buchanans’ dinner party, the book presents EXCESS only and every
one of the seven deadly sins:
pride
wrath
envy
avarice
lust
gluttony
sloth
while the seven cardinal virtues are nearly visible:
faith
hope
justice
charity
fortitude
prudence
temperance
Ms Isabella Marinaro
But Fitzgerald is not proposing a Christian message
He is rather ecouraging readers to stop
and take inventory of their lives
Fitzgerald is urging a reconsideration of where society is
and where it is going
A highly symbolic meditation on 1920s US , in
particular the disintegration of the American dream
in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material
excess (which will collapse in 1929)