Importance of Place in American Literature

Point 1

Image & passing = deconstructed/reinforced by place

Point 1 - Gatsby

AO1 - NYC deconstructs image of T, D & G as it = space of escape & transgression - Plaza

AO2 - ‘Tom’s got some woman in NY’ ‘it always had a quality of distortion’ ‘anything can happen now we’ve slid over this bridge’

AO3 - NYC in 1920s - instability - rapidly changing norms - illegal activity

AO5 - ‘an ornate stage set for Gatsby’s performance of legitimacy’ (Person) ‘novel explores the dream space of capitalism’ (Jameson)

Point 1 - Passing

AO1 - Harlem & I’s home = her place in society - maintain her passing in black bourgeoisie life - enables repressing of feelings for C

AO2 - ‘she wanted only to be tranquil’ ‘inexplicable onrush of affectionate feeling’ ‘and did…too much faith in safety and permanence unfit one for these other things’

AO3 - experience of black women - NL’s own - black community confined to Harlem for safety

AO5 - Irene ‘acknowledges her greatest concern is for security’ (Bernstein) ‘we might ask if I = passing when she poses as the doctor’s wife, mother, social do-gooder’ (Kreuger)

Point 2

Depiction of places of downfall for both characters & how they differ in importance

Point 2 - Gatsby

AO1 - WE & EE = Gatsby’s fantasy life he craves & reality that his dream doesn’t exist - can’t be achieved - death

AO2 - ‘men & girls came & went like moths’ ‘if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse’ ‘It was like a dream…something very wonderful, ineffably, perhaps impossibly grand’

AO3 - WE & EE link to fantasy wealthy life also craves by FSF - experiences with Zelda & Ginevra King - also show myth of AD

AO5 - Marxist - WE & EE = capitalist & explorative myth of AD - never really a real thing & never attainable for G

Point 2 - Passing

AO1 - Harlem = more gritty & real - remnants of a life Clare could’ve lived if not for racial barriers

AO2 - ‘really Rene I’m not safe’ ‘she belonged in this land of rising towers’

AO3 - NL’s restrictions from place in society - couldn’t afford to write Clare clinging to a fantasy/being a dreamer - too much focus on racial aspects needed

AO5 - Black Feminist - as a black woman, C = forced to keep her dream within reality - always restricted & Harlem reflects that - ‘CK finds no peace, rest or loyalty even after returning to the black community’ (Little)

Point 3

Place = societal barrier that affords some more luxuries than others

Point 3 - Gatsby

AO1 - VOA - moral & social decay - people only viewed through glimpse of wealthy passing through - G&M not set to achieve anything

AO2 - ‘pyramid of pulpless halves’ ‘I thought he was a gentleman…but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe’ ‘I had a glimpse of MW straining at the garage pump with panting vitality as we went by’

AO3 - Myth of AD & social mobility - place remained linked to class, making it difficult to escape either

AO5 - ‘dramatise the lie at the heart of the AD’ (Churchwell) ‘a symbol of capitalist ruin’ (Williams)

Point 3 - Passing

AO1 - Drayton - C&I = comfortable & free lifestyle due to lighter skin whereas others bare consequences of racism

AO2 - ‘B spoke bitterly of a lynching he’d been reading about’ ‘she was proud: one of my boys is dark’ ‘that strange, and to her fantastic, notion of B going off to Brazil’ ‘I want their childhood to be as free from the knowledge of such things as it possibly can’

AO3 - myth of GM & American history that race = better in North - experience of many black Americans

AO5 - ‘Larsen’s protagonists attempt to fashion a sense of self’ (Wall) ‘whiteness conferred an almost universal unearned advantage’ (Bernstein)