Form, Structure, and Themes: The Great Gatsby: Paper 2: English Literature AQA A Level

Structure

The structure of the novel has a quasi-volta. The novel turns around the central chapter.

The book has nine chapters and the plot revolves around the central fifth chapter where the readers witness Gatsby and Daisy’s reunion. Whilst the first half of the novel leads up to their reunion, the latter half deals with the inevitable ramifications of Gatsby’s unchecked infatuation with Daisy.

Narration

Fitzgerald does not use his eponymous protagonist, instead he uses Nick Carraway who interestingly does not know all the facts of the narrative. The gaps in Nick’s narration serve to humanise Gatsby as Gatsby is presented as a shadowy figure that can only be glimpsed through Nick’s memories.

Nick’s viewpoint is retrospective which further makes Gatsby vague and romantic in his blurry outline. Nick also tells the reader of Gatsby’s death from the very start of the novel. This gives his death an inevitable predetermined quality. Gatsby is raised to the pedestal of a tragic hero.

Symbols and Imagery

- The green light is a symbol of hope.

- Daisy is a symbol of Gatsby’s hopes for the future.

- Fitzgerald wanted to call his novel Gold-Hatted Gatsby, here the colour gold, as in the rest of the novel, creates a sense of worth.

- Cars are both symbols of status and destruction.

- Clocks are a symbol of the confusion of time.

Genre

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby contains elements of multiple genres: tragedy, realism, modernism, and social satire. The Great Gatsby is a novel about 1920s America. Many readers consider The Great Gatsby as a 20th-century tragedy. If we can understand what a classical tragedy entails, then we can extrapolate this into its modern equivalent.

Class and Wealth

Wealth plays an important role in The Great Gatsby. All the characters in the novel are driven by wealth somehow, not least by their involvement in the 1920s consumerist culture which emerged following the post-WWI economic boom. Fitzgerald explores different types of wealth and money throughout the novel. He not only focuses on how much wealth and money a character has, but also how they went about acquiring their money and what it represents.

Three distinct classes

There are three distinct classes in The Great Gatsby:

● Old Money: This includes people like The Buchanans or even Nick who serve as the elite of American society and have fortunes dating back for generations. Their wealth and privilege is inherited and needs no further justification or extravagant display as they hold undisputed family titles.

● New Money: People in this class are ‘self-made’ and their representative in the novel is Jay Gatsby, who profited from the 1920s boom. People in this class have no aristocratic heritage and, to compensate for this, resolve to display their wealth lavishly through conspicuous consumption.

● No Money: This includes people like The Wilsons, such as workers, servants or the unemployed, who are unable to acquire any of the American Dream’s monetary or social gains. They are overlooked by the emergence of a new class conflict between those of old money and those from new money backgrounds, embodied through the struggle between Tom and Gatsby over Daisy - whose love they attempt to gain.

Idealism

Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is often as a pessimistic critique of the idealism of the American Dream. The American Dream is commonly defined as “the belief that every man, whatever his origins, may pursue and attain his chosen goals, be they political, monetary or social” [Roger L Pearson, 1970]. This promotes the belief that America is a meritocracy whereby anyone can achieve or obtain anything if they work hard enough. This is an idealised, rose-tinted view of the opportunities available in America.

Love

In The Great Gatsby, love plays a vital role in the play. It is a theme that colours and permeates all the relationships in one way or another. Many have misunderstood the novel as a simple tragic romance, which ends with the main character’s death - an outcome of many romantic tragedies. This is a traditional, flawed reading of The Great Gatsby, a novel characterised by the importance of idealism vs. reality, the American Dream and the loss of moral values. The theme of class and wealth plays a key role in Gatsby’s ability to win Daisy, and it is the difference in their social status which means the relationship fails. Therefore, it would be inaccurate to describe the different relationships in the novel as solely driven or sustained by ‘love’ is.