Gatsby context and key ideas

Key autobiographical context

- born in 1896 Minnesota

- 1917 joined army

- fell in love with zelda when in the army, but she delayed their marriage until he was successful

- married Zelda Sayre -1920

- Fitzgerald known for his love for his wife, alcoholism + extravagant lifestyle

- fell into reckless life of parties + hedonism

- desperate to please Zelda by writing to earn more money – became alcoholic

- their relationship became turbulent

- Zelda had an affair, his romantic dreams were crushed, but they continued to be together

- their traumatic marriage and her breakdowns became the leading influence in his writing

- 1925 published TGG

Life influences on TGG

• Lot of TGG is autobiographical

• Like fitz:

  • nick is born in Minnesota, attended an ivy league uni + moved to NY after war

  • Gatsby idealised wealth, love + luxury

  • Falls in love + marries a woman out of his social class

• When Zelda gave birth to their daughter, she said “I hope it’s beautiful and a fool - a beautiful little fool”

• Fitz tries hard to prove his social standing + secure his love

• BUT, Gatsby (unlike fitz) does not indulge in alcoholism or get involved in his parties

• Like gatsby, Fitz suffered a lot of sadness in his endless pursuit of happiness

• Maybe Fitz saw himself in Gatsby

• Killed Gatsby off – maybe his prophetic foresight that his marriage would suffer an irreparable break

• Killing off gatsby + keeping wealthy Buchanans alive – maybe fitz reveals partialness to the upper class

• Fitz felt he didn’t deserve Zelda + that he wasn’t enough for her

• Fitz is both nick + gatsby simultaneously

  • like nick lives “within and without” the story

WWI and the Jazz Age

• 20s a time of growth + prosperity with a lot of cynicism and corruption

• The war was the first of its kind, so shook a lot of people -’The Great War’

• only 60 years after the American Civil War

• so, America was still finding its identity

• This gave birth to the jazz age

• Glamorous decade of culture + art

• BUT this dissolved in Wall Street Crash 1929

• was said to have epitomized the jazz age, but he denied as “a generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken”

• Gatsby + Nick both served in WWI

• Extravagance of his parties reflected lavish + golden decade

• BUT even with all its decadence there was still divide

⤷ old money ruled

⤷ new money tried to climb social ladder

⤷ no money excluded

• Ultimately ‘no money’ bear the brunt of ruthlessness of the ‘old money’

⤷ myrtle is killed

⤷ George kills gatsby (originally part of ‘no money’ before killing himself)

The Lost Generation

• Referred to by Gertrude Stein American writer

• Lost gen of post WWI

• one of the burning things of most American literature is the idea of the great American novel

• Americans felt that because it was a new nation and continent, it lacked the culture that areas like Europe afforded

  • Fitzgerald and many others of his time came to Europe a lot and found roots in it due to Europe’s long classical, literary and historic tradition and culture

• This gen felt powerless + saw life as pointless after the war

• Feelings of loss + emptiness filled with alcohol + indulgence

• Fitzgerald: this generation found “all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken”

• We can see this in TGG where Gatsby stands out from faithless society of east + west eggs for his “extraordinary gift for hope”

Flappers and Freedom

• Many of fitz’s short stories gave insights on youthful hedonism + antics of liberated young women, ‘flappers’

• Subverted social + gender norms

⤷ short skirts, short hair, makeup

• 19th Amendment 1920 gave women right to vote

• They cut their hair in bobs + gave up corsets to reinvent themselves 

• Jordan Baker - her name shows this bc they are both makes of cars, suggesting lack of femininity

⤷ as a professional golfer subverts all trad gender norms

⤷ unmarried + childless

⤷ she is a foil + contrast to Daisy

• Both myrtle + jordan show that emancipation is the common desire for women in 1920s america

The American Dream

• US advertised as ‘land of opportunity’

• A place for success regardless of social background if you worked hard enough

• A lot of people who migrated to US were escaping something

• Idea of american dream took place after the Great depression, but many like fitz still challenged this idea + questioned its possibility

• Believed that it boiled down to the pursuit of wealth

• Ironically wrote about widespread materialism, even though he was indulgent

• Gatsby personifies the American dream, and how it inspires american society

• He doesn't achieve it as daisy is a proxy for wealth + the american dream

• Myrtle also fails

⤷ she clings to it, and it kills her

⤷ gatsby’s car symbol of american dream as it’s associated with restlessness + power

Media and Mass Market

• TGG written against a backdrop of exponential growth in commodities available for purchase + advertising

• Eyes of Doctor T.J Eckleburg are a major symbol of advertising

⤷ symbol of the power of advertising in 1920s America, as a means for capitalism + consumerism that fuels the class division and American dream

⤷ it becomes a religion too

⤷ Wilson says “god sees everything” whilst “looking at the eyes of Doctor T.J Eckleburg” (chapter 8)

⤷ if god is advertising, then maybe capitalism is a religion for Gatsby + friends

• Jay Gatsby rebrands himself from Gatz to Gatsby, marketing himself through parties in hopes of winning daisy

Structure

• Satirical? who is the Great Gatsby? is Gatsby ‘Great’?

• So in 1925, Fitzgerald is writing a novel questioning the values of modern American society

  • post war — looking for a future where America is the no.1 society (US was an international power after WW1)

• Unreliable narrator — Nick contradicts himself from beginning to the end of the novel

  • it is a novel about contradictions of a society

  • he not unreliable because he lies, but because he himself is not sure of what he is seeing and the motivations

• “I just remembered that today’s my birthday”

  • Bildungsroman — coming of age

  • marks a new era that transforms lives

  • a new outlook

  • age 30 yet still lonely

• “There was an autumn flavour in the air”

  • summer to autumn, bildungsroman. End of long summer, and life starts again

Themes — the lost ideal

• lost paradise

• lost intangible beauty of the world

• the lost love that Daisy represents in the novel

• lost wealth and lost American dream

Social class and identity

• If you are from a family who has had money for generations, you are old money

• Gatsby aspires to be a part of that aristocratic crowd

• Gatsby has a lot of money. But where did he get it from? Is it clean money? Is any money clean money?

Ambition and Aspiration

• yes, it’s a novel about loss and love, but also about ambition and aspiration

Characters — Nick

• how he is impersonal?

• his relationships?

• “for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes in my desires”

“I see I have given the impression that the events…were all that absorbed me. On the contrary, they were merely casual events in a crowded summer, and, until much later, they absorbed me infinitely less than my personal affairs”

-at the time, these events were less remarkable for him, he is just showing how he is conscious of his job as storyteller of selection and omission.

-doesn't want to come across as someone obsessed with Gatsby from the very start – but it can be interpreted and seen that he seemed to be towards the end

-he could be hiding secrets – what personal affairs? Jordan?

-adds on to this idea of surface vs reality – the book constantly gives us peoples surfaces, but not their insides and how they really feel

• “Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known”

-Nick believes this as he is surrounded by people who are deceitful and dishonest

-he recognises that people are only showing a character of themselves

-whether he is actually an honest narrator or not is up to reader interpretation – as a narrator, calling yourself honest may not be entirely convincing as he is constantly contradicting himself

Motifs — light

• “Gatsby’s house, lit from tower to cellar”

  “Your place looks like the World’s Fair”

AO5 CRITICISMS — nuggets

• Gatsby and his idealistic conceptions of Daisy and obsession

  with the past – naïve and innocent or stupid and irrational?

  • “In worshipping the grail… Gatsby is really worshipping himself in the mirror of Daisy’s symbolism” – Giles Mitchell

  • “Gatsby has vitality and potential for intense happiness” – John Chambers

  • “Academia and film have romanticized Gatsby as a hero and his rotten core ignored because of Nick’s overblown narration” – Monty J Heying

• Daisy as the object of Gatsby’s desire – objectified or selfish and weak? Is she sincere or fake?

  • “She becomes the unwitting grail in Gatsby’s adolescent quest” – Leland S. Person

  • “the book contains no important woman character” – Fitzgerald in a letter to his publisher

  • “She is a gesture that is committed to nothing more real than her own image on the silver screen” – Marius Bewley, 1963

  • “even Nick admits that Daisy ‘tumbled short of his dreams — not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion.”

  • “We’re not Daisy apologists, but we’re also not sure she deserves every bit of her bad reputation… Anybody would crack under the pressure of being somebody else’s light at the end of the green

    dock.” – SparkLife notes editor, May 2013

  • “She feels like she’s living in a movie of her own life. She’s constantly on show, performing all the time. Nothing bad can happen in a dream. You can’t die in a dream. She’s in her own TV show. She’s like a Kardashian.” – Carey Mulligan, Vogue, April 2013

  • “she is for sale” Matthew Bruccoli writes in a 1922 preface to the novel, “but he doesn’t have the right currency”

• Myrtle Wilson as a symbol of the lower class, trying to escape

  her situation through Tom – sympathy or dislike?

  • “Myrtle Wilson is presented as being badly spoken, lacking in taste, self-seeking” – Tony Cavender

• Is the book a good one? Is it a detached and superficial story

  with awful characters, or does it represent real 20 th century life…

  • “None of its characters are likable. None of them are even dislikeable, though nearly all of them are despicable” – Kathryn Schulz

  • “The Great Gatsby is less involved in human emotion than any of book of comparable fame” – Kathryn Schulz

  • “For all of us, life is about constantly have to will ourselves to eternal optimism in the face of elusive dreams or challenging goals” – Halle Edwards

• Jordan – seemingly indifferent and cold, having to balance

  multiple identities

  • “To Nick, Jordan appears hard and self-sufficient. However, as with Daisy, this appearance can be seen as self-protection” – Tony Cavender

  • “Jordan is, literally and metaphorically, a woman successfully playing a man’s game” – Froehlich and Hazleton

AO5 — Psychoanalytical approach

• gatsby seems like a larger-than-life romantic hero, different from other characters in the novel

  • BUT, the readers interest created by the romance of G + D lies not in the uniqueness, but the ways it mirrors all the less appealing relationships (between T+D, T+M, M+G, and N+J)

  • a pattern is revealed of the characters’ fears of intimacy, the unconscious conviction that emotional ties to another human will result in being emotionally devastated

  • this psychological issue is so pervasive in the story that Gatsby’s love story becomes a drama of dysfunctional love

AO5 — marxist criticism

• The Great Gatsby can be seen as a chronicle of the American dream when capitalism’s promise of economic opportunity for all seemed at its peak of fulfilment in this nation

• Gatsby himself with his mansion seems to embody the infinite possibility offered by the American dream

• but the novel is not a celebration of capitalist culture, but reveals its dark underbelly

• through unflattering characterisation of those at the top of the economic heap, and its examination in how the American dream not only fails to fulfil its promise but contributes to decay of personal values, Fitz’s novel critiques American capitalist culture

• the sense of self-worth fostered in us derives from external standards and trends

  • we can never be secure in what we already have because something new and better is always being sold

  • so even Tom is maybe somewhat insecure about his social standing, so flexes constantly

  • and this is why Gatsby’s love for Daisy was always unattainable, because if he did have her fully, he would constantly want more - she is not enough to fulfil this ideal he has of her and his desire for wealth and social value

• people like the wilsons do not stand a chance in a world dominated by people like the Buchanans

• valley of ashes — is a chilling image of the lives of those who do not have socioeconomic resources like the Buchanans

  • ashes are what’s left over after something is used or wasted

  • a literal dumping ground

  • it is from settings like this that the American dream i supposed to emerge — that a shaky but persistent business enterprise is supposed to lead to financial security

  • but, the language used clearly imply that this is a land of hopelessness, not a place where dreams are likely to be fulfilled — a “greay land” that is “impenetrable”

  • the only way to escape this hell on earth is for people like Toom to exploit you

• the american dream through Gatsby is corrupt as he achieves his wealth through criminal activities, and is unattainable and impossible to achieve as Gatsby does not achieve his true dreams and dies for it

• Gatsby does not use his home, his pool, only his bedroom that is the only place truly decorated

  • he does this because the sole function of his material possessions is the sign-exchange value

  • he wants the image of ownership

  • his library etc, is all surface with no depth or truth to it — an illusion, as is the American Dream

• Gatsby really wants to possess Daisy, which is a permanent sign that he belongs to her socioeconomic class — she is like the empty things in his house, all surface level, loves the image of her, not her depth

• Nick is seduced by the American Dream Gatsby represents, so his narrative romanticises Gatsby

• from a marxist perspective - TTG’s most obvious flaw is the unsympathetic portrayal of George and Myrtle

  • they try to improve their lives in the only way they know how

  • they are victims of capitalism because ethe only way they can succeed in capitalist economy is to succeed in a market (myrtle - being purchased by Tom, and George - allows himself to be ridiculed and mistreated by Tom)

  • both are unable to succeed in a market, so are forever condemned to the valley of ashes

  • they are also negative stereotypes of a lower class couple — George is not very loud or bright, and she is loud, obnoxious and overly sexual

  • we feel sorry for George, but not because he is a victim to a repressive system, but because he does not have what it takes and has personal failings, not enough to keep his wife or achieve social mobility

  • the focus on the flaws in their personalities take away the blame on the system, instead blaming the man, making us feel pity for him rather than true sympathy

  • meanwhile, Myrtle is reduced to a horrible and immoral, sexual mistress and disloyal, selfish wife, taking away the focus of the fact that she is doing what she can to achieve her dreams of a better life

AO5 — feminist criticisms

• “nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they’ll throw everything overboard “

  • Tom’s double standard for his own and his wife’s behaviour

  • shows that he assumes that the moral structure of society rests on the stability of the patriarchal family and that the stability of the patriarchal family rests on the conformity of women to patriarchal gender roles

• the period of the Jazz Age was one of enormous social change, especially in the area of women’s rights

  • 1920 - they were finally given the right to vote

  • skirts became shorter, laced corsets disappeared, bobbed hair became fashion for young women

  • women also seen smoking and drinking often in company of men, without chaperones

  • attitude of free self-expression, sexuality and unrestrained enjoyment

  • ‘the New Woman’

• women seen as the standard-bearers of traditional values

• so with this change, many critics saw a decline of moral value

• even fitzgerald saw himself married to a New Woman, so may have been subject to the ideology that characterised his age

  • it was his experience of life in the ‘fast lane’ that created some misgivings about the changes in 1920s america

  • he was able to accept the New Woman only as long as he could view her as psychologically troubled and in need of his help

• the women in gatsby’s parties, however, have no differences and are lookalike

• all the women in TGG are not really seen as individual, they are presented through Nick’s eyes as basically the same, portrayed in a generally negative light

  • the only ones with true individuality are Jordan, Daisy and Myrtle — and these women are not very empowering

  • Daisy’s femininity is seen as dangerously alluring and causing the fall of men

  • while, Jordan has to emasculate herself to not be at the mercy of men, yet she is kind of thrown aside and mistreated by Nick

• the novel is uncomfortable with the New Woman

  • despite the differences in class, marital status, occupation, appearance and personality of Myrtle, Daisy and Jordan, all are versions of the New Woman

  • all display some sort of modern independence

TOM AND DAISY

What their relationship represents

• Materialism and hierarchical obsession of the post-war era

• Jazz-era’s upper class capitalist politics

• Together due to status and wealth – practical and stable in regards to social expectations

• Infidelity, abuse, lack of respect, yet unified and unbreakable – perhaps because there is nothing delicate or emotional to break, one cannot break cement or money

• Lack of love yet an unbreakable class bond

• The way they choose to live their lives, their morality (or lack thereof), and how much they dream doesn’t seem to matter. This, of course, is tragic and antithetical to the idea of the

  American Dream, which claims that class should be irrelevant and anyone can rise to the top.

Psychoanalytical criticism

• fear of emotional intimacy with both Daisy and Myrtle, so his divided time and interest protects him from true intimacy with either

• Daisy marries Tom not for love, but to keep herself from loving Gatsby who she had gotten too attached to for her own comfort

• after marriage, she seems ot be head over heels for him, which people might read as her desire for emotional intimacy with Tom

  • but, she is probably very aware and concerned about Tom’s regular infidelity and that whenever he is not with her he is with another woman

  • instead of hating him for such mistreatment, he falls in love with him, which can be explained psychologically:

  • a woman who falls in love with a man suffering from fear of intimacy probably fears intimacy herself - and if she fears it then a man who has no desire for it can make her feel safe

  • learning that Tom’s interest didn’t focus only on her, she could be capable of loving him intensely because he did not threaten her protective shell

  • but, gatsby’s focus and interests is solely on her, so he poses a threat to her fear and protection from emotional true intimacy that Gatsby wants from her

Marxist criticism

• for tom, everything is a commodity — including his marriage to Daisy being an exchange of her beauty + youth + social standing for his power + money + image of strength/stability

Myrtle and George

What their relationship represents

• Lower-class of 1920s society – lack of hope

• Valley of the ashes symbolism

• George is subservient and faithful to his dismissive and selfish wife

• Instability of their marriage comes from the instability of their financial situation – unable to leave one another and are exploited by members of the wealthier classes

• Fitzgerald seems to be arguing that anyone who is not wealthy is much more vulnerable to tragedy and strife – contrasting marriages of the Buchanans and the Wilsons help illustrate the novel’s critique of the wealthy, old-money class

Psychoanalytical criticism

• she is not emotionally invested in him or anyone really, only married him because she mistakenly believed he was of a higher class than he was

• his emotional dependence on her (like his belief that Dr T.J Eckleburg are the eyes of God) suggest psychological disorientation rather than emotional intimacy

• insecurity and obsession to please her, mistaken for love? because they were never close

• spent his life just working continuously tired and sickened because of it. so he mistakes this for love and is emotionally dependent on her as a result

• are George and Gatsby similar? both trying to please the women they ‘love’ due to insecurity about social status, and both tragically die as result

Daisy and Gatsby

What their relationship represents

• While Daisy views Gatsby as a memory, Daisy is Gatsby’s past, present and future – he is obsessed over his idealised conceptions of their past relationship

• Gatsby objectifies Daisy as the object of some egotistical pursuit – he pursues an idea, not a real person

• Gatsby pursues Daisy to complete his platonic conception of himself?

• Gatsby’s love is naïve and insane, but somehow hopeful and charming

• Daisy can never live up to Gatsby’s immense projection of her or fulfil his rose-tinted memory of her

• Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy can be compared to the American Dream – the dream is as alluring as Daisy but as ultimately elusive and unobtainable, even deadly

• Daisy, of course, is only human – flawed, flighty, and ultimately unable to embody the huge fantasy Gatsby projects onto her. So this, in turn, means that the American Dream itself is just a fantasy, a concept too flimsy to actually hold weight, especially in the fast-paced, dog-eat-dog world of 1920s America.

• Daisy letting Gatsby take the blame for Myrtle’s murder without second thought indicates her conception of him as an emotional buffer between her and the world, and as useless as a lover due to his social origin - he is expendable

• meanwhile, Gatsby is not emotionally in love with Daisy, but he is devoted to he because she is the key to his goal rather than the goal itself

  • he had set his sights on the attainment of wealth long before he met Daisy

  • his boyhood schedule of Jimmy Gatz shows this where he devotes his days to self-improvement

  • his reinvention of his past is more than just a ploy to pass off as a member of the upper class, but is also a form of denial, a psychological defence to help him repress the memory of his real past

  • daisy for him is not a flesh and blood woman, but an emblem of the emotional insulation he unconsciously desires from himself, James Gatz that his past belongs to

Tom and Myrtle

What their relationship represents

• Tom is Myrtle’s escape from her lower-class lifestyle – she is so obsessed with gaining a better status that she does not realise Tom is merely using her

• Highlights how lower class is exploited by the middle class

• Reminder that class is an enormous, insurmountable barrier, and when people try to circumvent the barrier by dating across classes, they end up endangering themselves

• Tom and Myrtle’s relationship allows Fitzgerald to sharply critique the world of the wealthy, old-money class in 1920s New York. By showing Tom’s affair with a working-class woman, Nick reveals Tom’s ugliest behaviour as well as the cruelty of class divisions during the roaring twenties.

Psychoanalytical criticism

• their relationship lacks intimacy

• no desire to be close to his mistress - she is only a way to avoid being close to his wife

• his treatment of her shows no deep emotional investment

• calls for her when it suits him

• lies about Daisy’s religious opposition to divorce to keep her away from becoming demanding, and breaks her nose when she becomes so anyway

• him crying when she dies is only a moment of sentimental self-indulgence, not love

• Myrtle also lacks real concern for him

• he is only a ticket out of George’s garage

• her motive is economic desperation rather than fear of intimacy

Marxist criticism

• tom uses his money and social status to purchase Myrtle and the numerous other WC women he has affairs with

  • like the chambermaid he has an affair with, and the “common but pretty” girl in Gatsby’s party that he picks up

• he markets his socioeconomic status where it will put him at the greatest advantage among women who are most desperate for and most easily awed by what he has to sell

Nick and Jordan

What their relationship represents

• Through Jordan and Nick’s encounters, Fitzgerald is able to portray the idea of the modern woman of the roaring twenties – Jordan androgynous appearance signifies the gender bending common among flappers, which demonstrated their freedom from conventional female constraints

• Jordan is indifferent and arguably hostile towards Nick, contrasting with Daisy and Myrtle whose typical femininity causes them to fall at the feet of their male counterparts

• To Nick, Jordan is enticing because she is part of the middle-class socialites of the roaring twenties, which he longs to be a part of