The Great Gatsby x Native Son

The character of Tom reflects...

how men were expected to shield society from the social disintegration rising groups like Marxists.

What does Kimmel say about proving masculinity?

society built "arenas" by which masculinity could be proven.

According to American sociologist Kimmel, how does society measure masculinity?

By the size of your paycheck

According to Omar Agustin the essence of masculinity depends on...

the display of culturally approved acts.

The emergence of "new women" movement posed a threat to what?

The traditional power structures set forth by patriarchy.

How would a Marxist reading label Daisy's lack of purpose in life?

As an inevitable consequence of American social class structures.

How is Daisy introduced and what does this show?

With a "rippling and fluttering" white dress. This description shows how she's not a grounded character.

What does Tom call Gatsby?

"Mr Nobody from Nowhere".

State two economic advancements in the 1920s.

More Americans lived in cities than on farms, and the nation's total wealth more than doubled

What were the results of industrialisation and urbanisation in the 1920?

MC bloomed but WC exploited with poor conditions.

What did prohibition lead to?

A rise in bootlegging and crime.

What does Nick think about the price of Gatsby's dream?

"paid a high price for living too long with a single dream."

What does Nick say about Daisy and Jordan when he first meets them and what does this show?

"Cool as their white dresses and impersonal eyes" Superficiality.

The ashes that "grow like wheat into ridges and hill" is symbolism of...

the waste of capitalism/consequences of the pursuit of wealth.

Which line shows Gatsby's facade?

"He was picking his words with care."

What does Gatsby running down "like an overwound clock" overshadow?

The escalating tensions that lead to the novel's tragic climax.

When Nick tells Gatsby, "You can't repeat the past," Gatsby replies...

"Why of course you can!"

What does "I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," show

Shows Gatsby's optimistic attitude that's at odd with Nick's cynical portrait of the world.

What does Gatsby say about Daisy's voice?

"Her voice is full of money."

What does Nick say about people like Daisy and Tom?

"They were careless people ... they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money...and let other people clean up the mess they had made".

What does Nick say about Gatsby's worth?

"You're worth the whole damn bunch put together".

The eggs are divided by

"a courtesy bay" metaphor of what divides East and West.

Nick in college

"I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men" perceptive

Gatsby's imitation of the rich/ Gatsby's house

"Factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville"

Nick first sees Tom

"Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face"

Disruptive force/ Tom the oppressor

"there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows"

A sense of artificiality

"Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it"

Tom about civilisation

"Civilisation's going to pieces"

Superficiality

Romantic language shows beauty in nature. Modernist imagery is tied with the innovations of the Jazz Age.

The structure is a disrupted chronology with layers and filters

the narrator is unreliable/the vignettes of Gatsby's life are repeated to Nick second hand showing reality is always mediated.

H.L. Mencken

a reflection of the Jazz Age's superficiality.

A period of many contradictions

In theory all women got the vote but Black women couldn't vote freely until 1965 (Ella Baker & Diane Nash)

Selective details

Fitzgerald typifies his characters with one feature (e.g G's capacity to dream) adds to Gatsby's reclusive mystique.

Richard Wright about self-realisation

"Men can starve from a lack of self-realisation as much as they can starve from bread".

According to Wright, the life of an African American is like...

the blueprints for the production of machines.

According to James Baldwin, no American Negro exists who...

doesn't have their private Bigger Thomas.

Kinnamon about Bigger

He's a composition portrait of Black individuals Wright had observed.

James Baldwin claims Native Son....

strips Black people of their humanity.

What real life case parallels Bigger's?

Robert Nixon convicted of killing a woman in her apartment. The murder was called a sex crime without any evidence of rape.

How was racial segregation predominant in the 1930s?

Blacks and whites separated in every aspect of life: school, housing...many Black people resided in places like Black Belt where it had harsh & unhygienic conditions.

Lang about the legacy of slavery and its relation to being primitive and hyper-masculine

The brutal masculinity white slave masters displayed influenced the male behaviour of slaves.

What does Bigger say when he's playing white that demonstrates the signifiers he & his friends have picked up from white people?

"snapping out his words with military precision" authoritative.

Freire argues?

Oppressed people internalise and reproduce the oppression they've experienced.

Which line demonstrates Bigger's bitterness about racial separation and the opportunities he doesn't have due to this?

"Every time I get to think about me being black and them being white, me being here and they being there, I feel like something awful's going to happen to me"

Bigger's fear, and denial of that fear, drives him to lash out in violent ways.

"his courage to live depended upon how successfully his fear was hidden".

Mary acknowledges the tragedy of segregation but doesn't grasp how her lack of understanding is.

″I've been to England, France and Mexico, but I don't know how people live ten blocks from me. We know so little about each other."

Despite Bessie obeying the rules, her life is full of hardship.

"I ain't never bothered nobody. I just worked hard every day as long as I can remember."

In his last moments Bigger recognises how his life was so bleak only his crimes made him feel.

"I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em."

What line shows Bigger's dissociation from the world?

"In all of his life these two murders were the most meaningful things that had ever happened to him."

Which line demonstrates how Black people view white people?

"To Bigger and his kind, white people were not really people; they were a sort of great natural force, like a stormy sky looming overhead."

How does the black rat at the start of the novel represent Bigger?

The rat crushed by a force beyond its control, the same way Bigger is crushed by the force of white society. The only witness to Bigger's crimes is Dalton's white cat, a rat's natural predator

Symbol of gun

masculinity, power, and protection. Bigger feels safer with the gun and takes it with him on the interview with Mr Dalton. He also uses it to threaten Jan, finding power in a situation he feels powerless.

Why is Mrs Dalton's blindness significant?

Her blindness prevents her from seeing Mary during her last moments. She's also symbolically blind to the suffering of the Black people she claims to help. Her blindness reflects the blindness the white society has to the suffering of the black community.

Malcolm X

The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman.

Snow

encompasses everything in the city just like white society (Bigger and Bessie forced to hide in an abandoned building because the snowstorm prevents them from finding any kind of transportation out of the city)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe

Focused on the cruelty of slavery in the American South but depicts crude anti-Black characters

Uncle Tom’s Children (Richard Wright’s response to the cultural imprint of Uncle Tom’s Cabin)

* describes his mother beating him for fighting white boys -“impart to me gems of Jim Crow wisdom”
* when he got fired from factory work for not using “Mr” when referring to his colleague his family called him a fool -”they told me that I must never again attempt to exceed my boundaries”
* Wright was “in a deadly, timeless battle” with Harriet Beecher Stowe -James Baldwin

The Darker the Berry -Wallace Thurman

explores the psychological impact of being a dark-skinned Black girl in America