RACE IN TGG
AMERICAN IDENTITY AND NATIONALITIES
‘My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations.’
novelty of usa- pride
‘That’s my Middle Western- not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns.’
possessive pronoun ‘my’
pre-modifiers having to be ethnic/race related
‘I had a dog- at least I had him for a few days until he ran away- and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over an electric stove.’
polysyndetic listing - careless ? suggests he owns them
ethnicity= everything, superiority, American exceptionalism ?
syntax of Finnish woman last- dog over her?
‘It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian chil was setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track.’
juxt. between american culture and italian
negative pre-modifiers - doesn’t like other ethnicities . Shows ethnocentrism of Anglo population.
‘Terrible place, isn’t it,’ said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg
superiority complex
‘The young Greek, Michealis’
american centralism, same ideas as earlier
TOM’S RACIAL ‘PHILOSOPHY’
‘Civilisations going to pieces,’ broke out Tom violently. ‘I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?’
lack of education- trying to assert it but the demonstrative determiner ‘this’ shows a lack of knowing and he has indeed not read the book
‘violently’ - shows anger
‘Why no,’ I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
‘suprised’, Fiztgerald is being critical?. Are any of these his thoughts or is he a mouthpiece for the audience?
‘Tom’s getting very profound,’ said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. ‘He reads deep books with long words in them What was that word we-‘
‘untoughtful sadness’, ditto
‘long words in them’ - almost emasculating ?
‘Well these books are all scientific,’ insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. ‘This fellow has worked out the whole things. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.’…
eugenics ‘scientific’
white supremacy as ideology, overt racism.
‘There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more.’ (all one)
‘complacency’ = carelessness
NOTE: allusion to The Rising Tide of Color (1920) by Lothrop Stoddard.
‘Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.’
paternalistic
but IRONY, hes literally have an affair… F suggesting white suprematists are hypocrites?
‘Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.’
‘impassioned gibberish’ - lexical choice! nonse. F showing T’s racist ideas are negative, seems to at least be positioning himself that way.
‘We’re all white here,’ murmured Jordan.
‘murmured’ - suggests quite discontent , transitive verb
1. telling him to shut up?
2. fragmentation - trying to build relationships in modernism
3. coded as biracial herself? so its not reality, like when people say everything is okay when it isn’t.
AFRICAN AMERICANS
‘As we crossed Blackwell’s Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled towards us in haughty rivalry.’
inversion of racial hierarchy
‘bucks’ - deer- zoomorphising of a.a men. stags= hypersexualised aa men → touches on racist tropes
‘Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge,’ I thought; ‘anything at all’
‘Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.’ (all one)
inverting racial hierarchy → suggest belief in racial hierarchy.
‘What’s the name of this place here? demanded the officer.’
‘Hasn’t got any name.’
‘A pale well-dressed negro stepped near.’
challenges expectations. standard lexis of time
‘It was a yellow car,’, he said, ‘big yellow car. New.’…
high frequency lexis - suggesting lack of education
‘Come here and let’s have your name. Look out now. I want to get his name.’
aa as criminal
automatic suspicion
suggesting policeman are racist
WOLFSHEIM’S ANTISEMITIC PORTRAYAL
‘A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril. After a moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the half darkness.’
F not challenging- just being antisemitic
anti-semitic synecdoche
‘tiny eyes’- rodenty, like a rat. Animal imagery
‘They shot Rosy Rosenthal there.’
‘He’s an Oggsford man’
‘Finest specimens of human molars’, he informed me
‘human molars’ monstrous → blood libel (Jewish people doing things to bodies [children])
‘As he shook hands and turned away his tragic nose was trembling.’
synecdoche
‘But when I’d shouted ‘hello’ several times in vain, an argument broke out behind a partition, and presently a lovely Jewess appeared at an interior door and scrutinised me with black hostile eyes.’
‘black hostile eyes’ dehumanised and villainous
‘The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears.’
synecdoche of nose
‘I cant do it- I cant get mixed up in it.’ he said
‘Are you a college man?’ he inquired suddenly
‘For a moment I thought ht was going to suggest a ‘gonegtion’, but he only nodded and shook my hand.’
‘gonegtion’- othering, non-standard pronunciation
ONLY MICHEALIS’S AND WOLFSHEIM’S NON-STANDARD/ETHNIC ACCENTS ARE GRAPHOLOGICALLY TRANSCRIBED- THEIR OTHERNESS IS EMPHASISED LINGUISTICALLY
‘Auto hit her. Ins’antly killed… She ran out ina road. Son of a bitch didnt even stopus car.’
non-standard english
CASUAL REFERENCES
‘The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West Fifties, and the clear voices of children, already gathered like crickets on the grass rose through the hot twilight:
‘I’m the Sheikh of Araby.
Your love belongs to me.
At night when you’re asleep
Into your tent I’ll creep-‘
stereotyping of oriental= sexually problematic ‘I’m the SHEIKH OF ARABY’
plays trope that Arab Man are sexually problematic and abusive.
Irony- tom
‘It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well. Wilson was so sick that he looked guilty, unforgivably guilty- as if he got some poor girl with child.’
‘in intelligence or race’- linkage
‘so profound’- intensifier (adverb) ‘so’ → so there is a difference (but its not as big).
IDEAS FROM CRITICS ON RACE
Gatsby as jewish. Micheals (critic) FROM VOGEL, 2015
has read him as Jewish, noting his original name ‘Gatz’ and his intimate ‘gonegtion’ to Meyer Wolfsheim
Wolfsheim based on historical figure, Arnold Rothsteinn, gambler, king-pin of Jewish mob in NYC
jews in 1920 were still perceived as ‘not quite white’
Wolfsheim skin tone never mentioned, but clearly presented to us through Nick’s overtly anti-semitic filter
references to his prominent nose are made repeatedly, but G makes no such observations- not only referring to him as a business partner, but as a ‘friend’ (GG 55)
W possess similar affection for G (“kind of man you’d like to take home and introduce to your mother and sister”, “a man of fine breeding”
while none of this proves gatsby is jewish, given the rampant anti-semtisim of the time (refracted so clearly through nick), it could help explain Gatsby’s difficulty integrating into the WASP establishment
Explain why him and Wolfsheim are friends
Gatsby as black- Van Thompson
theory that Gatsby is a light-skinned black man passing as white
‘the narrative constantly whispers the presence of blackness’, writes thompson
evidence- ‘tanned skin’, vs ‘pale well-dressed negro’
‘forty acres of lawn and garden’- oblique allusion to 40 acres and mule promised to emancipated slaves
Bruccoli disagrees , says F ‘would have made it clear’