But there are two other American ideas that reality TV taps into: That everyone

should have a shot. That sometimes being real is better than being polite.

That no matter where you start out, you can hit it big, get lucky and reinvent

yourself. In her own way, Jwoww is as American a character as the nobody Jay Gatsby heading east and changing his

name. (Time magazine 2/2010)

For Thursday with the quote:1) Locate it; understand its context

2) Be able to discuss its significance and meaning – how it connects to character development or a theme, conflict, relationship, symbol, etc.

You will be expected to provide one minute of insight on your quote

good B+N book 06Chap 1 5 1

Chap 2 27 23Chap 3 43 39Chap 4 65 61Chap 5 86 81Chap 6 103 97

Chap 7 119 113Chap 8 154 147Chap 9 171 163end 189 180

In your reading… Reread Chap 1 + 2 by Tuesday and Note/Highlight: * the quote you pulled* Time references* Nick’s narration or descriptions are funny (dry humor)*Nick’s shifts in his relationship with Gatsby and Tom/DaisyRead the book slowly, like poetry, savor and contemplate each sentence

Francis Scott

Fitzgerald(~1925)

* September 24, 1896 - born in St. Paul, Minnesota

* Attended Princeton University* 1917-1919 - served in army* 1920 - married Zelda Sayre

* 1940 - died of a heart attack in Hollywood, CA

Major NovelsThis Side of Paradise (1920)

The Beautiful and the Damned (1922)

The Great Gatsby (1925)Tender is the Night (1934)

The Last Tycoon (1940) – never finished

Personal IssuesF. Scott – became alcoholic but

never wrote drunkIncome: 1919 = $800

1920 = 18,000Zelda – had a mental breakdown

in 1930

Possible Labels- the drunken writer- the ruined novelist- the spoiled genius

- the personification of the Jazz Age

- the sacrificial victim of the Great Depression

But note he was a big American dreamer (like Gatsby) in his visions of football

glory at Princeton or war glory as a soldier

He learned from his father’s business failure to avoid that fate (like Gatsby and his father) and sought after his goals with an unwavering drive (connect to Gatsby’s drive towards his ideal self or “Platonic

conception of himself” – pg 104)

The Great Gatsby Issues and Themes

- the use of first person semi-involved narrator

- the commentary on 1920’s life- the delusions of fantasy versus

reality- Gatsby as American creation

- old versus new money (class divisions)

- love and betrayal- the use of time and reflections

on the past- the challenges of the American

dream

1920’s Culture

Prohibition18th Amendment (1919)

illegal to distribute, sell, or drink alcohol

created secret “speakeasies” – night clubs

-World War I (1914-1918)

- 1920s created time of looser dress styles (flappers) and looser

morals- Auto Industry boomed with 4.5 million cars produced by 1920s

Background for The Great Gatsby

- Written in France in 1924-1925- They lived on Long Island in

1922 summer (see pg 206)- ZELDA had an assumed affair with a French aviator, Edouard

Jozan

Ginerva King – first love around 1915, “rich girls don’t marry poor boys”

- Famously beautiful, socially successful- Shaped his desire for an enchanting,

careless and essentially superficial female (all his females have this – the

golden girl, pg 127) *Potentially Read his short story, Winter

Dreams and compare it to Gatsby.

Fitzgerald’s Dream: A Parallel to Gatsby

“When I was your age I lived with a great dream. The dream grew and I learned how to speak of it and make people listen. Then the dream divided

one day when I decided to marry your mother after all, even though I knew she was spoiled and meant

no good to me. I was sorry immediately I had married her, but being patient in those days, made

the best of it and got to love her in another way.

You came along and for a long time we made quite a lot of happiness out of our

lives. But I was a man divided – she wanted me to work too much for her and

not enough for my dream. She realized too late that work was dignity, and the only

dignity, and tried to atone for it by working herself, but it was too late and she broke

and is broken forever.” - Letter to his daughter, 7/7/1938

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to

them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful.” (Fitzgerald, beginning of

short story “The Rich Boy”)

“He thought the rich were a special glamorous race and when he found they weren’t it wrecked

him just as much as any other thing that wrecked him”

- Hemingway on Fitzgerald in “The Snows of Kilamanjaro”

Fitzgerald’s Experience

“That was always my experience--a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy’s school; a poor boy in a rich man’s club at Princeton. . . However, I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works.”

--Excerpt from Fitzgerald’s letter to Anne Ober, the wife of his literary agent.

Preface:Preface:Fitz in 1922: “I want to write something new – something

extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned”

(end pg vii)

Fitz in 1920: “An author ought to write for the youth of his

generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever

afterward” (pg ix)

Preface:• The Great GatsbyThe Great Gatsby = “Great American Novel” (?)

– It has become popular to refer to it as such as:• It it a great work of fiction with defining American

thematic qualities• James Gatz/Jay Gatsby is the great American character• Gatsby is the American self-made indeed SELF

INVENTED man• He believes in “the orgastic future,” he fulfills it, and –

sadly- confuses it with Daisy and is betrayed by it.

• “Great” = Irony • Gatsby is ostentations, though one must differentiate the

ostentatious Gatsby from the admirable….

x - xi

Preface:• Gatsby is made convincing by means of narrative POV.

– Gatsby is the hero BUT Nick is the central figure from whom the reader must rely.

– Nick is a partially involved narrator.• Is he reliable?• Serves as a trustworthy reporter, and, reluctantly (??) judge.

• Frame story, but NOT chronological. It is up to the reader to piece the information together. *There are chronological issues, though this works with the theme of time.

xii

Preface:• Reader must reorder the lies and truths of Gatsby to

make sense:– Chp III: Nick hears rumors about Gatsby at party– Chp IV: Gatsby tells Nick a mostly false autobiography during car ride to

NY; Jordan briefly narrates about Gatsby’s courtship of Daisy (1917)– Chp VI: Nick relates bio of Gatsby’s youth; though impressionistically, not

in Gatsby’s words.– Chp VII: Gatsby proves he went to Oxford; Tom reveals Gatsby’s

bootlegging activities– Chp VIII: “It was the night he told me the strange story of his youth with

Dan Cody…”; also recounts Gatsby’s falling in love with Daisy and the consummation, his war record, Daisy’s unfaithfulness (no source given), and his return to Louisville after the war.

– Chp IX: Wolfshiem tells Nick of his partnership with Gatsby; Mr. Gatz shows Gatsby’s boyhood schedule to Nick

xii -xiii

Fitz wanted The Great Gatsby to be a “consciously artistic

achievement” (195)

The novel’s sales were disappointing. The first printing

of slightly over 20,000 copies sold slowly. The second printing of 3,000 copies were never fully sold before Fitzgerald’s death 15

years later. (203)

Current:

Connect to Dr. T.J. Eckleburg…

To understand the cover art go to:pg 196-198

and last paragraph on pg 85

Francis Cugat’s Dust Jacket Design (Scribner)

• Fitzgerald pleads in an August 1924 letter, "For Christ's sake don't give anyone that jacket you're saving for me. I've written it into the book."

• "Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms” (81).

Text Support• Gatsby’s Car: “Circus Wagon” (by Tom)• Gatsby’s Party-goers: “conducted themselves according to

the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks”• “Coney Island” and “World’s Faire”• Step right up to see “the Great Gatsby” (some irony in

statement--like carnie)• Eyes: T.J Eckleberg “blue and gigantic and their retinas are

one yard high. • They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of

enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose.”

Text Support…• “Unlike Gatsby. . . “ End of Ch. 4

• “Eckleberg” Begin of Ch 2

• Begin thinking about eyes and perception

• Wilson: “when he saw us a damp gleam of home sprang into his light blue eyes.

• Tom: “Arrogant eyes”

• Ash gray men “stir up and impenetrable cloud which screens their

• Obscure operations from your sight”

Explanatory Notes:• Begin on pg 207 (the map is on 206)

– Refer to your text…

– ALSO, don’t forget to read Max Perkins (Fitz’s editor) letter to Fitz on needed revisions pg 199-202

xv

OLD Cover

Poem?

Paradise to Gatsby: A meta-connection? => Thomas Parke D’Invillers: Pen name for F. Scott Fitzgerald and

character in This Side of Paradise that was poet and friend of Amory

Then Wear the Gold Hat

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her,

If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,

Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,

I must have you!”

Naming Conventions?• Fitzgerald considered several titles for the text:

(Consider if “The Great Gatsby” is the most effective of them.) pg 207

• Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires

• On the Road to West Egg

• Gold-Hatted Gatsby (pg1)

• The High-Bouncing Lover

• Under the Red, White and Blue

• Trimalchio in West Egg (119)

• Trimalchio

Who is Trimalchio?• Character in Petronius’ Satyricon (60 AD)• Chapter titled “Trimalchio’s Feast”• Acquires great wealth and taken to extreme excess • Known for throwing excessive dinner parties and

serving lavish delicacies.• At parties, inebriated guests talk crudely about money

and possessions• T.S. Eliot begins The Waste Land with an epigraph by

Trimalchio from the Satyricon.

Trimalchio“I’ve shifted things around a good deal to make people wonder.”

--Gatsby to Nick, Trimalchio, Ch. VIII

“It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night--and, as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over” (113).

Trimalchio“I’ve shifted things around a good deal to make people wonder.”

--Gatsby to Nick, Trimalchio, Ch. VIII

“It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night--and, as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over” (113).

East Egg/ West Egg [8.12/10/6]

• The novel is set on Long Island (New York)

• West Egg can be considered as a fictionalized Great Neck, where Fitzgerald lived.

• East Egg is Sands Point, the tip of the Port Washington peninsula (just across Manhasset Bay).

Wilson’s Garage & The Ash Heaps [27.4]

• The trip to New York City has them pass through Flushing (in the borough of Queens) which is the basis of the setting for Wilson’s Garage.

• The Valley of Ashes was originally a dump in Corona.

El Greco’s “View of Toledo”

• Tone & Mood

• Colors

• Subject Matter

• Style

El Greco’s Style (1541-1614)

Manerism:

• Style that avoided realistic portrayals of the physical world in favor of a more “subjective view.”

• Point of view that exists in the mind rather than in nature.

• Space was compressed, colors were bizarre, and figures became elongated and were intertwined in complex poses.

THE END

Nick CarrawayNick Carraway

•Nick is the glue linking the assembly of characters, allowing him to be the perfect observer narratorperfect observer narrator – he is also a REAL human being)~ part of both worlds, but doesn’t belong to either~ Consider his interactions with both East and West Egg

•Very honest and harmless (unwilling to act on the flaws he sees in the other characters)

•He thinks of himself as higher than everyone else (irony – says he doesn’t judge people, but judges them the entire book)

•Is a reliable narrator (reader comes to trust him and share his values)

•His realism keeps the reader from over-romanticizing the lives of the wealthy

•Turns 30 - (a symbolic shift he recognizes from youthful idealism of 20s to sad realism of life and moral responsibility in his 30s)

•By the end admires the essence By the end admires the essence of Gatsby’s quest for Daisyof Gatsby’s quest for Daisy

Jay Gatsby Jay Gatsby

•Does not develop over novel (static)

•symbol for the whole of the American experience (adopts materialism to achieve his goals, only leads to corruption; everything becomes empty)

•heroic figure (?) ~ Consider the 5 characteristics of a tragic hero/character…

•Creates own identity from his “Platonic conception of himself” (trying to create the ideal vision of man in himself) ~ Consider what a platonic ideal is…

•His demise is ironic in that he dies at the hands of another very loyal character (Wilson)

•“Can’t repeat the past – why of course you can.” ~Time as a MAJOR theme in the text~

•Last paragraph of book – he is the one trying to beat back into the past [that was his whole point in desiring Daisy; that he could reestablish the past]

Tom BuchananTom Buchanan

(Fitzgerald thought he was the “best” character he ever created)

•Aggressive, argumentative =

Power (physical, sexual, social) [represents the brutality and moral carelessness of established rich]

The American Dream (for Myrtle Wilson)

• Contrasts Gatsby’s idealism and Nick’s personal integrity

•The antagonist (?); highly immoralan “old sport”“old sport” – a former athlete for Yale; went to college with Nick

• Total inheritance of wealth, but is in the bond business

• Wife = Daisy

•Mistress = Myrtle Wilson

• Hypocrite:

Criticizes others for disrespecting the sanctity of marriage

Criticizes Gatsby as bootlegger, but takes advantage of that constantly

Daisy BuchananDaisy Buchanan

• Gatsby’s ideal vision of woman

• Beautiful, enchanting, hollow (voice gives the illusion of sincerity ~see chp 1,

and the quote that her “voice was full of money.”)

• Graceful, romantic, but childishly selfish and destructive

• Light, thin, and immaterial (in contrast to Myrtle who is solid and fleshy)

•Is cynical, unfaithful, selfish (not worthy of Gatsby’s devotion – irony)

•Has charming, meaningless gestures (this is the nature of upper class)

•Is the wealthy “golden girl” (connect to Zelda and Ginierva)

•Nick’s second cousin

• Desire for daughter to be “a beautiful young fool” which is “the best thing a girl can be in this world”

• Cracks under the pressure (see Plaza hotel scene)

•FIRST WORDS –FIRST WORDS – “I’m p-p-paralyzed…”

An excuse for her not to get up and move…

Consider that like Zelda, the affair with the other man (Edouard/Gatsby), is stopped when the husband steps in.

Jordan Baker

• Name = combination of 2 different cars

• Professional golfer (formerly a man’s profession)

• An image of the “NEW WOMANNEW WOMAN” of the 1920s generation

• Cool even cold character who enters into a world once reserved for men (and plays by their rules; win at all costs)

• Identified with Daisy in her appearance and personal irresponsibility

•*A bad driver**A bad driver* (proves the concept that the rich think that everyone should get our of their way; they have a right to drive bad because it won’t be their fault)

COMMENTS ON THE DIAGRAM• The AUTHOR creates a fictional world with a location,

characters and a sequence of events. This is THE FABULA. The fabula is a result of moral, political, intellectual, psychological, and aesthetic concerns of the author. Many of these concerns are conscious, but there may also be unconscious concerns that "sneak" into the narrative. The author also creates a NARRATOR to report the events, characters and setting to the reader. This is the voice in which the author chooses to speak. Sometimes it may be almost neutral and sometimes it may express moral and aesthetic judgments. But it is a creation of the author, and it is part of the narrative - sometimes as an external "voice" and sometimes as an internal voice or the voice of a character in the fictional world itself..

More COMMENTS ON THE DIAGRAM

• The sequence of events as reported by the narrator is THE STORY. It is only the story as reported by the narrator that is available to the reader, and the narrator may choose to report the events out of the order that they occur in the fabula. (The term "flashback" describes a case of the narrator reporting past events late in the story.) The reader receives the story through THE TEXT and that is where the narrator makes his moral and aesthetic judgments, if he chooses to make them at all.

• Note that the arrows connected to the author are one way. THE READER can only work "backwards" along the arrows to infer the concerns of the author and to infer from the story and the text the order of events in the fabula and the characters.

• Note that the author and the reader are transcendental (outside)to the text while the narrator and the fictional world are immanent (within or present) to the text