Zelda Sayre - married him after his first successful novel
Went to NYC to pursue fame
Alcoholism and mental illness
Slide 2 - Slide
Title + motto:
Playful alliteration - deceiving?
Sincere? Sarcastic?
Who's the protagonist?
"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!'
- Thomas Parke D'Invilliers
Slide 3 - Slide
Literary context
Modernism: tried to capture the sense of emptiness and disillusionment post WWI (Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway)
The lost generation of American authors: Fitz + Hemingway (Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms)
Reality, corruption, and sadness of the human condition
Slide 4 - Slide
The Jazz age
The tone of modernist literature is, at first glance, in stark contrast to the exuberance, rhythm, and positivity of the Jazz Age/Roaring twenties. This is a productive contradiction for Fitzgerald.
Slide 5 - Slide
West Egg
Slide 6 - Slide
East Egg
Slide 7 - Slide
Chapter I: What kind of book are we reading?
Perspective: 1st person
Reliable or unreliable?
What kind of background?
Slide 8 - Slide
character:
"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since"
Very first line about someone else
"I'm inclined to reserve all judgments," and "I was unustly accused of being a politician." Trying to convince the reader that he is objective and reliable
Slide 9 - Slide
Character II
"after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit" Zijn objectiviteit heeft wel grenzen
