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THE GREAT GATSBY

Nienke Langenhoff, Tessa Rensink, Elise van der Sman & Fleur Busch

What makes this book a classic novel?

And why is it still relevant today?

Modernism / Roaring 20s 

Themes

Symbolism 

Moral of the novel

Critical reception

Conclusion

Characters

Main characters

Nick Carraway: 

• Narrator, get's more involved with time
• Moves to West Egg 
• Doesn't seem to be the same as the other characters, naive 

Characters

Main characters

Jay Gatsby: 

• Nick's neighbour
• Mysterious 
• Parties, in hope of finding Daisy 
• Lonely/insecure

Characters

Main characters

Daisy Buchanan:

• Nick's cousin 
• Gentleness  
• Ethereal            the colour white
• Married to Tom Buchanan 
• Actually quite shallow

Characters 

Supporting characters: 

• Jordan Baker
  
• Tom Buchanan
  
• Myrtle Wilson
  
• George Wilson 

Short summary 

Nick Carraway moves to West Egg, NYC after returning from WWI

Nick becomes reacquainted with his distant cousin Daisy (and husband Tom)

Tom is cheating on Daisy with Myrtle Wilson. Myrtle is from lower class, while Tom and Daisy are from a high social class

Short summary 

Nick receives an invitation to one of the lavish parties of the mysterious Mr. Gatsby. 

Gatsby seeks friendship with Nick. He wants Nick to help him meet Daisy, the love of his life, again. 

Short summary 

Nick arranges Gatsby and Daisy's reunion. 

Tom and Daisy come to Gatsby’s party. Daisy doesn’t seem to enjoy it, while Tom wants to find out how Gatsby has earned his money.

Short summary 

Daisy and Gatsby drive away and Daisy runs over Myrtle Wilson (Tom's mistress) by accident. 

Tom tells George Wilson that Gatsby killed his wife. George makes his way to Gatsby’s mansion, shoots him, and then commits suicide.

Short summary 

Nick arranges Gatsby’s funeral. Only two people come, one of whom is Gatsby’s father.

Nick moves back to the Midwest.

My opinion: Tragic story. Although it seemed like Gatsby had many friends, none of Gatby's party guest of associates attended his funeral. Very sorrowful ending. 

Writer and inspirations

"The whole idea of Gatsby is the unfairness of a poor young man not being able to marry a girl with money. This theme comes up again and again because I lived it"

• F. Scott Fitzgerald           American novelist, essayist and short story writer
•   1922-1925
• Great Neck and Manhasset Neck           West egg and East egg
• Young Midwesterner from Minessota, Princeton          Yale
• Jazz age and Roaring Twenties 
• Romance with socialite Ginevra King

Time in which the book was written

“They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestful wherever people played polo and were rich together”.

• Modernism
  
• fragmented writing
• Modernism techniques like: corruption of the
  American Dream, breaking society's rules, 
• Alientation          Daisy
• Lost generation          all characters, Daisy and Tom
• WWI          Nick and Gatsby

In what time do you think the Great Gatsby took place?

Time in which the book took place

• 1922 > Roaring Twenties
• Rapidly changing society
• After WWI
• Enormous economic prosperity & consumer culture
• Shift in values and beliefs & changing social order
• Women's clothing
• Underground drinking culture (speakeasies)
• Organized crime

Do you think F. Scott Fitzgerald believed in the American dream?

1. Yes
2. No

Theme: American Dream

• Roaring Twenties
• Gatsby > rises from poverty to wealth
• Reality > corrupt and materialistic society
• Gatsby believes
• Lack richness of love

“Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this brigde, ‘I thought; ‘anything at all…’ Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.”

Theme: society and class

"Old money": 

• Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Jordan 
• Daisy could not bear to lose her social status for genuine love

"New Money":

• Gatsby
• Wealth is not equivalent to an entrance
  into the upper social class

"No Money": 

• George and Myrtle Wilson
• Difficult to move up in class

“decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth”.

Theme: Love and Marriage

‘I married him because I thought he was a gentleman,’ she said finally. ‘I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.’ - Myrtle Wilson

Loveless marriages

Tekst

Between George and Myrtle Wilson:

Why do you think Myrtle has an affair with Tom while being married to George?

Theme: Love and Marriage

‘[H]e gave her a string of pearls... I was a bridesmaid... She... pulled out the... pearls... “Take ’em down-stairs and give ’em back to whoever they belong to. Tell ’em all Daisy’s change’ her mind. Say: ‘Daisy’s change’ her mind!’

Loveless marriages

Tekst

Between Tom and Daisy Buchanan:

Theme: Materialism

Materialism by defintion: a tendency to consider material possesions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values. 

Examples in the book: 

• The time period of the roaring twenties (consumerism)
• Gatsby's mansion 
• East egg

Symbolism: Gatsby's Mansion

• Huge parties
• Jazz era / Roaring Twenties
• Emptiness for love
• Nicks Neighbor
• Not enough for acceptance
• Emptiness
• West egg

Symbolism: The Green Light

Color symbolism 

Mysterious light at the end of Daisy's East Egg dock.

• Representation of Gatsby's dreams and hope for the future
• Everything that haunts him and takes him to the past
• The green stuff 
• American Dream as unattainable as the green light

Symbolism: The Valley of Ashes

'But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—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. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.'

    

                                          page 26

Symbolism: The Valley of Ashes

The Valley of Ashes is a symbol that represents death, poverty, moral decay, and the unattainability of the American Dream. 

                             Done by the use of grey 

Division of classes, people who have failed to live the American Dream. 
The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg can be perceived as God looking over the lower class.

Symbolism: East Egg and West Egg

West egg:

• New York: Great Neck           West Egg                         
• New money
• Gatsby 
• Principals of a hard-working generation and true values

East egg : 

• Manhasset Neck           East Egg  
• Old money 
• Tom and Daisy Buchanan and Jordan
• Flawes of present-day monarchs and a rich and spoiled generation
  

“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,’ he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me as if he were alert for something more. ‘I’d be a God damn fool to live anywhere else”

What is the biggest difference between East Egg and West Egg?

Was the Great Gatsby well received in his time?

1. Yes, there were only good reviews
2. No, hardly anyone was positive about the book
3. The reviews were mixed

Critical reception at the time

• Mixed reviews
•          Rich portrayal of the Roaring Twenties
•          Loose structure and lack of moral compas
• Relatively well sold
• Masterpiece of the genre
• Classic

Answering the main statement: 

Why is the book still relevant to this day on? And why is it a true noval? 

• Numerous themes that still resonate
• The false promise of the American Dream 
• Gap between upper and lower class
• Wanting to relive your past (you can’t relive the past and something that is gone)
• Greatest novel ever written
  in English
•  Hypertonic mystery, questions
• Use of words and heartlessness

“The cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment-houses”. 

Two truths and a lie, pick out the lie in the following statements:

1. Daisy isn't happily married with Tom
2. Tom is cheating on Daisy with Jordan
3. Daisy is Nick's cousin

Two truths and a lie, pick out the lie in the following statements:

1. Gatsby his nickname for Nick is 'old sport'
2. At the beginning Nick looks up to Gatsby
3. Nick and Gatsby have known each other from the start

Two truths and a lie, pick out the lie in the following statements:

1. Myrtle and George live in West Egg
2. East Egg stands for old money
3. Jordan lives in East Egg

Two truths and a lie, pick out the lie in the following statements:

1. Nick believed in the American Dream
2. The valley of the ashes represents the moral decay of the American Dream
3. Gatsby achieved the American Dream

THE END