Great Gatsby 2

• English
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 5

The Great Gatsby 

Reading the Great Gatsby in 2021

• What is the teacher's tone when he's asking how women are portrayed in The Great Gatsby? Why? 
• Why does the boy speak "like a true Nick Carraway?" Explain. 

Last Week

• Fitz' bio 
• historio-literary context: modernism + post WWI 
• Motto
• Perspective (1st person) + (un)reliable narration
• Old money vs. nouveau riche 
• East vs. West 

This week

• Daisy (and the portrayal of women) 
• Old money, new money, NO MONEY 
• Symbols: The Valley of Ashes + The Eyes of Dr. Eckleburg
• No vacation before quotation
• Finding ways to analyze literature  

Daisy Buchanan

"'We don't know each other very well, Nick,' she said suddenly. 'Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding.' 

'I wasn't back from the war.' 

'That's true.' She hesitated. 'Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything" (23).  

Daisy Buchanan

• Superficial? 
• Shallow? 
• Spoiled?  

Daisy Buchanan

Talking about the birth of her daughter:

"[I]t was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.' 

You see I think everything's terrible anyhow,' she went on in a convinced way. 'Everybody thinks so - the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything' (...) 'Sophisticated - God, I'm sophisticated!'" (23-24)

Daisy Buchanan

• Self-reflexive? 
• Aware of her position in society?
• Keeping up appearances?  

The proliferation of vanity 

Mrs. McKee - "shrill, languid, handsome, and horrible" (36):

"She told me with pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they had been married" (36).  

 

Old money, new money, NO MONEY

• East coast, west coast, flyover country
• East/West Egg, New York, the valley of ashes

The Valley of Ashes 

"This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight” (?). 

The Valley of Ashes

• The spacial representation of flyover country 
• The silent/forgotten losers of the roaring twenties (and capitalism) 
• Who is the personification of this sentiment? 
• And who's trying to get away from their fate?  

The eyes of Dr. Eckleburg

"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… I followed [Tom] over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg's persistent stare... "Terrible place, isn't it," said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg" (?).

The eyes of Dr. Eckleburg

• The Great Gatsby is known for its time and color motif. This occurs in the description of Dr. Eckleburg as well.
• Nick is getting fancy with his language here 
• Eyes watching over the American wasteland.. Religious? Never explicit in the novel. 

When analyzing the Great Gatsby

Thought provoking literature is always trying to occupy an unexpected position between binaries:

Man vs. Woman

Rich vs. Poor 

East vs. West

Colorful vs. Bleak

Young vs. Old 

In a literature questions: find the binary, see where the novel positions itself, and discuss your findings.