The Great Gatsby

Chapter 6

“James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name.  he had change it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior….I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then.  His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all.  The truth was that jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.  He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.  So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end” (p. 98).

Here, in striking detail, is revealed the rub of Gatsby’s fantasies.  Here, we learn from whence he (in all enigmatic mystery) stems.  Not the haughty hot-house of pleasure, ease, and luxury; but rather a destitute hearth of agrarian mean.  With finality of the novel in mind, coupled with its searing impact on all who read it, we awaken to the idea that this tale is one of embittering dejection.  It is a story of the death of the American dream.  Gatsby, in the vibrant naiveté of youth, conceives an existence for himself which shall cut his woes from his coat-tails.  This conjuring, envisioned at 17, is magnanimous and noble.  Should we discourage Gatsby’s lofty ideals and expressions?  Is not every creature entitled to the rare expressionism as exhibited in the altitudinous fantasies of James Gatz? 

None can resist, amid the peering moonlight of sleepless reverie, the chance to steal away from the mundane and minutia of living to the chimerical fabrications of juvenile imagination.  The world we generate, although fantastic and unreal, if allowed, can become a monomaniacal obsession which drags us deep into fen and swamp whence hardly a man can escape its slimy grasp.  When a dream, silently and unnoticeably, corrupts into ill fixation, the spawn is hamartia.  We applaud Gatsby for the brilliancy of his hope.  Hope that consumes, however, becomes the hero’s error. 

Do not misunderstand.  Our dreams are laudable, as is Gatsby’s, but anticipation which wafts men and women into mania is insalubrious.  James Gatsby created: “A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor.  Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace.  For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing” (p. 99). 

This monomania is evidenced when, following the extravagant party held at his mansion, he tensely councils with Nick Caraway:

“‘She didn’t like it,’ he said immediately.

‘Of course she did.’

‘She didn’t like it,’ he insisted. ‘She didn’t have a good time.’

He was silent and I guessed at this unutterable depression.

            ‘I feel far away from her,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to make her understand.’

            ‘You mean about the dance?’

            ‘The dance?’ He dismissed all the dances he had given with a snap of his fingers. ‘Old sport, the dance is unimportant.’” (p. 109).

Nick Caraway then comments about Daisy:

 

            “‘I wouldn’t ask too much of her,’ I ventured. ‘You can’t repeat the past.’

            ‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!’

            He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.” (p. 110—emphasis added). 

            This pathetic, forced indoctrination, by Gatsby himself, is that the past can somehow be manipulated at your own discretion.  Such a thought is wholly illogical.  This absurdity will form the cast of his misfortune.

CHAPTER 5

The Great Gatsby: Chapters 5

            Chapter five features the culmination of our aspirations for the love rekindling.  Cupid stands figuratively astride Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchannan. 

            After returning from New York, Nick Caraway finds “the whole corner of the peninsula…blazing with light, which fell unreal on the shrubbery and made thin elongating glints upon the roadside wires.  Turning [the] corner, [he] saw that it was Gatsby’s house, lit from tower to cellar” (p. 81).  Although the mansion’ festivities are not underway upon this particular night, often it is described empty, “there wasn’t a sound.  Only wind in the trees, which blew the wires and made the lights go off and on again as if the house had winked into the darkness” (ibid.).  This vacuum house is void of its stellar shindigs on this particular night.  The daylight has fled, leaving the house longing for is usual concourses of people dotting the dining rooms, filling the furniture, and packing the passageways.  Gatsby affirms this when Nick inquires as to the house’s emptiness “I have been glancing into some of the rooms” (ibid). 

            As they converse, the truth is quickly revealed regarding why Gatsby has approached Nick on this night.  Gatsby desires that Nick host tea for Daisy and Gatsby just happens to arrive.  In Gatsby’s mind, this meeting will break the barriers of his desolate existence and, thereby, liberate him from the dismal depression in which he finds himself. 

            Naturally, we as the reader, find the bringing of flowers totally romantic.  Yet, the romanticism is marred by the nagging nervousness exhibited by Gatsby before Daisy’s arrival.  Gatsby sits in Nick’s home and two minutes to four he is ready to withdraw when finally she arrives. 

 

            My reasoning in recounting this part of the novel is to remind us the stakes here.  Gatsby has just invited the love of his life to tea at Nick’s home, and Gatsby is almost too apprehensive to see it come to fruition.  In fact, as Daisy enters the house, to our chagrin, Gatsby is not present at all!  After all the planning, the wanting, the desire to see this moment, Gatsby flees.  How often do we find ourselves in similar situations when at the slightest pang of panic we run out the door, unable to face what we have brought upon ourselves?

            Just when all seems lost, “there [is] a light dignified knocking at the front door.  I went out and opened it.  Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes” (pp. 85-86).  We then see this almost tragic moment transform into what I will call “a romantic love-punch for the audience,” simply because it becomes one of the most memorable scene in the book and ultimately sets the stage for further love interest between Gatsby and Daisy. 

            “For half a minute there wasn’t a sound.  Then from the living-room I heard a sort of choking mummer and part of a laugh, followed by Daisy’s voice on a clear artificial note: ‘I certainly am awfully glad to see you again.’  A pause; it endured horribly.  I had nothing to do in the hall, so I went into the room” (p.86). 

            As a reader, our emotions are roused by this pathetic reunion.  We feel sadness for Gatsby, realizing that this is, most likely, not the encounter he must have envisioned.  However, as they begin to converse, things quickly improve as both recognize their embarrassment.  It is with this jarring of our heartstrings that Fitzgerald masterfully intensifies the moment.  Through this distress, we are endeared to the characters. 

Daily we face moments of immense perplexity.  Daily we must wend our way amidst fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.  We relate to Gatsby in this moment.  How often do we see our plans lay wasted?  We feel that we should have fared better, when we fared worse.  We can empathize with Gatsby; we see the similarities of his situation and our current circumstances.  Therefore, when he flagrantly flees and reluctantly returns, it is us who is fleeing and returning.  We feel intimately apart of the proceedings.  If Gatsby is rejected, we are rejected.  As Gatsby feels embarrassed, likewise, we are embarrassed too.  Thus, when this premeditated meeting is somewhat successful, we feel overjoyed and there is an inseparable link created between the reader and Gatsby.  We are cheering and hoping for his success.

The Great Gatsby: Chapters 3 & 4.

                “There was music from my neighbor’s house thought the summer nights.  In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.  At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam” (p. 39). 

            This is but one of various accounts made by Nick Caraway concerning the fabulous and frantic orgies held at Gatsby’s mansion.  Although, seemingly annoyed by it all, it is apparent that Caraway knows much concerning the nature of these parties.  A truly irritated individual would seek to separate him/herself from the raucous riot occurring simultaneously next door.  We are certain of this tone of bother in Caraway’s voice by the comparison of the people to moths (an aggravating insect which can eat clothing).  Once again, Nick Caraway demonstrates his ambivalence.  At the same moment he holds contradictory attitudes—that of attraction and repulsion. 

            Caraway then informs us that he went to the party.  He involves himself because his fascination is more than his disinterest.  The invitation from Gatsby allows his imaginations to get the best of him.  Thus, while at the party, he walks among this castle of chattels enchanted by the extravagance and lured by the luxury of it all.  Then, he unintentionally meets Gatsby.  It is an absorbing scene:

                “I’m Gatsby,” he said suddenly.

                “What!” I exclaimed. “Oh, I beg your pardon.”

                “I thought you knew, old sport.  I’m afraid I’m not a very good host.”

                He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly.  It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.  It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.  It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.  Precisely at that point it vanished— (p. 48).”

            This occurrence tips the balance in Gatsby’s favor.  Nick Caraway figuratively becomes a fan of Gatsby. Even so, Nick Caraway tries to “write off” this glamour of the gala later when finished writing about the party:

            “Reading over what I have written so far, I see I have given the impression that the events of three nights several weeks apart were all that absorbed me.  On the contrary, they were merely casual events in a crowded summer, and, until much later, they absorbed me infinitely less than my personal affairs” (p. 56).

Caraway is not about to admit that he enjoyed the party.

The interactions with Gatsby gives rise to the question of the rumors heretofore heard by Nick throughout the night.  We, the reader, are left wondering: “Is this hyperbole, do these rumors have foundation?”  The night continues in the suave soiree of fireworks and introductions.  However, as the night presses on, there is a moment of innate symbolism.  Nick Caraway comes to a large room full of people.  A girl in a yellow dress is playing the piano and a red-haired lady, standing nearby singing:

            “She had drunk a quantity of champagne, and during the course of her song she had decided, ineptly that everything was very, very sad—she was not only singing, she was weeping too.  Whenever there was a pause in the song she filled it with gasping, broken sobs, and then took up the lyric again in a quavering soprano.  The tears coursed down her cheeks—not freely, however, for when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed an inky color, and pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets.  A humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes on her face, whereupon she threw up her hands, sand into a char and went off into a deep vinous sleep.  ‘She had a fight with a man who says he’s her husband,’ explained a girl at my elbow. 

                I looked around.  Most of the remaining women were not having fights with men said to be their husbands” (p. 51). 

                At this disgusting deluge of fighting between husbands and wives, we see the theme symbolically portrayed.  Amid the excess of the bash, a place where people should be enjoying themselves, there is quarreling and weeping of remorse.  There is emptiness.  Here is the rancorous reality that human beings will never be happy with this lifestyle. Is Fitzgerald’s message that the hedonism of the age is a problem which cannot satisfy the terms and conditions of men and women’s happiness?  That people aren’t truly happy with the “live for the moment” lifestyle, continually getting what they want?  Are we to know that the unabated receiving of our desire’s whimsical wants is not instantaneously given?  Further reading will reply.  We see this emptiness again, just pages later:

            “A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell” (p. 55).

            Will all this emptiness resolve itself?  Shall Fitzgerald reveal, at any point in the novel, the panacea for the woes and angst of the age? 

                “‘I’ll tell you God’s truth.’  His right hand suddenly ordered divine retribution to stand by.  “I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West—all dead now.  I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years.  It is a family tradition’” (p. 65). 

            In this chapter, for the first time we are intimately introduced to Gatsby, as is Nick Caraway. Gatsby’s attempted portrayal as a traditional wealthy family is a tragic exaggeration which likely stings his Gatsby’s lying lips as it leaves.  For those who are familiar with the story, we are deeply melancholic about this supposition accepted unwittingly by Nick Caraway.  The first portrait we have of Gatsby is gallant, refined, and sophisticated.  Furthermore, our narrator admits this in his reflections; the “Great” Gatsby, Gatsby the wonderfully mysterious. 

James Gatsby’s hamartia, his error, his misstep, his frailty, his flaw is his obsession, obsession with Daisy Buchannan.  Caraway wrongly sees it as “hope.”  However, this is not hope.  Gatsby’s is hope in excess, hope in the extreme.  This hope cankers into monomania, a preoccupation so preemptive, that everyone involved is affected.  It is his fatal flaw.  This flaw leads to his lying, his cheating, his foul-play to get, what he wrongly assumes, he deserves.

Chapters 1 & 2 Analysis

Chapters 1 & 2 of The Great Gatsby

            The initial readings of any book by even the most casual reader are vital.  There is no exception with The Great Gatsby.  Nick Caraway, the unpronounced narrator and supposed author of this account merely muses:

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ [his father] told [him], ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had” (p.1).

            Nick then describes that he is “inclined to reserve all judgments” (ibid), whereupon, he declares that “reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope” (p. 2).   He continues in his tolerance has certain boundaries, and he has an ‘unaffected scorn’ for this ‘Gatsby.’  Yet at the same moment, almost in the same breath, he expresses a fascination with Gatsby:

‘there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life…it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which is not likely I shall ever find again.  No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men’ (ibid.).

Caraway is obviously ambivalent to Gatsby.  These conflicting comprehensions toward this now ambiguous man are something to be pondered throughout the novel.  While we have yet to be introduced to any character in the book, Nick Caraway inserts this opinion, almost tainting our imaginations with the notion that Gatsby is one whom we should recognize as a social paradox, someone who we should ‘scorn,’ but also one who should be admired.  I find this narrative fascinating in the way that it relates to the remainder of the novel. 

Prevalent through the first few chapters, is the way that Fitzgerald influences our opinion of the characters through word use.  For example, Tom Buchannan is described as rough and manly and Fitzgerald maintains this description.  From the initial conversation in the Buchannan home, the virtues and idiosyncrasies of each character quickly become apparent.  Another moment of note is Daisy’s fascination with sophistication:  “she laughed with thrilling scorn.  ‘Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!’” (p.17).  This obsession makes sense of later behavior in relation to Gatsby’s stock of stuff.  She frolics frantically in Gatsby’s palace of possessions, hardly acknowledging him or his progression.  She only does this when persuaded by Gatsby to love him. 

Then, of course, we have the mystical green light which shall yet play a major role in the book, the symbolism, of which, is not fully explained until the bitter end.  The final lines of chapter one end with Nick Caraway looking out to see Gatsby:

“. . .he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling.  Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green ling, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.  When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.”

This is our first encounter with the queer green light.  This haunting apparition which makes itself a serpentine symbol which pervades the novel in all of Gatsby’s actions and ideas.  The only symbol, which more often manifests itself in the novel, is Doctor Eckleburg’s eyes,  “I followed him over a low whitewashed railroad fence, and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare.” (p. 24).  The appearance of these eyes will be discussed more intensely in later posts.  We need only know that from their first indication, they are important.

In chapter two, we are flung into the affair of Tom Buchannan and Myrtle Wilson.  As if Tom were somehow admirable from the beginning, any sentiments of esteem for Tom are dashed to pieces, and left in their stead is a cold and biting opinion.  Our fleeting feelings of rectitude are further wafted away in the wind by the subtle and shoddy fabrications of Tom and Myrtle. 

“‘You see,’ cried Catherine triumphantly.  She lowered her voice again.  ‘It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart.  She’s a Catholic, and they don’t believe in divorce.’

Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie” (p. 33).

The first two chapters quickly plunge us into the traditional culture of the nineteen twenties.  Our exposures to the practices of the decade are tremendously zeitgeist in nature and contribute to our mental depiction of the novel.  These primary phrases commence swiftly and seemingly every sentence is significant.

Announcement of First Novel!

The totals are in and the winner is…The Great Gatsby!  Although it was most likely read in high school English by everyone, this masterpiece has thrilled readers for nearly a century.  The Great Gatsby has been called the “supreme achievement of [F. Scott Fitzgerald’s] career.”  It is a real reflection of the “roaring twenties” or the period of prosperity following the completion of “The Great War.”  The Great Gatsby is marked as “A Great American Novel” being distinguished from the classical European novels which were widely read at the time.  The novel is a literary zeitgeist, meaning it is accurately catches the spirit of the time along with the thoughts of people living at that period and “typifies and influences the culture of a particular era” (“zeitgeist” Merriam-Webster). 

                What is most memorable to me upon reflection of the novel, is the descriptive and symbolic words as used by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  His prose is prolific in that it adequately describes what he wishes to express, but also painting a canvas of connotation.  Images of implication are rich and abundant.  The casual reader must slowly glean from the passages the immensity of indications which are presented to move the novel forward. 

Another reflection stems from the idea of romance lost.  I think it is safe to assume that everyone has held deep feelings in relation to another person.  The feelings of romance an attraction are natural and can be overwhelming to where we find existential vestiges in the minutia of daily life.  Coupled with these feelings, perhaps we have experienced the dejection of deprivation.  When that love is lost to the wind, taking with it all of its feelings and sucking dry the liveliness of life.  We are, therefore, the opposite of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz film.  We are dragged from the Technicolor reality of Oz and are slumped back into the droll darkness of desaturated Kansas.  This is experienced by Gatsby, essentially constructing his life around this one idea, and then when the dream itself collapses, literally and figuratively, he must collapse also. 

Needless to say, I am ecstatic to examine this magnum opus once again and pull from its pages the thoughts and ideas of one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century. 

To allow everyone involved with The Finer Things Club to choose a novel by the end of the summer, the reading will require daily vigilance.  Thus, we have created this reading schedule which is totally doable.  I will be commenting on the readings every other day from the chapters which we have finished and I invite you all to leave comments of thoughts, interpretations, and elucidations in regards to The Great Gatsby. 

 

DATE	ASSIGNED READING
Wednesday, May 8 Day 1	Chapter 1 & Chapter 2
Thursday, May 9 Day 2	Chapter 3
Friday, May 10 Day 3	Chapter 4
Saturday, May 11 Day 4	Chapter 5
Sunday, May 12 Day 5	Chapter 6
Monday, May 13 Day 6	Chapter 7
Tuesday, May 14 Day 7	Chapter 8
Wednesday, May 15 Day 8	Chapter 9   If you do not desire to read on Sunday, then plan ahead and read extra on Saturday.

 

Inaugural Finer Things Club Blog Entry

     With much anticipation and all accolades adequate to the cause, we formally announce The Finer Things Club Blog.  This blog is strictly dedicated to the interpretation and theory of literary criticism as derived and given by the members of The Finer Things Club. 

     The Finer Things Club had its commencement in the summer of 2012 with examination of C.S. Lewis' classic religious text Mere Christianity.  It was, for all intents and purposes, a book club.  Upon the completion of the novel, there were various disputes regarding the succeeding novel.  These quarrels in relation to the selection and continuity of the club utterly led to the club's abolishment.  Like the sputtering spark, trying to ignite the large logs for a fire, the club disbanded before the necessary warmth was created which would lead to perpetuity. 

     In conversation with former members of The Finer Things Club one could discern no hint of resignation of the group, merely a matter of disorganization which caused the group's failure.  In these discussions, desires have been expressed to restructure the club in hopes that this will lead to continuity.  As such, this blog has been formed for the very purpose of adequately providing circumstances to discuss the novel minus the collected meeting of all involved with monthly meetings (brunches) to discuss the book in person.  It will also beget a watchful eye of all participants in order to see where in the book the participant should be thus preventing all slackful and procrastinating readers. 

     The blog will cause creative criticism, clarification, exegesis, and hermeneutics of the novels which will be selected by means of a survey taken on the blog itself.  This blog had its genesis in hopes of inducing in us better benevolence, brotherhood, kindliness, and rapport. 

     Please take the first survey which will be tabulated and announced Saturday evening via text message and post your sentiments apropos of the blog idea itself.  My cordial thanks to each of you.