Importance of TIME as a narrative device:
} In Chapter VI, Nick narrates what Gatsby tells him about his transformation from the penniless young drifter James Gatz, aged seventeen, into Jay Gatsby.
} The constant fracturing of time that we see in Gatsby – (remember time is not chronologically ordered. Nick concentrates primarily on four months from early summer to autumn in 1922, inserting various details of Gatsby’s past) – heightens the intensity of emotion experienced by both Gatsby and Nick, thus creating in the novel a poignant sense of what is lost or unattainable.
Gatsby’s real past:
P94: “James Gatz – that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed 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.”
Gatsby’s name change is pinpointed as the turning point in his life that sparked the ‘beginning of his career.’ The luxurious yacht of Dan Cody’s represented the beauty he craved and that was enough to stimulate his self-styled, self-styling image of himself as a seventeen year old.
P95: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 (false/insincere) 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.
-Nick’s truth or Gatsby’s truth? Can we ever distinguish between the two?
- Q: Why do you think Fitzgerald tells the story of Jay Gatz at this point in the novel?
Gatsby’s conception of himself:
} The Greek philosopher Plato suggested that the material world we experience is a mere shadow of the ideal world which constitutes reality. Plato insisted upon the ultimate reality of an ideal world, a utopia.
} Such a Platonic conception seems to be fundamentally out of step with modern American priorities. F. Scott Fitzgerald clearly recognises however, that despite the rampant materialistic values, twentieth-century Americans often clung to an ideal sense of their own national and personal destinies and identities.
} This ‘ideal’ sense is embodied in Jay Gatsby, who despite being caught up in property and money, is driven by a desire for something beyond physical possessions, something more akin to the ‘ideal’ – whatever that means?
} Therefore the identity of Jay Gatsby as an ideal conception of himself is cherished by young James Gatz as he beats his penniless way along the shores of Lake Superior. On meeting Dan Cody he presents a ready-made identity produced by the fantasies with which his imagination has fed his craving for a different kind of life.
} THIS NAME CHANGE HAS MAJOR SIGNIFICANCE FOR GATSBY, because he believes it is the key to changing himself. The name ‘Gatsby’ is the cornerstone of his new image and central to his characterisation.
A02 (Language shaping meaning)
} The language of this passage is highly associative. Phrases like, ‘He was a son of God’ and ‘he must be about His Father’s business’ evoke the perfection of Christ and His act of total dedication to the plan which His Father had set for Him.
} However, in the phrase that follows these overtly religious references –’a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty’ irony is introduced to reemphasise that Gatsby is dedicating and fashioning himself to a beauty that only wealth can create or buy and that is, in fact, morally suspect.
A04: Literary Context
} Emerson (19th century American writer, lecturer, poet) who championed individualism and self-reliance.
} Transcendentalism: literary movement in 19th Century – core belief: an ‘ideal’ spiritual state could ‘transcend’ the physical and the measurable states of being through intuition as opposed to religious doctrine.
} Emerson:
“Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?...The sun shines today also... There are new lands, new men, new thoughts.”
} Emerson and many other American writers stressed self-reliance, self-sculpting, self-inventing. The American ‘self-made’ man had a prestigious place in society and in this respect, Gatsby – springing from ‘his Platonic conception of himself’ – makes him a typically American young man as he invents the version of himself that he wants.
Romanticism/Reality/Unreality:
P95:
Even as a young man, working as a ‘clam-digger’ and ‘salmon-fisher’ Nick relates that Gatsby’s ‘heart was in a constant, turbulent riot.’ Every night he is described as adding ‘to the pattern of his fancies’ and ‘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.’
Irony here in the juxtaposition of phrases ‘rock of the world’ and ‘fairy’s wing.’ What is Fitzgerald trying to say about the nature of Gatsby’s imagination?
Q: Based on the description by Nick how would you describe Fitzgerald’s attitude towards imagination?
} Definite ambivalence in how he views the imagination;
} On one hand it can be seen to work magic, invoke wonder and make ordinary life seem enchanted (NB: Gatsby’s imagination allows him to add to his ‘fancies until drowsiness closed down’); but also it can be seen to generate illusions that keep harsh realities out of focus.
Nick’s reaction to Gatsby’s past:
P97:
All Gatsby has inherited from Dan Cody was ‘his singularly appropriate education’ and ‘the habit of letting liquor alone.’ Nick’s role as a writer continues to involve the process of extending Gatsby’s transforming vision so that the reader may share in it and so, in Chapter VI after Gatsby’s past is revealed ‘the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man.’ Through his use of time, Fitzgerald shows how the past is a crucial framing device to deepen Gatsby’s characterisation.
} ‘He told me all this very much later, but I’ve put it down here with the idea of exploding first those first wild rumours about his antecedents, which weren’t even faintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a time of confusion, when I reached the point of believing everything and nothing about him.’
} Nick concerned with dispelling rumours about Gatsby but even he doesn’t know what to believe. He reveals the persistent contradictions in his oscillating POV of Gatsby. Nonetheless there is something sympathetic in Nick’s tremendous keenness to give Gatsby the benefit of the doubt.
Tom’s first visit to Gatsby’s mansion
P98:
‘He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. But he would be uneasy anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague way that was all they came for.’
Q: What does this comment reveal about Gatsby’s attitude to hosting guests?
Gatsby’s social sensitivities:
P100:
‘I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish.’
} As Fitzgerald develops the plot, the superiority of Tom and Mr. Sloane’s attitude towards Gatsby emerges. Gatsby, despite his wealth, lacks their sense of social nuance and easy, aristocratic grace. Within the novel there are even class distinctions among the very rich.
Point of View
Shifts in narrative POV add a different dynamic to the perceptions of Gatsby’s final party as Nick views things through Daisy’s eyes.
Gatsby’s last party P100-107:
} P100:
“There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-coloured, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn’t been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy’s eyes.’
Point of View:
} The unease that permeates Gatsby’s final party is heightened for Nick as he views everything ‘through Daisy’s eyes.’
} Fitzgerald playing with perspective and point of view here. As Nick’s emotional experience is increasingly identified with Gatsby’s now that Nick is moving emotionally closer to him having uncovered the ‘truth’ about his past, the two central male figures start to look through Daisy’s eyes at the world Gatsby has created.
} Nick comments, ‘It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.’ – Nick saddened by the world he sees from Daisy’s perspective as her perspective destroys his own romantic vision of Gatsby’s world.
Daisy’s vision of West Egg:
} The guests at Gatsby’s party are viewed in terms of Daisy’s social attitudes; they are raucous and drunk, as they ‘scream’ and shout ‘violently’ to one another.
} Despite thinking Miss. Baedeker is ‘lovely’ (P103) the ‘rest offended’ Daisy as Nick claims ‘inarguably, because it wasn’t a gesture but an emotion.’ – Daisy sees the world in gestural terms, not emotional terms.
} Sense of place being developed in the narrative as Daisy’s characterisation is simultaneously developed:
} P103: ‘She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented ‘place’ that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village - appalled by its raw vigour that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.’
} Daisy’s sense of social propriety is offended by the bohemian behaviour brought by Broadway to West Egg.
Development of Daisy’s Character
} This party of Gatsby’s is the climax of the representation of Daisy as the object of his romantic vision and it marks the end of the glowing dream.
} However, towards the end of the night, Daisy’s voice and actions inject temporary magic:
P104: “Her voice broke up sweetly...and each changed tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air.”
The powerful allure of Daisy’s voice is enchanting not just to Gatsby but to Nick as well.
P105: “After all, in the very casualness of Gatsby’s party there were romantic possibilities totally absent from her world.”
– is she intrigued by the ‘romantic possibilities’ Gatsby can offer her?
As Daisy begins to sing along to ‘Three O’Clock in the Morning’ something calls her ‘back inside’ and Nick speculates as to what might happen.
“Perhaps some unbelievable guest would arrive, a person infinitely rare and to be marvelled at, some authentically radiant young girl who with one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical encounter, would blot out those five years of unwavering devotion.”
} Crucially it is Nick who defines Daisy’s feelings: he speculates that after she leaves some ‘authentically radiant young girl’ might bring fresh magic to Gatsby’s imagination. The word ‘authentically’ conveys that Daisy knows she cannot live up to Gatsby’s vision of her.
} NB: As readers we are never given the chance to penetrate Daisy’s mind; we only understand it through Nick’s judgement. Does this matter? Nick very much adopts the role as moral judge in the novel.
Climax of Gatsby’s Dream
} Fitzgerald continues to develop the narrative by showing the extent to which Gatsby is consumed with an irrational longing for the past.
P105:
Once the guests have left, Nick stays late as Gatsby asks him to wait until he was free.
“He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you.’”
Gatsby wants nothing less than for Daisy to renounce the last five years of her life and ‘go back to Louisville and be married from her house –just as if it were five years ago.’
-Is this dream in any way realistic? What does it lead us to conclude about Gatsby?
} P106:
“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!”
“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he nodded determinedly. “She’ll see.”
Do you agree with Nick or Gatsby?
} Gatsby is trapped in a timeless past which allows him no chance to develop any understanding of life’s complexities.
} Rational thought or self-questioning would quickly destroy such a dream, but to Gatsby – the dreamer- the allure of the dream’s potential fulfilment, however impossible, is enough to keep it alive.
P106:
“He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.”
} Gatsby’s all-consuming vision is entirely egocentric because his sense of self is powerfully ensnared in his past with Daisy.
} His ideal of himself is rooted in his idealisation of Daisy in 1917.
} Time shift in the narrative as Nick transports the reader to ‘one autumn night, five years before.’ Here Nick has entirely taken over the telling of Gatsby’s story, which he is telling in confident third-person indirect discourse.
Nick indulges both himself and the reader with a lyrical account of Gatsby and Daisy’s kiss.
No comments:
Post a Comment