Half Term Work

Notes for the rest of Chapter Seven:

Tom vs. Gatsby: Social tensions/pretensions

·         Tom’s sense of self is pushed by Gatsby to the point of crisis. For Tom, his social status is founded securely in his ancestral past, yet Gatsby – who embodies the duality of American experience – challenges the view Tom holds of himself as at the top of the social hierarchy. 

P124: As Tom finds himself ‘standing alone on the last barrier of civilisation’ there is irony in his fears for the decline of American civilisation, since his brutal arrogance and his complete lack of moral concerns are a measure of that very decline in the novel. 

The Utopian figure of Gatsby:

·         By creating such antithetical male characters in Tom and Gatsby, Fitzgerald is able to present their dichotomy as a decidedly American one and their differences fuel much of the narrative excitement.

·         Whilst Tom frequently asserts in the novel that America belong to him and his ‘type’, Gatsby embodies utopian ideals (utopia = the term for an ideal society), as Nick portrays him as very much a dreamer, an idealist who is not simply defined by his possessions and materialism but transcends them in the singular capacity he has for hope, for wonder, for the ‘dream.’ 

The crisis:

P124: ‘Your wife doesn’t love you,’ said Gatsby. ‘She’s never loved you. She loves me.’

P125: ‘Just tell him the truth – that you never loved him – and it’s all wiped out forever.’

The word ‘forever’ has little meaning in this context. Gatsby’s inability to appreciate that in the intervening years Daisy could have an emotional life of her own marks his total commitment to his own dream rather than to Daisy herself.

Q: Why does Gatsby lose Daisy during the confrontation at the Plaza?

P126: ‘Oh, you want too much!’ she cried to Gatsby. ‘I love you now – isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.’ She began to sob helplessly. ‘I did love him once – but I loved you too.’

Gatsby feels physically assaulted by the idea that she should have loved Tom as well as himself as indicated by his incredulity:

‘You loved me too?’ he repeated. 

·         Tom then reverts to old tactics as he questions the legitimacy of Gatsby’s background.

P128: When Tom asserts his social authority, he strives to put distance between himself – the social elite – and Gatsby, the dreamer, the illegal bootlegger. As Tom reveals that Gatsby’s ‘got something on now that Walter’s afraid to tell [him] of’ Nick notes the expression on Gatsby’s face – it was as if he had indeed ‘killed a man.’

·         This is the first time Nick acknowledges to himself the shady nature of Gatsby’s business connections, which would indeed require him to be tough, and concedes the possibility of some truth in the rumours.

·         Nick’s observation suggests that, if only momentarily, reality displaces the dream in Gatsby’s mind. He then desperately tries to defend himself but...

The dream reasserts its hold...

However, as Gatsby speaks, Daisy ‘was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, towards that lost voice across the room.’

·         For Gatsby, the realisation is complete: the past is gone. There is no way to recreate that perfect moment. The fact that Tom then feels secure enough to send Daisy home ‘In Mr. Gatsby’s car’ confirms Nick’s observation that Gatsby’s dream is dead. They leave ‘like ghosts,’ empty beings. 

Q: Do you think Gatsby could have fought harder for Daisy?

Shift in narrative perspective/POV:

P129: Nick’s narration changes here from a reportorial, experienced-based mode to one more expository (narration which informs, explains, describes). The accident is told from great distance as he circles down towards the terrible moment wherein Daisy struck and killed Myrtle Wilson. 

·         Fitzgerald has Nick far from the circle of characters and tells the story from the vantage point of the eyewitness, Michaelis at the inquest. 

P130: Michaelis tells how George has got Myrtle ‘locked in up there,’ which he is shocked at. Fitzgerald develops his characterisation of George Wilson, with Michaelis describing him as:

‘one of these worn-out men...who laughed in an agreeable, colourless way. He was his wife’s man and not his own.’ Yet, despite his sickness George Wilson has changed.

·         His wife cries for him to ‘beat’ her before she runs out as is struck by the ‘death car as the newspapers called it,’ which ‘didn’t stop.’ 

The death of Myrtle Wilson:

P131: ‘her life violently extinguished knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust.

·         ...when they had torn open her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped a little at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long.’

• The moment of her death is both dramatised and given added significance by Fitzgerald’s use of language.
• There is irony in her kneeling, a posture usually associated with prayer or penitence, and so the narrative style suggests she is paying a heavy price for her adulterous sexual life. The monosyllabic phrase of ‘dark thick blood’ emphasises this notion further.
• The horrific details of Myrtle’s injuries have implications which are also related to her sexuality. ‘Her left breast’ which ‘was swinging loose like a flap’ makes it seem that Fitzgerald makes Myrtle pay heavily for openly being a sensualist.
• NB: the tragic irony in the reference to her mouth. This can be cross-referenced with how she wets her lips in Chapter II as she flirts with Tom.

 Contexts of Production:

Fitzgerald was very insistent about retaining the spectacle of Myrtle’s breast swinging loose like a flap in the novel.

In a letter to Maxwell Perkins in December 1924 Fitzgerald wrote:

‘I want Myrtle Wilson’s breast ripped off – it’s exactly the thing, I think.’

·         Fitzgerald is acutely aware of what he is doing through this grotesque image. He wants to show America desecrated, mutilated, violated. Whatever the might-have-beens of the new world, the promises and ‘wonder’ that so many Americans seemed to hold dear, Fitzgerald strives to communicate that what might have been a Wonderland, Americans have made a wasteland.

Reactions to the death of Myrtle Wilson:

TOM:

P135: ‘In a little while I heard a low husky sob, and saw that the tears were overflowing down his face.

“The God damned coward!” he whimpered. “He didn’t even stop his car.”’

 

GATSBY:

P136: ‘Did you see any trouble on the road?

Was she killed?

I thought so; I told Daisy I thought so. It’s better that the shock should all come at once. She stood it pretty well.’

He spoke as if Daisy’s reaction was the only thing that mattered.’

P137: 

‘Was Daisy driving?’

‘Yes’ he said after a moment, ‘but of course I’ll say I was.’

‘She’ll be all right tomorrow,’ he said presently.

The selective style of the narrative passes over the horror of the car’s dreadful impact on Myrtle Wilson. Gatsby tells what happened but he is much more concerned with his relationship with Daisy and Daisy’s own feelings 

Ending to Chapter VII:

·         P138: The chapter draws to a close with Nick sneaking a view into the Buchanan’s mansion through ‘a rift’ in the blinds.

·         As Nick looks through the gap, Fitzgerald strips Daisy of all her glamour and the magic of her charm. Normally she is associated with dazzling light, now there is only ‘a small rectangle of light.’

·         Even Daisy’s voice is completed silenced: Tom talks ‘across the table at her’ and ‘Once in a while she looked up in him and nodded in agreement.’

·         ‘There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.’ The cold chicken and ale- which are admittedly untouched – reinforce her choice of Tom’s materialism rather than Gatsby’s romanticism.

Ending of Chapter VII directly parallels Nick’s first sighting of Gatsby at the end of Chapter I.

‘He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight – watching over nothing.’

·         Notably, as Daisy sits inside, Gatsby waits outside, once more excluded. Nick’s view of him still relates him to moonlight, but the dream of Daisy is smashed, although he cannot admit it, and Nick knows he is ‘watching over nothing.’ The actual and the dream Daisy can no longer co-exist.