What themes about men, America, and materialism emerge? How do we deceive ourselves? What happens when we hold on to the past (when have we done that?)?With a little on line searching, I came across these two links of interest:
Chapter summaries!
I, personally, find the analysis of key quotes fascinating.
We couldn’t help but think of The Stranger by Camus when we began talking about this book – the outside observer. Then we chose to discuss “themes” and came up with the following:
MONEY – people hide behind it, it’s a “veil,” it keeps you from interacting with real people, people use each other more, Daisy’s voice is the sound of money, people attach to each other because of money.
MATERIALISM AND ITS EFFECTS – are damaging to personal character and relationships
HONESTY/DISHONESTY – with oneself and the world
LEAVING YOUR PAST BEHIND/LIVING IN THE PAST – doesn’t move you forward
PRIVILEGE – what does it get you? What can’t it do?
CAN’T REALLY START OVER – would you know what to do? Can you really get away from your past?
THE FALICY OF THE AMERICAN DREAM - You can't really make it in society automatically. Just because you have money doesn't mean you can "fit" into society.
LONELINESS – surrounded by people, looking for affairs/love
We asked ourselves, “What does being successful look like to you?” and came up with: life with warmth, meeting your personal goals, relationships with honesty, and being true to yourself. And, “What was it about Daisy?” We couldn’t ignore the tragedy of Gatsby who knows Daisy is out for money, but loves her anyway. How sad he acts during the rain scene!
Sparknotes came up with these themes, motifs, symbols, and foreshadowing:
Themes · The decline of the American dream, the spirit of the 1920s, the difference between social classes, the role of symbols in the human conception of meaning, the role of the past in dreams of the future
- The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s, an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure.
- A person from any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracy—families with old wealth—scorned the newly rich industrialists and speculators.
- The passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.
- The American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast. Gatsby’s dream of loving Daisy is ruined by the difference in their respective social statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough money to impress her, and the rampant materialism that characterizes her lifestyle.
- Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its object—money and pleasure. Like 1920s Americans in general, fruitlessly seeking a bygone era in which their dreams had value, Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished past—his time in Louisville with Daisy—but is incapable of doing so. When his dream crumbles, all that is left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is move back to Minnesota, where American values have not decayed.
- Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes’ invitation to lunch. In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, epitomized by the Buchanans’ tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker.
- What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in heart, as the East Eggers prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies who are so used to money’s ability to ease their minds that they never worry about hurting others and don’t condescend to go to Gatsby’s funeral.
Motifs - The connection between events and weather, the connection between geographical location and social values, images of time, extravagant parties, the quest for wealth
Symbols - The green light on Daisy’s dock, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, the valley of ashes, Gatsby’s parties, East Egg, West Egg
Foreshadowing · The car wreck after Gatsby’s party in Chapter III, Owl Eyes’s comments about the theatricality of Gatsby’s life, the mysterious telephone calls Gatsby receives from Chicago and Philadelphia
Sparknotes had an interesting piece about Weather in Gatsby:
The weather in The Great Gatsby unfailingly matches the emotional and narrative tone of the story. Gatsby and Daisy’s reunion begins amid a pouring rain, proving awkward and melancholy; their love reawakens just as the sun begins to come out. Gatsby’s climactic confrontation with Tom occurs on the hottest day of the summer, under the scorching sun. Wilson kills Gatsby on the first day of autumn, as Gatsby floats in his pool despite a palpable chill in the air—a symbolic attempt to stop time and restore his relationship with Daisy to the way it was five years before, in 1917.
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