Death of A Salesman

recent NYT article intrigued me:

Arthur Miller’s ―Death of a Salesman,‖ … is the most devastating portrait of

punctured middle-class dreams in our national literature. … [It] has consolidated its

prestige as an exposure of middle-class delusions. … Mr. Miller later wrote …. that

he had hoped the play would expose ―this pseudo life that thought to touch the

clouds by standing on top of a refrigerator, waving a paid-up mortgage at the moon,

victorious at last.‖ … Mr. Miller remembered worrying in 1949 that ―there was too

much identification with Willy, too much weeping, and that the play’s ironies were

being dimmed out by all this empathy.‖ … Miller’s outrage at a capitalist system he

wanted to humanize has become our cynical adaptation to a capitalist system we

pride ourselves on knowing how to manipulate. (more)

I didn’t remember the play offering a critique of capitalism, but looking around I see

this view is common:

Critics have maintained that much of the enduring universal appeal of Death of a

Salesman lies in its central theme of the failure of the American Dream. Willy’s

commitment to false social values—consumerism, ambition, social stature—keeps

him from acknowledging the value of human experience—the comforts of personal

relationships, family and friends, and love. … Some commentators perceive the play

as an indictment of American capitalism and a rejection of materialist values. …

Willy’s … penchant for blaming others has been passed onto his sons and, as a

result, all three men exhibit a poor work ethic and lack of integrity. Willy’s inability to

discern between reality and fantasy is another recurring motif. (more)

So I just re-read the play. And it does contain critiques of status, ambition for status,

and self-delusion to gain status. It is indeed sad to see a success-driven man

unwilling to admit his failure, or to accept charity from friends, choose instead to kill

himself. But I see no further critiques of materialism or capitalism in the play.

On materialism, Willy Loman and his similar son Happy mainly want to be liked and

respected. Sometimes they care about money, but mainly to keep score, and get

respect. When they want luxury goods, such as stockings or fancy drinks, it is mainly

to get women to sleep with them. In contrast, Willy’s other son Biff wants ―to be

outdoors, with [my] shirt off.‖ Perhaps those other women are materialistic, but not

these men.

On capitalism, the play might hold critiques of failing to save for hard times, or of

success based on who you know, good looks, and likability. But these are not

intrinsic to, or even obviously correlated with, capitalism. For example, North Korea

today is nothing like capitalism, yet it has strong status differences, people who

struggle for status, in part to gain sex, and success based in part on good looks and

who you know. A story about an old self-deluded status-seeking North Korean

failure would make just as much sense as Willy Loman’s story.

This seems to me a common situation – things said to be critiques of capitalism are

often just critiques of humanity. Humans vie selfishly and self-deludedly for status.

Some succeed, while others fail. The struggle, and the failures, aren’t pretty. Yes

capitalism inherits this ugliness, but then so does any other system with humans.

It is interesting to note that, compared to most occupations, the world of Miller the

playwright was especially like the salesmen Miller described:

For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. … He’s a man way out there in

the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—

that’s an earthquake. … A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.

Like salesmen, playwrights succeed when others like them. Even though most fail,

most self-deludedly think they will be the exceptions, and can be crushed when they

eventually learn otherwise. But few playwrights lament this, or blame it on

capitalism. Why?

I suspect this is because playwrights see even failed playwrights as high status, and

successful salesmen as low status. A hidden message of the play is ―Poor Willy

can’t see that even if he sold a lot, he’d still be a failure in our eyes.‖ Which is part of

why it bothered Arthur Miller that his audiences empathized so much with Willy.

Audiences thought Willy could have high status.

Some key quotes from the play:

To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you

really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of

the next fella. …There’s nothing more inspiring or—beautiful than the sight of a mare

and a new colt. …

And whenever spring comes to where I am, I suddenly get the feeling, my God, I’m

not gettin’ anywhere! What the hell am I doing, playing around with horses, twenty-

eight dollars a week! I’m thirty-four years old, I oughta be makin’ my future. …

Sometimes I want to just rip my clothes off in the middle of the store and outbox that

goddam merchandise manager. I mean I can outbox, outrun, and outlift anybody in

that store, and I have to take orders from those common, petty sons-of-bitches till I

can’t stand it any more. … I gotta show some of those pompous, self-important

executives over there that Hap Loman can make the grade. I want to walk into the

store the way he walks in. …

That girl Charlotte I was with tonight is engaged to be married in five weeks. …

Sure, the guy’s in line for the vice-presidency of the store. I don’t know what gets

into me, maybe I just have an overdeveloped sense of competition or something, but

I went and ruined her, and furthermore I can’t get rid of her. And he’s the third

executive I’ve done that to. …

I mean, Bernard can get the best marks in school, y’understand, but when he gets

out in the business world, y’understand, you are going to be five times ahead of him.

That’s why I thank Almighty God you’re both built like Adonises. Because the man

who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal

interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want. …

Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You’ll never get out of the jungle that way. …

See—I put thirty-four years into this firm, Howard, and now I can’t pay my insurance!

You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away—a man is not a piece of fruit! …

Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He

don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man

way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not

smiling back—that’s an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on

your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to

dream, boy. It comes with the territory.

DEATH OF A SALESMAN: FREE NOTES / BOOK SUMMARY

THEMES

Major Theme

The falsity of the American Dream is the dominant theme of Arthur Miller's play. Willy

Loman represents the primary target of this dream. Like most middle-class working men, he

struggles to provide financial security for his family and dreams about making himself a

huge financial success. After years of working as a traveling salesman, Willy Loman has only

an old car, an empty house, and a defeated spirit. Miller chose the job of salesman carefully

for his American Dreamer. A salesman does not make his/her own product, has not

mastered a particular skill or a body of knowledge, and works on the empty substance of

dreams and promises. Additionally, a salesman must sell his/her personality as much as

his/her product. Willy Loman falsely believes he needs nothing more than to be well liked to

make it big.

Minor Theme

The tragedy of the dysfunctional family, which helps to keep the American Dream alive, is a

second important theme of Miller's play. Linda and Happy especially work very hard to keep

the fantasy of the dream of success alive. In the dysfunctional Loman family, the wife is

restricted to the role of housekeeping and bolstering her husband's sense of self-importance

and purpose. A contradictory role given to her is that of the family's financial manager. In

effect, Linda juggles the difficult realities of a working class family while making her

husband believe that his income is better than adequate. Willy attempts to provide financial

security and to guide his sons' future, neither of which he does very well. Unlike the myth of

economic mobility in America, the vast majority of people in the working class stay in the

working class generation after generation. However, the myth is what Willy Loman lives on.

Unfortunately, his illusions do not fit his reality. Finally, the only solution to providing for his

family is to kill himself so that they can collect on his life insurance.

MOOD

The mood is uncomfortably false and depressing throughout the play. The audience is

always aware of the family’s trying to keep the truth from one another. The failure of the

American Dream is ever present and makes the audience question its own commitment to false dreams.

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman as Social Commentary

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman portrays the Loman's and all the

family conflicts they faced. It's also apparent on a bigger scale that this

play is a social commentary. It touches all the problems brought on by

wealth and success in our culture. Death of a Salesman is more effective as

a reflection of society and the problems it faces than as a depiction of

family conflicts.

The play showed how Willy Loman's longing to be successful controlled his

life and ruined his family. Willy also represents a large piece of society.

He portrays the people in our culture that base their lives on acquiring

money. Greed for success has eaten up large numbers of people in this

country. It's evident in the way Willy acts that his want of money consumes

him. This constantly happens in our society; people will do anything to

crawl up the ladder of success, often knocking down anyone in their way.

Death of a Salesman also reflected how families treat people once they

are older. Willy raised Biff and Happy when they were completely dependent

on him, but the boys aren't willing to help Willy out when he needs them.

This is more effective when looked at as if Willy represents all the older

people in our society. It shows how the elderly are looked down upon, are

thought to be crazy, and have their jobs taken away for no reason other than

age. At times you feel sorry for Willy because these things are happening to

him and he is powerless against them. This makes the reader stop to examine

our own culture and the ways we discriminate against people who should be our

equals and treated with respect.

This play also represents how Willy's actions affected his entire family.

He always pushed the boys to have to be the greatest at everything they did.

This made the children grow up to always feel like they could never do

enough to please their father. They ended up doing things against what they

truly wanted. Biff never found a sufficient occupation and was forced to do

things like steal. Happy ended up lying to make things always seem better

than they were. But it's how this represents society that makes it so

effective.

The biggest issue this play imitates is peer pressure. Willy's pressure

on the kids is like pressure from friends to do things you normally wouldn't

do. Our culture thrives on peer pressure. It can sometimes be positive,

like when it pushes you to give your best effort, and sometimes negative,

like when it causes you to conform excessively. Either way, Death of a

Salesman shows the effects of society's pressure on normal people. Willy is

just a man who wanted to be well off. To him, this meant rich and

successful. Many people are just like Willy; they have to be well liked

because to them, that's what success is.

Death of a Salesman shows both family and society conflicts. However,

it's definitely more effective when looked at as an exposing of society's

conflicts. It forces you to evaluate the morals and values of this culture.

It shows what kinds of things we hold most important and all the hurt that

results from making those the most valued things. The play is a depressing

but truthful reflection of our society.

Major Themes

The Dangers of Modernity Death of a Salesman premiered in 1949 on the brink of the 1950s, a decade of

unprecedented consumerism and technical advances in America. Many innovations applied specifically to the home: it was in the 50s that the TV and

the washing machine became common household objects. Miller expresses an ambivalence toward modern objects and the modern mindset. Although Willy Loman is a deeply flawed character, there is something compelling about his

nostalgia. Modernity accounts for the obsolescence of Willy Loman's career - traveling salesmen are rapidly becoming out-of-date. Significantly, Willy reaches

for modern objects, the car and the gas heater, to assist him in his suicide attempts.

Gender Relations In Death of a Salesman, woman are sharply divided into two categories: Linda

and other. The men display a distinct Madonna/whore complex, as they are only able to classify their nurturing and virtuous mother against the other, easier

women available (the woman with whom Willy has an affair and Miss Forsythe being two examples). The men curse themselves for being attracted to the

whore-like women but is still drawn to them - and, in an Oedipal moment, Happy laments that he cannot find a woman like his mother. Women

themselves are two-dimensional characters in this play. They remain firmly outside the male sphere of business, and seem to have no thoughts or desires

other than those pertaining to men. Even Linda, the strongest female character, is only fixated on a reconciliation between her husband and her sons, selflessly subordinating herself to serve to assist them in their problems.

Madness Madness is a dangerous theme for many artists, whose creativity can put them

on the edge of what is socially acceptable. Miller, however, treats the quite bourgeois subject of the nuclear family, so his interposition of the theme of

madness is startling. Madness reflects the greatest technical innovation of Death of a Salesman--its seamless hops back and forth in time. The audience or

reader quickly realizes, however, that this is based on Willy's confused perspective. Willy's madness and reliability as a narrator become more and

more of an issue as his hallucinations gain strength. The reader must decide for themselves how concrete of a character Ben is, for example, or even how

reliable the plot and narrative structure are, when told from the perspective of someone as on the edge as Willy Loman.

Cult of Personality One of Miller's techniques throughout the play is to familiarize certain characters

by having them repeat the same key line over and over. Willy's most common line is that businessmen must be well-liked, rather than merely liked, and his business strategy is based entirely on the idea of a cult of personality. He

believes that it is not what a person is able to accomplish, but who he knows

and how he treats them that will get a man ahead in the world. This viewpoint is tragically undermined not only by Willy's failure, but also by that of his sons,

who assumed that they could make their way in life using only their charms and good looks, rather than any more solid talents.

Nostalgia / regret The dominant emotion throughout this play is nostalgia, tinged with regret. All

of the Lomans feel that they have made mistakes or wrong choices. The technical aspects of the play feed this emotion by making seamless transitions

back and forth from happier, earlier times in the play. Youth is more suited to the American dream, and Willy's business ideas do not seem as sad or as

bankrupt when he has an entire lifetime ahead of him to prove their merit. Biff looks back nostalgic for a time that he was a high school athletic hero, and,

more importantly, for a time when he did not know that his father was a fake and a cheat, and still idolized him.

Opportunity Tied up intimately with the idea of the American dream is the concept of

opportunity. America claims to be the land of opportunity, of social mobility. Even the poorest man should be able to move upward in life through his own

hard work. Miller complicates this idea of opportunity by linking it to time, and illustrating that new opportunity does not occur over and over again. Bernard has made the most of his opportunities; by studying hard in school, he has risen

through the ranks of his profession and is now preparing to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court. Biff, on the other hand, while technically given the

same opportunities as Bernard, has ruined his prospects by a decision that he made at the age of eighteen. There seems to be no going back for Biff, after he

made the fatal decision not to finish high school.

Growth

In a play which rocks back and forth through different time periods, one would

normally expect to witness some growth in the characters involved. Not so in

Death of a Salesmen, where the various members of the Loman family are

stuck with the same character flaws, in the same personal ruts throughout time.

For his part, Willy does not recognize that his business principles do not work,

and continues to emphasize the wrong qualities. Biff and Happy are not only

stuck with their childhood names in their childhood bedrooms, but also are

hobbled by their childhood problems: Biff's bitterness toward his father and

Happy's dysfunctional relationship with women. In a poignant moment at the

end of the play, Willy tries to plant some seeds when he realizes that his family

has not grown at all over time.

Arthur Miller was born in New York City on October 17, 1915. His career as a playwright

began while he was a student at the University of Michigan. Several of his early works won

prizes, and during his senior year, the Federal Theatre Project in Detroit performed one of

his works. He produced his first great success, All My Sons, in 1947. Two years later, Miller

wrote Death of a Salesman, which won the Pulitzer Prize and transformed Miller into a

national sensation. Many critics described Death of a Salesman as the first great American

tragedy, and Miller gained eminence as a man who understood the deep essence of the

United States. He published The Crucible in 1953, a searing indictment of the anti-

Communist hysteria that pervaded 1950s America. He has won the New York Drama Critics

Circle Award twice, and his Broken Glass (1993) won the Olivier Award for Best Play of the

London Season.

Death of a Salesman, Miller’s most famous work, addresses the painful conflicts within one

family, but it also tackles larger issues regarding American national values. The play

examines the cost of blind faith in the American Dream. In this respect, it offers a postwar

American reading of personal tragedy in the tradition of Sophocles’ Oedipus Cycle. Miller

charges America with selling a false myth constructed around a capitalist materialism

nurtured by the postwar economy, a materialism that obscured the personal truth and moral

vision of the original American Dream described by the country’s founders.

A half century after it was written, Death of a Salesman remains a powerful drama. Its

indictment of fundamental American values and the American Dream of material success

may seem somewhat tame in today’s age of constant national and individual self-analysis

and criticism, but its challenge was quite radical for its time. After World War II, the United

States faced profound and irreconcilable domestic tensions and contradictions. Although

the war had ostensibly engendered an unprecedented sense of American confidence,

prosperity, and security, the United States became increasingly embroiled in a tense cold

war with the Soviet Union. The propagation of myths of a peaceful, homogenous, and

nauseatingly gleeful American golden age was tempered by constant anxiety about

Communism, bitter racial conflict, and largely ignored economic and social stratification.

Many Americans could not subscribe to the degree of social conformity and the ideological

and cultural orthodoxy that a prosperous, booming, conservative suburban middle-class

championed.

Uneasy with this American milieu of denial and discord, a new generation of artists and

writers influenced by existentialist philosophy and the hypocritical postwar condition took up

arms in a battle for self-realization and expression of personal meaning. Such discontented

individuals railed against capitalist success as the basis of social approval, disturbed that so

many American families centered their lives around material possessions (cars, appliances,

and especially the just-introduced television)—often in an attempt to keep up with their

equally materialistic neighbors. The climate of the American art world had likewise long

been stuck in its own rut of conformity, confusion, and disorder following the prewar climax

of European Modernism and the wake of assorted -isms associated with modern art and

literature. The notions of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung regarding the role of the human

subconscious in defining and accepting human existence, coupled with the existentialist

concern with the individual’s responsibility for understanding one’s existence on one’s own

terms, captivated the imaginations of postwar artists and writers. Perhaps the most famous

and widely read dramatic work associated with existentialist philosophy is Samuel

Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Miller fashioned a particularly American version of the

European existentialist stance, incorporating and playing off idealistic notions of success

and individuality specific to the United States.

The basis for the dramatic conflict in Death of a Salesman lies in Arthur Miller’s conflicted

relationship with his uncle, Manny Newman, also a salesman. Newman imagined a

continuous competition between his son and Miller. Newman refused to accept failure and

demanded the appearance of utmost confidence in his household. In his youth, Miller had

written a short story about an unsuccessful salesman. His relationship with Manny revived

his interest in the abandoned manuscript. He transformed the story into one of the most

successful dramas in the history of the American stage. In expressing the emotions that

Manny Newman inspired through the fictional character of Willy Loman, Miller managed to

touch deep chords within the national psyche.

As a flute melody plays, Willy Loman returns to his home in Brooklyn one night, exhausted

from a failed sales trip. His wife, Linda, tries to persuade him to ask his boss, Howard

Wagner, to let him work in New York so that he won’t have to travel. Willy says that he will

talk to Howard the next day. Willy complains that Biff, his older son who has come back

home to visit, has yet to make something of himself. Linda scolds Willy for being so critical,

and Willy goes to the kitchen for a snack.

As Willy talks to himself in the kitchen, Biff and his younger brother, Happy, who is also

visiting, reminisce about their adolescence and discuss their father’s babbling, which often

includes criticism of Biff’s failure to live up to Willy’s expectations. As Biff and Happy,

dissatisfied with their lives, fantasize about buying a ranch out West, Willy becomes

immersed in a daydream. He praises his sons, now younger, who are washing his car. The

young Biff, a high school football star, and the young Happy appear. They interact

affectionately with their father, who has just returned from a business trip. Willy confides in

Biff and Happy that he is going to open his own business one day, bigger than that owned

by his neighbor, Charley. Charley’s son, Bernard, enters looking for Biff, who must study for

math class in order to avoid failing. Willy points out to his sons that although Bernard is

smart, he is not ―well liked,‖ which will hurt him in the long run.

A younger Linda enters, and the boys leave to do some chores. Willy boasts of a

phenomenally successful sales trip, but Linda coaxes him into revealing that his trip was

actually only meagerly successful. Willy complains that he soon won’t be able to make all of

the payments on their appliances and car. He complains that people don’t like him and that

he’s not good at his job. As Linda consoles him, he hears the laughter of his mistress. He

approaches The Woman, who is still laughing, and engages in another reminiscent

daydream. Willy and The Woman flirt, and she thanks him for giving her stockings.

The Woman disappears, and Willy fades back into his prior daydream, in the kitchen. Linda,

now mending stockings, reassures him. He scolds her mending and orders her to throw the

stockings out. Bernard bursts in, again looking for Biff. Linda reminds Willy that Biff has to

return a football that he stole, and she adds that Biff is too rough with the neighborhood

girls. Willy hears The Woman laugh and explodes at Bernard and Linda. Both leave, and

though the daydream ends, Willy continues to mutter to himself. The older Happy comes

downstairs and tries to quiet Willy. Agitated, Willy shouts his regret about not going to

Alaska with his brother, Ben, who eventually found a diamond mine in Africa and became

rich. Charley, having heard the commotion, enters. Happy goes off to bed, and Willy and

Charley begin to play cards. Charley offers Willy a job, but Willy, insulted, refuses it. As they

argue, Willy imagines that Ben enters. Willy accidentally calls Charley Ben. Ben inspects

Willy’s house and tells him that he has to catch a train soon to look at properties in Alaska.

As Willy talks to Ben about the prospect of going to Alaska, Charley, seeing no one there,

gets confused and questions Willy. Willy yells at Charley, who leaves. The younger Linda

enters and Ben meets her. Willy asks Ben impatiently about his life. Ben recounts his

travels and talks about their father. As Ben is about to leave, Willy daydreams further, and

Charley and Bernard rush in to tell him that Biff and Happy are stealing lumber. Although

Ben eventually leaves, Willy continues to talk to him.

Back in the present, the older Linda enters to find Willy outside. Biff and Happy come

downstairs and discuss Willy’s condition with their mother. Linda scolds Biff for judging Willy

harshly. Biff tells her that he knows Willy is a fake, but he refuses to elaborate. Linda

mentions that Willy has tried to commit suicide. Happy grows angry and rebukes Biff for his

failure in the business world. Willy enters and yells at Biff. Happy intervenes and eventually

proposes that he and Biff go into the sporting goods business together. Willy immediately

brightens and gives Biff a host of tips about asking for a loan from one of Biff’s old

employers, Bill Oliver. After more arguing and reconciliation, everyone finally goes to bed.

Act II opens with Willy enjoying the breakfast that Linda has made for him. Willy ponders the

bright-seeming future before getting angry again about his expensive appliances. Linda

informs Willy that Biff and Happy are taking him out to dinner that night. Excited, Willy

announces that he is going to make Howard Wagner give him a New York job. The phone

rings, and Linda chats with Biff, reminding him to be nice to his father at the restaurant that

night.

As the lights fade on Linda, they come up on Howard playing with a wire recorder in his

office. Willy tries to broach the subject of working in New York, but Howard interrupts him

and makes him listen to his kids and wife on the wire recorder. When Willy finally gets a

word in, Howard rejects his plea. Willy launches into a lengthy recalling of how a legendary

salesman named Dave Singleman inspired him to go into sales. Howard leaves and Willy

gets angry. Howard soon re-enters and tells Willy to take some time off. Howard leaves and

Ben enters, inviting Willy to join him in Alaska. The younger Linda enters and reminds Willy

of his sons and job. The young Biff enters, and Willy praises Biff’s prospects and the fact

that he is well liked.

Ben leaves and Bernard rushes in, eagerly awaiting Biff’s big football game. Willy speaks

optimistically to Biff about the game. Charley enters and teases Willy about the game. As

Willy chases Charley off, the lights rise on a different part of the stage. Willy continues

yelling from offstage, and Jenny, Charley’s secretary, asks a grown-up Bernard to quiet him

down. Willy enters and prattles on about a ―very big deal‖ that Biff is working on. Daunted by

Bernard’s success (he mentions to Willy that he is going to Washington to fight a case),

Willy asks Bernard why Biff turned out to be such a failure. Bernard asks Willy what

happened in Boston that made Biff decide not to go to summer school. Willy defensively

tells Bernard not to blame him.

Charley enters and sees Bernard off. When Willy asks for more money than Charley usually

loans him, Charley again offers Willy a job. Willy again refuses and eventually tells Charley

that he was fired. Charley scolds Willy for always needing to be liked and angrily gives him

the money. Calling Charley his only friend, Willy exits on the verge of tears.

At Frank’s Chop House, Happy helps Stanley, a waiter, prepare a table. They ogle and chat

up a girl, Miss Forsythe, who enters the restaurant. Biff enters, and Happy introduces him to

Miss Forsythe, continuing to flirt with her. Miss Forsythe, a call girl, leaves to telephone

another call girl (at Happy’s request), and Biff spills out that he waited six hours for Bill

Oliver and Oliver didn’t even recognize him. Upset at his father’s unrelenting misconception

that he, Biff, was a salesman for Oliver, Biff plans to relieve Willy of his illusions. Willy

enters, and Biff tries gently, at first, to tell him what happened at Oliver’s office. Willy blurts

out that he was fired. Stunned, Biff again tries to let Willy down easily. Happy cuts in with

remarks suggesting Biff’s success, and Willy eagerly awaits the good news.

Biff finally explodes at Willy for being unwilling to listen. The young Bernard runs in shouting

for Linda, and Biff, Happy, and Willy start to argue. As Biff explains what happened, their

conversation recedes into the background. The young Bernard tells Linda that Biff failed

math. The restaurant conversation comes back into focus and Willy criticizes Biff for failing

math. Willy then hears the voice of the hotel operator in Boston and shouts that he is not in

his room. Biff scrambles to quiet Willy and claims that Oliver is talking to his partner about

giving Biff the money. Willy’s renewed interest and probing questions irk Biff more, and he

screams at Willy. Willy hears The Woman laugh and he shouts back at Biff, hitting him and

staggering. Miss Forsythe enters with another call girl, Letta. Biff helps Willy to the

washroom and, finding Happy flirting with the girls, argues with him about Willy. Biff storms

out, and Happy follows with the girls.

Willy and The Woman enter, dressing themselves and flirting. The door knocks and Willy

hurries The Woman into the bathroom. Willy answers the door; the young Biff enters and

tells Willy that he failed math. Willy tries to usher him out of the room, but Biff imitates his

math teacher’s lisp, which elicits laughter from Willy and The Woman. Willy tries to cover up

his indiscretion, but Biff refuses to believe his stories and storms out, dejected, calling Willy

a ―phony little fake.‖ Back in the restaurant, Stanley helps Willy up. Willy asks him where he

can find a seed store. Stanley gives him directions to one, and Willy hurries off.

The light comes up on the Loman kitchen, where Happy enters looking for Willy. He moves

into the living room and sees Linda. Biff comes inside and Linda scolds the boys and slaps

away the flowers in Happy’s hand. She yells at them for abandoning Willy. Happy attempts

to appease her, but Biff goes in search of Willy. He finds Willy planting seeds in the garden

with a flashlight. Willy is consulting Ben about a $20,000 proposition. Biff approaches him

to say goodbye and tries to bring him inside. Willy moves into the house, followed by Biff,

and becomes angry again about Biff’s failure. Happy tries to calm Biff, but Biff and Willy

erupt in fury at each other. Biff starts to sob, which touches Willy. Everyone goes to bed

except Willy, who renews his conversation with Ben, elated at how great Biff will be with

$20,000 of insurance money. Linda soon calls out for Willy but gets no response. Biff and

Happy listen as well. They hear Willy’s car speed away.

In the requiem, Linda and Happy stand in shock after Willy’s poorly attended funeral. Biff

states that Willy had the wrong dreams. Charley defends Willy as a victim of his profession.

Ready to leave, Biff invites Happy to go back out West with him. Happy declares that he will

stick it out in New York to validate Willy’s death. Linda asks Willy for forgiveness for being

unable to cry. She begins to sob, repeating ―We’re free. . . .‖ All exit, and the flute melody is

heard as the curtain falls.

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The American Dream

Willy believes wholeheartedly in what he considers the promise of the American Dream—

that a ―well liked‖ and ―personally attractive‖ man in business will indubitably and deservedly

acquire the material comforts offered by modern American life. Oddly, his fixation with the

superficial qualities of attractiveness and likeability is at odds with a more gritty, more

rewarding understanding of the American Dream that identifies hard work without complaint

as the key to success. Willy’s interpretation of likeability is superficial—he childishly dislikes

Bernard because he considers Bernard a nerd. Willy’s blind faith in his stunted version of

the American Dream leads to his rapid psychological decline when he is unable to accept

the disparity between the Dream and his own life.

Abandonment

Willy’s life charts a course from one abandonment to the next, leaving him in greater

despair each time. Willy’s father leaves him and Ben when Willy is very young, leaving Willy

neither a tangible (money) nor an intangible (history) legacy. Ben eventually departs for

Alaska, leaving Willy to lose himself in a warped vision of the American Dream. Likely a

result of these early experiences, Willy develops a fear of abandonment, which makes him

want his family to conform to the American Dream. His efforts to raise perfect sons,

however, reflect his inability to understand reality. The young Biff, whom Willy considers the

embodiment of promise, drops Willy and Willy’s zealous ambitions for him when he finds out

about Willy’s adultery. Biff’s ongoing inability to succeed in business furthers his

estrangement from Willy. When, at Frank’s Chop House, Willy finally believes that Biff is on

the cusp of greatness, Biff shatters Willy’s illusions and, along with Happy, abandons the

deluded, babbling Willy in the washroom.

Betrayal

Willy’s primary obsession throughout the play is what he considers to be Biff’s betrayal of

his ambitions for him. Willy believes that he has every right to expect Biff to fulfill the

promise inherent in him. When Biff walks out on Willy’s ambitions for him, Willy takes this

rejection as a personal affront (he associates it with ―insult‖ and ―spite‖). Willy, after all, is a

salesman, and Biff’s ego-crushing rebuff ultimately reflects Willy’s inability to sell him on the

American Dream—the product in which Willy himself believes most faithfully. Willy assumes

that Biff’s betrayal stems from Biff’s discovery of Willy’s affair with The Woman—a betrayal

of Linda’s love. Whereas Willy feels that Biff has betrayed him, Biff feels that Willy, a ―phony

little fake,‖ has betrayed him with his unending stream of ego-stroking lies.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and

inform the text’s major themes.

Mythic Figures

Willy’s tendency to mythologize people contributes to his deluded understanding of the

world. He speaks of Dave Singleman as a legend and imagines that his death must have

been beautifully noble. Willy compares Biff and Happy to the mythic Greek figures Adonis

and Hercules because he believes that his sons are pinnacles of ―personal attractiveness‖

and power through ―well liked‖-ness; to him, they seem the very incarnation of the American

Dream.

Willy’s mythologizing proves quite nearsighted, however. Willy fails to realize the

hopelessness of Singleman’s lonely, on-the-job, on-the-road death. Trying to achieve what

he considers to be Singleman’s heroic status, Willy commits himself to a pathetic death and

meaningless legacy (even if Willy’s life insurance policy ends up paying off, Biff wants

nothing to do with Willy’s ambition for him). Similarly, neither Biff nor Happy ends up leading

an ideal, godlike life; while Happy does believe in the American Dream, it seems likely that

he will end up no better off than the decidedly ungodlike Willy.

The American West, Alaska, and the African Jungle

These regions represent the potential of instinct to Biff and Willy. Willy’s father found

success in Alaska and his brother, Ben, became rich in Africa; these exotic locales,

especially when compared to Willy’s banal Brooklyn neighborhood, crystallize how Willy’s

obsession with the commercial world of the city has trapped him in an unpleasant reality.

Whereas Alaska and the African jungle symbolize Willy’s failure, the American West, on the

other hand, symbolizes Biff’s potential. Biff realizes that he has been content only when

working on farms, out in the open. His westward escape from both Willy’s delusions and the

commercial world of the eastern United States suggests a nineteenth-century pioneer

mentality—Biff, unlike Willy, recognizes the importance of the individual.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or

concepts.

Seeds

Seeds represent for Willy the opportunity to prove the worth of his labor, both as a

salesman and a father. His desperate, nocturnal attempt to grow vegetables signifies his

shame about barely being able to put food on the table and having nothing to leave his

children when he passes. Willy feels that he has worked hard but fears that he will not be

able to help his offspring any more than his own abandoning father helped him. The seeds

also symbolize Willy’s sense of failure with Biff. Despite the American Dream’s formula for

success, which Willy considers infallible, Willy’s efforts to cultivate and nurture Biff went

awry. Realizing that his all-American football star has turned into a lazy bum, Willy takes

Biff’s failure and lack of ambition as a reflection of his abilities as a father.

Diamonds

To Willy, diamonds represent tangible wealth and, hence, both validation of one’s labor (and

life) and the ability to pass material goods on to one’s offspring, two things that Willy

desperately craves. Correlatively, diamonds, the discovery of which made Ben a fortune,

symbolize Willy’s failure as a salesman. Despite Willy’s belief in the American Dream, a

belief unwavering to the extent that he passed up the opportunity to go with Ben to Alaska,

the Dream’s promise of financial security has eluded Willy. At the end of the play, Ben

encourages Willy to enter the ―jungle‖ finally and retrieve this elusive diamond—that is, to

kill himself for insurance money in order to make his life meaningful.

Linda’s and The Woman’s Stockings

Willy’s strange obsession with the condition of Linda’s stockings foreshadows his later

flashback to Biff’s discovery of him and The Woman in their Boston hotel room. The

teenage Biff accuses Willy of giving away Linda’s stockings to The Woman. Stockings

assume a metaphorical weight as the symbol of betrayal and sexual infidelity. New

stockings are important for both Willy’s pride in being financially successful and thus able to

provide for his family and for Willy’s ability to ease his guilt about, and suppress the memory

of, his betrayal of Linda and Biff.

The Rubber Hose

The rubber hose is a stage prop that reminds the audience of Willy’s desperate attempts at

suicide. He has apparently attempted to kill himself by inhaling gas, which is, ironically, the

very substance essential to one of the most basic elements with which he must equip his

home for his family’s health and comfort—heat. Literal death by inhaling gas parallels the

metaphorical death that Willy feels in his struggle to afford such a basic necessity.

The Great Gatsby

THE GREAT GATSBY

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Themes, Motifs & Symbols

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Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s

On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a

woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic

scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of

1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New

York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in

particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity

and material excess.

Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in

its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that

led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent

parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the

American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble

goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had

fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced

made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy,

empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a

sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people

began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. 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. Additionally, 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.

Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social trends.

Nick and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the newfound

cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from the war. The various social climbers and

ambitious speculators who attend Gatsby’s parties evidence the greedy scramble for

wealth. The clash between ―old money‖ and ―new money‖ manifests itself in the novel’s

symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-

made rich. Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s fortune symbolize the rise of organized crime

and bootlegging.

As Fitzgerald saw it (and as Nick explains in Chapter 9), 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. The main plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as

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. Additionally, places and objects in The Great

Gatsby have meaning only because characters instill them with meaning: the eyes of Doctor

T. J. Eckleburg best exemplify this idea. In Nick’s mind, the ability to create meaningful

symbols constitutes a central component of the American dream, as early Americans

invested their new nation with their own ideals and values.

Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end

of Daisy’s dock. Just as Americans have given America meaning through their dreams for

their own lives, Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither

deserves nor possesses. 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.

The Hollowness of the Upper Class

One of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth,

specifically, how the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from and relate to the old

aristocracy of the country’s richest families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens

represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom,

represent the old aristocracy. 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. The Buchanans exemplify

this stereotype when, at the end of the novel, they simply move to a new house far away

rather than condescend to attend Gatsby’s funeral. Gatsby, on the other hand, whose

recent wealth derives from criminal activity, has a sincere and loyal heart, remaining outside

Daisy’s window until four in the morning in Chapter 7 simply to make sure that Tom does

not hurt her. Ironically, Gatsby’s good qualities (loyalty and love) lead to his death, as he

takes the blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting Daisy be punished, and the Buchanans’

bad qualities (fickleness and selfishness) allow them to remove themselves from the

tragedy not only physically but psychologically.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and

inform the text’s major themes.

Geography

Throughout the novel, places and settings epitomize the various aspects of the 1920s

American society that Fitzgerald depicts. East Egg represents the old aristocracy, West Egg

the newly rich, the valley of ashes the moral and social decay of America, and New York

City the uninhibited, amoral quest for money and pleasure. Additionally, the East is

connected to the moral decay and social cynicism of New York, while the West (including

Midwestern and northern areas such as Minnesota) is connected to more traditional social

values and ideals. Nick’s analysis in Chapter 9 of the story he has related reveals his

sensitivity to this dichotomy: though it is set in the East, the story is really one of the West,

as it tells how people originally from west of the Appalachians (as all of the main characters

are) react to the pace and style of life on the East Coast.

Weather

As in much of Shakespeare’s work, 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 (like the fatal encounter between Mercutio and Tybalt in

Romeo and Juliet). 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.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or

concepts.

The Green Light

Situated at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsby’s West Egg

lawn, the green light represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby

associates it with Daisy, and in Chapter 1 he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding

light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with

the American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. In

Chapter 9, Nick compares the green light to how America, rising out of the ocean, must

have looked to early settlers of the new nation.

The Valley of Ashes

First introduced in Chapter 2, the valley of ashes between West Egg and New York City

consists of a long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes. It

represents the moral and social decay that results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as

the rich indulge themselves with regard for nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of

ashes also symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George Wilson, who live among the dirty

ashes and lose their vitality as a result.

The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg

The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an

old advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They may represent God staring down

upon and judging American society as a moral wasteland, though the novel never makes

this point explicitly. Instead, throughout the novel, Fitzgerald suggests that symbols only

have meaning because characters instill them with meaning. The connection between the

eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg and God exists only in George Wilson’s grief-stricken mind.

This lack of concrete significance contributes to the unsettling nature of the image. Thus,

the eyes also come to represent the essential meaninglessness of the world and the

arbitrariness of the mental process by which people invest objects with meaning. Nick

explores these ideas in Chapter 8, when he imagines Gatsby’s final thoughts as a

depressed consideration of the emptiness of symbols and dreams.

Plot Overview

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Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to

learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a

wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their

fortunes too recently to have established social connections and who are prone to garish

displays of wealth. Nick’s next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay

Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties every

Saturday night.

Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at Yale and has social

connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper

class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan,

and her husband, Tom, an erstwhile classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce

Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic

relationship. Nick also learns a bit about Daisy and Tom’s marriage: Jordan tells him that

Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping

ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to

New York City with Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that Tom

keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking

her nose.

As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsby’s

legendary parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself,

a surprisingly young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls

everyone ―old sport.‖ Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later

learns more about his mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in

Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green

light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsby’s extravagant lifestyle

and wild parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange

a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she

knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her

that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy

reestablish their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.

After a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wife’s relationship with Gatsby.

At a luncheon at the Buchanans’ house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised

passion that Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an

extramarital affair, he is deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to

him. He forces the group to drive into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite

at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never

understand, and he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal—his fortune comes from

bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to Tom,

and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that

Gatsby cannot hurt him.

When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that

Gatsby’s car has struck and killed Myrtle, Tom’s lover. They rush back to Long Island,

where Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle, but that

Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtle’s husband, George, that

Gatsby was the driver of the car. George, who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of

the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion

and shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots himself.

Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back

to the Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby’s life and

for the emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick

reflects that just as Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the

American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of

wealth. Though Gatsby’s power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him

―great,‖ Nick reflects that the era of dreaming—both Gatsby’s dream and the American

dream—is over.

Important Quotations Explained

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1.

I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

Daisy speaks these words in Chapter 1 as she describes to Nick and Jordan her hopes for

her infant daughter. While not directly relevant to the novel’s main themes, this quote offers

a revealing glimpse into Daisy’s character. Daisy is not a fool herself but is the product of a

social environment that, to a great extent, does not value intelligence in women. The older

generation values subservience and docility in females, and the younger generation values

thoughtless giddiness and pleasure-seeking. Daisy’s remark is somewhat sardonic: while

she refers to the social values of her era, she does not seem to challenge them. Instead,

she describes her own boredom with life and seems to imply that a girl can have more fun if

she is beautiful and simplistic. Daisy herself often tries to act such a part. She conforms to

the social standard of American femininity in the 1920s in order to avoid such tension-filled

issues as her undying love for Gatsby.

2.

He had 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.

This passage occurs in Chapter 3 as part of Nick’s first close examination of Gatsby’s

character and appearance. This description of Gatsby’s smile captures both the theatrical

quality of Gatsby’s character and his charisma. Additionally, it encapsulates the manner in

which Gatsby appears to the outside world, an image Fitzgerald slowly deconstructs as the

novel progresses toward Gatsby’s death in Chapter 8. One of the main facets of Gatsby’s

persona is that he acts out a role that he defined for himself when he was seventeen years

old. His smile seems to be both an important part of the role and a result of the singular

combination of hope and imagination that enables him to play it so effectively. Here, Nick

describes Gatsby’s rare focus—he has the ability to make anyone he smiles at feel as

though he has chosen that person out of ―the whole external world,‖ reflecting that person’s

most optimistic conception of him- or herself.

3.

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.

In Chapter 6, when Nick finally describes Gatsby’s early history, he uses this striking

comparison between Gatsby and Jesus Christ to illuminate Gatsby’s creation of his own

identity. Fitzgerald was probably influenced in drawing this parallel by a nineteenth-century

book by Ernest Renan entitled The Life of Jesus.This book presents Jesus as a figure who

essentially decided to make himself the son of God, then brought himself to ruin by refusing

to recognize the reality that denied his self-conception. Renan describes a Jesus who is

―faithful to his self-created dream but scornful of the factual truth that finally crushes him and

his dream‖—a very appropriate description of Gatsby. Fitzgerald is known to have admired

Renan’s work and seems to have drawn upon it in devising this metaphor. Though the

parallel between Gatsby and Jesus is not an important motif in The Great Gatsby, it is

nonetheless a suggestive comparison, as Gatsby transforms himself into the ideal that he

envisioned for himself (a ―Platonic conception of himself‖) as a youngster and remains

committed to that ideal, despite the obstacles that society presents to the fulfillment of his

dream.

4.

That’s my Middle West . . . the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark. . . . I see now

that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I,

were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made

us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.

This important quote from Nick’s lengthy meditation in Chapter 9 brings the motif of

geography in The Great Gatsby to a conclusion. Throughout the novel, places are

associated with themes, characters, and ideas. The East is associated with a fast-paced

lifestyle, decadent parties, crumbling moral values, and the pursuit of wealth, while the West

and the Midwest are associated with more traditional moral values. In this moment, Nick

realizes for the first time that though his story is set on the East Coast, the western

character of his acquaintances (―some deficiency in common‖) is the source of the story’s

tensions and attitudes. He considers each character’s behavior and value choices as a

reaction to the wealth-obsessed culture of New York. This perspective contributes

powerfully to Nick’s decision to leave the East Coast and return to Minnesota, as the

infeasibility of Nick’s Midwestern values in New York society mirrors the impracticality of

Gatsby’s dream.

5.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It

eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms

farther. . . . And then one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

These words conclude the novel and find Nick returning to the theme of the significance of

the past to dreams of the future, here represented by the green light. He focuses on the

struggle of human beings to achieve their goals by both transcending and re-creating the

past. Yet humans prove themselves unable to move beyond the past: in the metaphoric

language used here, the current draws them backward as they row forward toward the

green light. This past functions as the source of their ideas about the future (epitomized by

Gatsby’s desire to re-create 1917 in his affair with Daisy) and they cannot escape it as they

continue to struggle to transform their dreams into reality. While they never lose their

optimism (―tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther . . .‖), they expend all of

their energy in pursuit of a goal that moves ever farther away. This apt metaphor

characterizes both Gatsby’s struggle and the American dream itself. Nick’s words register

neither blind approval nor cynical disillusionment but rather the respectful melancholy that

he ultimately brings to his study of Gatsby’s life.

The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, is hailed as one of the foremost pieces of

American fiction of its time. It is a novel of triumph and tragedy, noted for the

remarkable way its author captures a cross-section of American society. In The

Great Gatsby Fitzgerald, known for his imagistic and poetic prose, holds a

mirror up to the society of which he was a part. The initial success of the book

was limited, although in the more than 75 years since it has come to be

regarded as a classic piece of American short fiction. In 1925, however, the

novel served as a snapshot of the frenzied post-war society known as the Jazz

Age, while today it provides readers with, among other things, a portal through

which to observe life in the 1920s. Part of Fitzgerald's charm in The Great

Gatsby, in fact, is his ability to encapsulate the mood of a generation during a

politically and socially crucial and chaotic period of American history.

To understand Fitzgerald's genius more fully, one must be aware of the politics

that underlie the story. To remove the story from its full historical context is to

do it a grave injustice. The novel, published in 1925, explores life in the early-

to mid-1920s. Politically speaking, this was a time of growth and prosperity, as

well as a time of corruption. World War I, the first war of its kind anyone had

ever known, had ended in 1919. When Warren G. Harding assumed the

presidency in 1920, one of his goals was to bring the country back to business

as usual. However, this proved to be a difficult task because Harding's

administration was plagued by scandal and corruption, as well as opposition

mounted by both unions and organized crime.

After WWI ended, Harding's administration targeted business as a means of

rebuilding the country. What this entailed, however, included undermining

striking laborers and largely siding with management in labor dispute issues

over such things as minimum wage, unions, child labor, and so on. In addition

to favoring management in labor disputes, Harding and his successor, Calvin

Coolidge, enacted tax legislation that benefited the wealthy more so than any

other group. In addition, because of administrative policy decisions, industries

such as agriculture, textiles, and certain types of mining suffered greatly, and

as a result, cities grew as people moved to urban areas to make a living. Many

of them, however, remained trapped in a purgatory of sorts, looking for a better

life but unable to get it, not unlike the people in The Great Gatsby's valley of

ashes.

Economically, the 1920s boasted great financial gain, at least for those of the

upper class. Between 1922 and 1929, dividends from stock rose by 108

percent, corporate profits increased by 76 percent, and personal wages grew by

33 percent. Nick Carraway's journey to the East to make his fortune in the bond

business is not entirely unfounded. Largely because of improvements in

technology, productivity increased while overall production costs decreased, and

the economy grew. All this would come to a grinding halt, however, with the

stock market crash of 1929, sending the U.S. into the greatest depression it has

ever known. Fitzgerald, of course, couldn't have forecasted the crash, but in The

Great Gatsby, he does suggest, on one level, that society was living in excess

and without curbing its appetite somewhat, ruin was just around the corner.

The commercial growth of the 1920s resulted in rampant materialism, such as

that chronicled in The Great Gatsby. As people began to have more money,

they began to buy more. In turn, as people began to buy more, profits grew,

more goods were manufactured, and people earned more money, thereby

enabling the economic growth cycle. People began to spend their money on

consumer goods — cars, radios, telephones, and refrigerators — at a rate never

before seen. People also began to spend time and money on recreation and

leisure. Professional sports began to grow in popularity, and movies and tabloid

newspapers gained a foothold on America, helping everyone to share, in one

way or another, in the growing materialism that categorized the Jazz Age.

In addition to economics, Fitzgerald takes other national issues into

consideration in The Great Gatsby. For example, in Chapter 1, Tom has an

intense dislike for outsiders. Later, other characters, including Nick, refer

negatively to immigrants who live in the community of West Egg. Although to

modern readers the comments and allusions may seem to lack motivation, such

is not the case. Immigration to America was at its peak in the late nineteenth

and early twentieth centuries. Although immigration waned during the war

years, by June of 1921, immigration had returned again to pre-war levels

(800,000 people between June of 1920 and June of 1921) and organized labor

began lobbying against immigrants, whom they believed were taking away jobs

from American citizens. Business leaders and various special interest groups

also began to worry about the influx of immigrants, citing anti-American

political fanaticism as a likely problem. In response, Congress passed a series of

restriction bills and laws, setting quotas that limited the number of immigrants

allowed in a particular year (164,000 in 1924 and 1925; 150,000 after July 1,

1927). The quota was entirely discriminatory, particularly to people from

southern and eastern Europe and from Asia. Although readers may not like

what Fitzgerald's characters imply, there is certainly a historical basis behind it.

Another aspect of The Great Gatsby that has historical roots centers on the

Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution: prohibition. Enacted in 1919 (and

ultimately repealed in 1933), this amendment made it illegal for anyone to

manufacture, sell, or transport liquor of any sort. Millions of Americans hailed

this amendment as a moral advance, curbing America's growing penchant for

immorality and all the vices that went (in their eyes) hand in hand with

drunkenness. Despite the millions who supported prohibition, millions also broke

the law and drank the outlawed liquor. Not surprisingly, when the illegal liquor

business became lucrative, organized crime stepped in to meet the demand.

Manufacturing and distributing alcohol were big businesses during the years of

prohibition and helped make the fortunes of the nouveaux riches(newly rich)

found within Fitzgerald's novel, including Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsby himself.

An understanding of prohibition also helps explain why Fitzgerald puts such an

emphasis on drinking within the novel.

Although political issues underlie The Great Gatsby, so, too, do social issues. In

many ways, Fitzgerald's Jazz Age characters are a fairly honest representation

of what could be found in the social circles of the country's younger generation.

Many of the men in The Great Gatsby had served in WWI, and like their real-life

counterparts, they returned from the war changed. They found the ideas and

attitudes waiting for them at home to be representative of an outmoded way of

thinking, and so they rebelled. The women at home, too, found post-war

America to be too constrictive for their tastes. Many women had entered the

workforce when the men went to war and were unwilling to give up the by-

products of their employment — social and economic freedom — when the men

returned from the war. In addition, the Nineteenth Amendment, enacted in

1920, gave women the right to vote, making their independence even more

necessary. In the 1920s, young men and women (including Fitzgerald himself)

refused to be content maintaining the status quo, and so they openly and

wholeheartedly rebelled.

Socially, the 1920s marked an era of great change, particularly for women. In a

symbolic show of emancipation, women bobbed their hair, that one great

indicator of traditional femininity. To complement their more masculine look,

women also began to give up wearing corsets, the restrictive undergarment

intended to accentuate a woman's hips, waist, and breasts, as if to reinvent

themselves, according to their own rules. Other things women did that were

previously unheard of included smoking and drinking openly, as well as relaxing

formerly rigid attitudes toward sex. Fitzgerald picks up on the social rebellion of

his peers particularly well in The Great Gatsby. He shows women of all classes

who are breaking out of the molds that society had placed them into. Myrtle, for

instance, wishes to climb the social ladder, and so she is determined to do so at

all costs. Daisy attempts to break away from the restrictive society in which she

was raised, yet she cannot make the break entirely and so she falls back into

the only thing she knows: money. Jordan Baker, too, is an emancipated woman.

She passes time as a professional golfer, a profession made possible largely

because of the social and economic progress of the 1920s.

Part of what makes Fitzgerald's novel such a favorite piece is the way he is able

to analyze the society of which he was also a part. Through his characters, he

not only captures a snapshot of middle- and upper-class American life in the

1920s, but also conveys a series of criticisms as well. Through the

characterization in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald explores the human condition

as it is reflected in a world characterized by social upheaval and uncertainty, a

world with a direct underlying historical basis. By emphasizing social groupings

and how they do or do not interact with each other (see the Critical Essays

section in this Note for further explorations), Fitzgerald establishes a sense the

urgency. The Jazz Age society so clearly shown in The Great Gatsby is, in effect,

on a very dangerous course when people like Tom, Daisy, and Jordan are at the

top of the ladder, working hard to ensure no one else climbs as highly as they.

Through Gatsby, Fitzgerald demonstrates the enterprising Jazz Ager, someone

who has worked hard and profited from listening and responding to the

demands of the society. Unfortunately, despite his success, Gatsby (and all of

the people he represents) is never able to capture his elusive dreams.

Fitzgerald's story, although a fiction, is informed by reality, helping to make it

one of the most treasured pieces of early twentieth century American fiction.