Study Guide Great Gatsby

7/30/2019 Study Guide Great Gatsby

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Setting/ Staging/ Tone and Mood

The story takes place during the 1920s, there are four major settings:

West Egg

East Egg New York City

The Valley of Ashes

The West Egg is the less fashionable side of Long Island where Gatsby and Nick

live. The East Egg is the fashionable side of Long Island where the Buchanans

and other old money people live. The Valley of Ashes is the desolate wasteland

where the Wilsons live. New York City is a symbol of what America has become in

the 1920s a place where anything goes, where money is made and bootleggers

flourish.

The mood is largely dark, pessimistic, and vapid as set by the purposelessness

and carelessness of the wealthy, the ongoing string of meaningless parties, the

ugliness of the Valley of Ashes, and the tragic deaths of Gatsby and Myrtle. Only

Nick Carraway's honest and moral view of life breaks the sense of tragedy.

Throughout this passage, Nick portrays a tone of admiration towards Gatsby with

heroic, respectable, god-like references. Nick's view of Gatsby is described by

saying."... [That] there is something gorgeous about him, some heightened

sensitivity to the promises of life... Then later in the passage, speaking of the

"extraordinary gift of hope", Nick later states."...as I have never found in any other

person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again." In this quote, Nick is

referring to Gatsby's hope. He gives Gatsby exclusivity and isolates Gatsby from

everyone else in a positive way. The fact that Gatsby is the only one that Nick

might ever find to be like that further idolizes him and establishes his tone towards

Gatsby

Minor characters

Minor Character Characterization Relationship to MainCharacter

Meyer Wolfsheim Jewish man, a gamblerwho fixed the WorldSeries

Friend of Gatsby

Catherine She defends her sisterafter her death, with allthe reporters

Sister of Myrtle Wilson

Chester and LucilleMcKee

McKee is in the artisticgame, he is a

Myrtles New York friends


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photographer

Owl Eyes Drunken party-goer Friend of Gatsby

Ewing Klipspringer He is a sponger Friend of Gatsby

Henry C. Gatz He helped build up thecountry

Dad of Gatsby

Michaelis Witness of the death ofMyrtle Wilson George Wilson neighbor

Dan Cody Millionaire, teachesGatsby how to makemoney

Friend of Gatsby

Motifs

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 is connected to more traditional social values

and ideals. Nicks 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 react to the pace and style of life on the East Coast.

Symbols

The green light

Situated at the end of Daisys East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsbys West

Egg lawn, the green light represents Gatsbys hopes and dreams for the future.

Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and he reaches toward it in the darkness as a

guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsbys quest for Daisy is broadly

associated with the American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more

generalized ideal. 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

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


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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 Dr. 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. The connection between the eyes of Doctor

T. J. Eckleburg and God exists only in George Wilsons 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, when he imagines Gatsbys final thoughts as

a depressed consideration of the emptiness of symbols and dreams.

Themes

The Death of a Dream

.......Gatsby dreams of one day being reunited with Daisy Buchanan. To win herback, he makes a fortune apparently through dealings with mobsters so that hecan compete in the moneyed world of Daisy. But though his wealth buys him aplace in elite society, it cannot buy him Daisy. Ultimately, he becomes a man whohas everything but ends up with nothing.

The Death of an Ideal

.......After Europeans colonized America, the New World offered them the dream ofa better life if they worked at honest jobs and held fast to noble goals and ideals.Everyone had a chance to fulfill his dream, for everyone was equal. In The GreatGatsby, the central characters achieve wealth and social status. But their cravingfor material possessions and high living overcomes the desire to aspire to nobleideals. Racism and snobbery obviate equality. Selfishness underminesselflessness.

.Corruption in Capitalist America

.......The First World War made America a powerful nation, not only militarily butalso economically. Factories mass-produced cars, radios, telephones, kitchenappliances, and other goods. Jobs opened at home, and markets for American-made products opened abroad. Hollywood and the entertainment industryflourished. Even gangsters thrived, thanks in part to the Volstead Act, a new lawpassed to enforce the 18th Amendment prohibition of the manufacture, sale, anddistribution of alcoholic beverages. Mobs circumvented the law, making and sellingbooze on a large scale at speakeasies (nightclubs that served the liquor) and


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bribing many police officers to look the other way........In the meantime, America's well-to-do bought what they wanted: new homes,fast cars, the latest fashions. And they threw parties, like those at Gatsby's, wherethey consumed illegal gin and whiskey, danced to the hottest jazz, gossiped, metparamours, and made shady business deals. It is this self-indulgent, materialistic,

corrupt society that Fitzgerald holds up to public view in The Great Gatsby.

What Money Cannot Buy: Happiness

.......Gatsby and the Buchanans have everything that they want materially but little,if anything, spiritually. Gatsby tries to buy the one thing that will make him happy,the love of Daisy, but fails. Meyer Wolfsheim attempts to buy the 1919 WorldSeries, bribing Chicago White Sox players to throw the series. Although the noveldoes not discuss at length the series and its outcome, readers of Fitzgerald's novelwell knew all the details. After the series, suspicions of a fix surfaced, and four ofthe eight players who reportedly accepted bribes admitted their guilt to a grand

jury. In a trial, the accused players were acquitted because key evidence could notbe found. However, the baseball commissioner forbade all eight players includingone of the greatest players in the history of baseball, Shoeless Joe Jackson fromever playing professional baseball again.

Irresponsibility

.......Tom Buchanan, Daisy Buchanan, and Jordan Baker all act irresponsibly. Borninto wealthy families that saw to their every need, they expect others such asservants and friends to look out for their welfare while they go their merry way.Jordan Baker drives carelessly and expects others to get out of the way. Daisyshirks her responsibility as a mother. Tom cheats on his wife with Myrtle Wilsonand openly crows about his affair. Nick Carraway says of the Buchanans, "Theysmashed up things and creatures and then retreated back to their money or theirvast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other peopleclean up the mess they made.".......Near the end of the novel, Daisy strikes and kills Myrtle Wilson in a hit-and-runaccident while driving home from New York in Gatsby's car. Gatsby is in apassenger seat. But Daisy never admits that she was at the wheel when theaccident occurred. Tom Buchanan, who knows all the details of the accident,implicates Gatsby when talking with Myrtle's husband, George Wilson. So Gatsbytakes the blame and dies at the hands of Wilson.

Bigotry

.......Many Americans of the 1920's were openly bigoted against blacks, Jews,Roman Catholics, and other racial, ethnic, and religious groups. When NickCarraway is a dinner guest at the Buchanan home, Tom Buchanan exhibits bigotrywhen he discusses a book he is reading, The Rise of the Coloured Empires. Of theauthor, he says, "This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us who arethe dominant race to watch out for these other races will have control of things." At


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a small party in Tom's New York City apartment, Mrs. Lucille McKee, one of theguests, observes, "I almost married a little kyke who'd been after me for years. Iknew he was below me. Everybody kept saying to me: 'Lucille, that man's waybelow you!' But if I hadn't met Chester, he'd of got me sure."

Reference

Michael Cummings. "Study Guide." Free Study Guides for Shakespeare and Other

Authors. 2011. Web. 27 Aug. 2011.

http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides2/Gatsby.html
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Study Guide Great Gatsby