Universidad de Navarra

25.10.2013/08.11.2013

CLASSIC CHARACTERS IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN

LITERATURE

Gatsby and the American Dream I+II

The Gilded Age

In the 20s he was after pleasure and opulence and, as his a personification of his nation, a decade later, transformed into a “gloomy aftermath of excess”.

Famous after his first best-seller at 24, he got married.Published The Great Gatsby at 1925, while living in

EU.Became an alcoholic.Character – one of his favorite

concepts (weakness of character).Work ethic to vanity and the

American dream to nightmare.Died from a heart-attack at 44.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

"I wouldn’t ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can’t repeat the past.""Can’t repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand."I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said, nodding determinedly. "She’ll see."

“Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it was what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.”

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

“It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

“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.”

Famous Quotes

Jay Gatsby

Nick Carraway

Daisy Buchanan

Tom BuchananJordan BakerMyrtle WilsonGeorge WilsonMeyer Wolfsheim Owl EyesDan Cody

Characters

The American dreamTime – can we relive the past?Homo faber vs homo ludensReificationCamera obscuraWealth - Aristocracy vs Nouveau-riches;

In a post-WWI; Positive or negativeOverwhelming desire for moreThe control of time

Main themes:

“The 99 percent is increasingly outgunned by the One Percent. The result is something that economists Alan Krueger and Miles Corak call the Great Gatsby Curve. As income inequality increases, social mobility decreases. The plutocracy may be a meritocracy, but increasingly you have to be born on the top rung of the ladder to even take part in that race.” (Chrystia Freeland in The rise of the new global super-rich, "Plutocrats“)

Colors WealthEmotionsThe billboard’s eyesThe wasteland - valley of ashesThe phone callsCarsThe bootleggersOnomatology

symbols / imagery / metaphors

The wasteland - valley of ashes

Ambiguities in life. PersistenceAny mean justified the end.HypocrisyPlutocratic society (Crony capitalism)US geographyThe weatherQuae negata, grataCourtly love (amor cortés)

Motifs:

Is the all American Dream a lie? The land of endless possibilities only a farce?

Think about an incident in your past you would have liked to recreate, what would you do to erase time and do it all over again?

Why is Gatsby ‘great’? What is the moral of the story?One can find in every writing some of the author. Can

you notice the real Fitzgerald in the narrator, or in Gatsby, or maybe even in some of the other characters?

Nick the Narrator and the character, how does one affect the other?

Write about your Country’s Gatsby, using the same references.

Task

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

Next week

The Picture of Dorian Gray and the myth of Faustus