понедельник, 2 декабря 2013 г.

Let me remind you that F.Scott Fitzgerald lived at the beginning of the 20th century, so he was a witness of the processes happenng that time.  Let's talk about ...

                             THE MAIN THEMES AND MOTIVES OF THE BOOK.                                           

The main theme is , of course , LOVE .. There are several romantic lines in the book:  Gatsby and Daisy, Daisy and Tom, Myrtle and Tom, Nick and Jordan.  So let's speak about them separately. 
To be honest, Fitzgerald exposes the idea that love itself is a rare phenomenon to meet , relationships in Great Gatsby are not “loving” in the least, and tend to be more motivated by money than true love.

In case of Gatsby and Daisy , Gatsby is believed to love Daisy truelly, but as it turns out, he is in love with his dream version of Daisy, that he was saving from the moment they first met.  As for Daisy -  things changed, she met another guy , Tom, and married him, forgetting Gatsby's pure love. After Nick asked Daisy for tea, it became obvious that Daisy didn't  not love Gatsby, but loves the material wealth that he provides, especially colorful shirts.

Tom’s relationship with Myrtle is about physical intimacy, while Tom gives Myrtle the money that her husband cannot provide. But I think that Myrtle is actually  in love with Tom,as she run to the yellow car to ask Tom take her with him.  

Nick’s relationship with Jordan is also somewhat estranged from true love. They simply get along with each other since they come from similar backgrounds. 

FRIENDSHIP is shown on the example of Nick and Gatsby . It becomes obvious only in the end of the book, as nobody remaind  with Gatsby  except Nick. In the course of events he also tried to help Gatsby as he arranged the meeting with Daisy, kept silence about their affair, Daisy's night visits and so on. 


MOTIVES


  • The Era of Prohibition





Prohibition was the political forbiddance of producing, transporting and selling alcoholic beverages. The Eighteenth Amendment was imposed in 1917 and was abolished in 1933. It was know as the National Prohibition Act. This act was enforced by the government assuming that it would help reduce criminal actions like homicide, assault and battery. Furthermore they hoped to reduce poverty and to improve economy and the quality of life.




Many well-known bootleggers emerged during this age, for instance Arnold Rothstein and Johnny Torrio (both operating in New York) and of course Al Capone in Chicago.  Maybe it was he, who ispired Fitzgerald to create the image of Gatsby as we know it today.



Unfortunately the police was not able to reduce the illegal consume of alcohol. Many bootleggers bribed the police, even leading officials - as Wolfsheim - but not all authorities were corruptible. And these incorruptible officers sometimes burst into houses which they assumed to be“speak-easies”.



However, the Eighteenth Amendment turned out to be ineffective. Instead of crime rate reduction homicide had a 78 percent increase and also the other major crimes could not be repressed. Only minor crime rates, like swearing, decreased. All in all Prohibition did not serve its purpose and was doomed to fail.





  • The Jazz Age



Jazz was born around 1895 in New Orleans. Originally it was a mixture of Blues and marching band music and was played by African-Americans and Creoles on old U.S Army instruments like the cornet or marching drums. It is also marked through the use of improvisation, because most of the former virtuoso jazz musicians weren’t able to read music at all. Soon the white man noticed the popularity of jazz and started to play it too. Therefore the European and African music culture melted together and a new style of jazz was born. 






The twenties, also known by some as the "Jazz Age", were the time for experiments and discovering new jazz-styles. In that period of growing industrialization black people and new-Orleans-musicians moved from the country site south to Chicago. There they helped creating the (white) Chicago-Style. Lots of Chicago musicians finally moved to New York, which was an important centre of jazz, too. 
Jazz bands started the musical revolution using for the first time the saxophone. It has been known to provoke close intimate dancing and many people were shocked by the loud and extraordinary sound of the sax (which happens to sound like sex).That’s why older people blamed jazz to be a bad influence on the younger generation. They began to rebel and refuse to follow the moral traditions.
With the help of national radio, the barely known new jazz sound spread quickly over America, and found many supporters. Lots of important clubs, or speakeasies (illegal pubs), helped jazz bands to get famous and featured their songs. Jazz often got connected with alcohol, intimate dancing and “other socially questionable activities”. 


The Jazz Age in The Great Gatsby:
Gatsby’s parties are typical for this time period. On his extravagant festivities “charm, notoriety [and] mere good manners weighted more than money as a social asset” .
 Proofs for this statement can be in all the gossip about Gatsby that is talked by his guests. Interesting at this point is that most of his guests do not even know him and spread rumours about him all the same. That’s how he got his notoriety: “I‘ll bet he killed a man.”. The good manners are reflected by gentlemen who always offer a helpful hand to charming ladies.
At Gatsby’s parties “people were not invited – they went there […] came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission.” For this spontaneous society Gatsby’s huge “party lawn” is an amusement park, a place animated with chatter and laughter where “casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot” are on the agenda. Since these parties are very large, there is time for privacy when anybody wants it and time for intimate moments without anybody realizing.
While reading Nick Carraway’s descriptions of Gatsby’s garden and all the decorations that are put up for the party, it seems a little exaggerated: “Several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree out of Gatsby’s enormous garden” are hung up so that “the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors”. Also, Gatsby does not save any money with the food. Each evening a great buffet table with glistening hors-d’oeuvre, turkey, ham, salads and pastry pigs waits for his guests. Once a week five crates of oranges and lemons are delivered to impress his visitors with fresh fruits. Despite Prohibition alcohol is poured out.
The way the people dress during this jazz age period is also very interesting. Their hair is “shorn in strange new ways” and around the women’s necks are “shawls beyond the dreams of Castile”.They wear “golden and silver slippers” and the best example is Gatsby “in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored tie”  himself.
Moreover, Gatsby’s guests are, of course, entertained by cocktail music played by a typical jazz orchestra consisting of oboes, trombones, saxophones, viols, cornets and piccolos, low and high drums . They know how to play popular jazz songs, for example the “neat, sad little waltz of that year” , “Three O’Clock in the Morning” or W.C.Handy’s  “Beale Street Blues”, a famous jazz blues melody. Another song that is played is Vladimir Tostoff’s “Jazz History of the World”.

On the base of http://www.redhotjazz.com/
http://home.earthlink.net/~timsamuel/music.htm



  • The American Dream


The American Dream originated in the early days of the American settlement, with the mostly poor immigrants searching for opportunities. It was first manifested in the Declaration of Independence, which describes an attitude of hope. The Declaration of Independence states that “all man are created equal and that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”.



In The Great Gatsby the American Dream plays a big role. In it you can see what happened to it during the 1920s. The values have totally changed, instead of striving for equality, they just want to get as rich as they could get.
Fitzgerald managed to reflect the absurdity of the idea describing the failure to rich it and the conditions in which every hope is likely to disappear.
So it is not surprising that the new kind of "American Dream" fails several times, which F. Scott Fitzgerald describes in his book. He shows that people are not yet treated equally and that social discrimination still exists, which is described in the scene where Tom and Wilson talk to each other in Chapter II. For the reader it is immediately clear that Tom sees himself as superior to Wilson. We can see that when Wilson wants to resell Tom’s old car. Tom simply goes on with his game with Wilson since he wants to continue his affair with Wilson’s wife, as a result of that he does not give the car to Wilson.
More or less it is appropriate to add this picture
 cause it
reflects Fitzgerald's idea 
Most of the people appearing in The Great Gatsby are full of hope. Especially Gatsby who is hoping to win Daisy back. He has an “extraordinary gift of hope“  and he sacrifices himself to fulfill his dream. He struggles to get into the upper class. In the end his dream fails completely, and his life finds an abrupt end. 
Nick Carraway is a pragmatic man, who comes from the Middle-West, and does not share the American dream . But still he is striving for something, he wants to be himself, as he sees himself, tolerant, objective and reliable. The money of the upper class is just a tiny bit of his dream together with his admiration for the rich East Eggers. Mainly, his dream consists of mental values, of a pursuit of honesty. He says of himself “ I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known” . 
Daisy lives her American Dream with Tom as her husband, who has a lot of money. She does not have any long term aims in her life. Having that kind luxury around her, she lives for the moment, and does not think about the next one. 
Tom was born into his American Dream. He never had to work in his life, and got all his money from his parents. Since everything is perfect for his narrow-minded eyes, he does not want any changes. Losing Daisy would be a major change in his dream because he sees her as one of his possessions. 
Wilson’s dream is to earn enough money to move away with his wife and to start a new life some place beautiful. But his dream can just become true with the help of Tom. Although, Wilson does not realize that Tom does not want to help him at all. His dream fails, when his wife is killed, his life becomes senseless to him.
His wife, Myrtle, has also a dream, she wants to become a girl of the upper class. Having an affair with Tom, she acts as if she already belonged among those rich people. Tom is her key to the upper class and she would do everything for him. She hates Daisy, because Daisy is standing in her way, for her marriage with Tom.

  •  Women in the 20’s - “Flappers”


It seems rather strange to us today that women led the life so different from the life we are living now, but ..
At the end of the first World War the role of women as housewives changed dramatically.
They were forced to work and to earn their own money which was the first step towards their independence. Especially after the war women came to the conclusion that there had to be more in life than just looking after the children and the house.
By earning the right to vote in 1920 women made their biggest step in being accepted as equal members of society. This freedom changed women’s attitude totally.
They started drinking alcohol, smoking and dancing a new type of dance called “Swing”.
This new type of women have no plans in their lifes and they can afford to wait that life happens to them.
One perfect example is Jordan Baker in the novel The Great Gatsby. She represents the new woman who calls herself “Flapper”. Her desire for success and a very arrogant attitude are Jordan’s main characteristics. Nick notices this arrogance as soon as he meets her: “She was [...] completely motionless, [...] her chin raised a little.”
Another example is Daisy. In contrast to Jordan she is more emotional. She is looking for the perfect gentleman with a lot of money and the right family background.
But all in all, one could say that they both represent the women's new way of life even if they are of a different direction.

  •   The Atomobile

Modern image of a car roots back to the beginning of 20th century, when in 1923 Ford started the mass production of the Model T, which was a very cheap car everybody was able to afford. They built more than 15 millions without changing their design or anything else. So the era of the automobile had begun. Millions were spent in mass production and all over Europe and USA, car manufacturing factories were built very fast.

Ford T , 1927


It was and still is a kind of status symbol to own the newest and fastest car which has got the best trimmings. In this book the car has a special function, it represents the reckless convictions of the flapper society.
Technology made it possible to improve the standard of a normal car a lot. During the 1920s the importance of the automobile grew a lot. In this decade there was some kind of a “revolution“, cars were built to emphasize the actual fashion instead of functions. A lot of knick-knack was installed for example a “three noted horn“ , as well as “hat-boxes, supper-boxes, and tool-boxes“.




Cars like the typical Cadillac with extraordinary outline emerged. Cars were also often painted in, for this time, very strange colors to make it even more individual. For example,Tom had a very blue car and Gatsby – a yellow one.

As a consequence of improving cars to high-tech machines, the cities also improved their streets. A lot of gas stations were installed during that time and also many railroads were built. Moreover a garage - building spree began. In the 20s everybody who had a house also had a garage for his car. People did not care about how they drove, they just did it: “I know very little about driving - next to nothing“. That is why cars were also an agent of catastrophe for example, Myrtle just dies because of an irrelevant car accident. Also, the car accident after the first party Nick went to, gives a hint for the bad things coming .


  • East versus West


The Midwestern states and the Eastern states of America are very different and marked by specific values and attitudes.




While in the Mid West you find more traditional values (American values), for example living on one’s own, not needing anyone else and being self-supporting, the East has a closer connection to Europe and orientates itself by European values and qualities.
The West is described as the country of wide lawns and friendly trees and prairies. There, agriculture is the major economic factor and the landscape is marked by long wheat and corn fields. The people living in the West tend to have a very strict and conservative attitude and not to be open for most changes. It was there, where prohibition started.

On the other side of the Ohio, the major eastern side stream of the Mississippi, the Eastern states begin. They represent the modern America where the immigrants first arrived in order to start a better life (American Dream). Also, the East is much more densely populated and you find more big cities like New York. The Easterners are said to be open-minded and sophisticated.

In the book
 The Great Gatsby, East Egg and West Egg are used as metaphors for the East and the Middle West. While the "aristocrats" Tom and Daisy live in East Egg, the newly rich Gatsby lives in West Egg. Even though Gatsby shows off with his wealth and tries to fit in the "aristocratic" society, the fact that he is living in West Egg, shows that the distance between East and West does not become smaller, because West Egg stays the “less fashionable of the two”.
Most of the settlers, who explored the western country, were Finnish. For that, the “Finnish woman”  who works for Nick, is another example of the connection between West Egg and the Middle West.

воскресенье, 1 декабря 2013 г.

I hope the describtion of some interesting moments encoureged you to begin to read this wonderful book. So to make it clear, let's turn to the depiction of the main characters





Nick Carraway

Nick Carraway was born in 1892 in Minnesota, Middle-West of the United States, as the son of a well situated family. Supposedly he was raised on stereotypical Midwestern values  ( hard work, perserverance, justice, etc.).  His grand uncle had started the family’s hardware business in 1851. He went to elementary, middle and high school in the Middle-West. After that he was sent to Yale University by his family. Nick was sent to France, when the United States entered the Great War in 1917, in order to fulfill his military service. After this time, in 1922, he decided to move to New York to learn the bond business, because the war had changed his perspective of the world. The rural narrow mindedness was not his world anymore. In West egg, a district of Long Island, he rented a small house, and became a neighbor of Gatsby.




Nick is Daisy's cousin, which enables him to assist the love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. As a result of his relationship to these two characters, Nick is a perfect narrator for this novel even though he is not very reliable because he seems to be a real person who sometimes decides what should be hidden from other people, in this case – from the readers.
Nick is also well suited to narrate The Great Gatsby because of his temperament. As he tells the reader in Chapter I, he is tolerant, open-minded, quiet, and a good listener, and, as a result, others tend to talk to him and tell him their secrets. Gatsby, in particular, trusts and treats him as a confidant.
Moreover, Nick is not only the narrator of the novel, but he plays a character in the story. I would say, that he is the only person in the whole book who is seeing the world in reality, even though he tells us what he wants us to know. Nick is the only character who understands, that Daisy and Tom as well as Gatsby only have eyes for money and their personal American Dream and do not care about others. Nick just wants to show that the urban people, he never really belonged to, only have eyes for showing their wealth.
Nick is not the kind of urban people like Daisy, Tom or Jordan. Of course he is well situated but he does not have the need to show that to everybody. He is neither as rich as Gatsby or his Cousin nor poor but he polite enough not to show that to everybody.
Nick ia Fitzgearld’s EVERYMAN , though in many ways he is much more.


Jay Gatsby

Gatsby is a man in his mid-thirties who lives an extravagant life which he finances with the money he has earned by “a good deal of money”. He likes showing off and always throws big parties at his mansion on West Egg/ Long Island. The fact that Gatsby lives on West Egg relates to his origin from the Middle West.

At the age of 17 he changes his original name, James Gatz, to Jay Gatsby. He does that, because the name sounds typically European and he does not want people to know his being a newly-rich. During that time immigrants just like upstarts were not accepted by the upper class.

Being a young soldier, he falls in love with a rich girl named Daisy Fay. When Gatsby has to leave her for serving the U.S. Army in the Great War their relationship splits up. After the war, because of several circumstances, he has to attend Oxford College in England.
As he comes back to the United States he finds his great love married to another man and thinks his only possible chance to get Daisy back is being rich. This idea is stuck in his head and trying to get his love back is the only thing he lives for. Little by little Gatsby loses his sense of reality completely. He is a dreamer, but to complete his dream of living a perfect life he has to reunite with Daisy.
Therefore he moves to New York and makes a lot of money with illegal business.
He throws party after party hoping Daisy would join one of them. This shows that Gatsby is a very dedicated person. He tries everything to get Daisy back.
The people who attend his parties see Gatsby as a gentleman. However, his shy behaviour towards them makes them gossip about him. Keeping his past a secret people connect it with criminal affairs. Nevertheless in Gatsby´s opinion gossip is better than his biggest fear coming true, not being respected by those upper class people and to being seen as a nobody.
All in all Gatsby is totally lost in his dream world and not able to find back to reality.

Daisy Buchanan

Daisy Fay Buchanan is originally from a good family in Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nick Carraway’s  cousin once removed. After marrying Tom Buchanan, a very rich man, she moves to East Egg, Long Island. She is the mother of a little girl. Daisy is a woman who likes to play with men , she loves to exagorate and extemporize. Most men are fascinated by her , and Daisy enjoys being the center of attention . She also hopes to be liked and popular among the men around her.






She wants to impress men including Gatsby by using sophisticated language. She, for example, says: "The pompadour! You never told me you had a pompadour – or a yacht". Daisy promises more than she gives and oftentimes does not tell the truth.
She has a strong desire for love. Mainly for this reason she married Tom, instead of Gatsby. Since she did not know if Gatsby was to come back from Oxford, she did not want to wait for him any longer. Wanting to be loved is a reason for her superficial behavior and why everything about her is just not real. Especially with Daisy knowing about her husband's infidelity, it is hard for her to change her behavior. Sometimes it can even be seen as cynical. Daisy says about herself: "I'm pretty cynical about everything". You can see that she does not really love her husband Tom and is not happy because of her near divorce from Tom. “Sometimes she gets foolish ideas in her head and doesn’t know what she’s doing” .

Furthermore Daisy is careless person which you can see in her behavior when she has the hit-and-run accident in which Myrtle Wilson (Tom's mistress) is killed. Being used to getting young men's attention, she has learned to think only of herself no matter whether other people get hurt or not. Another reason for marrying Tom rather than Gatsby is because material things have a great importance to her. She was always “crying for a decision”  and wanted her life to be “shaped” . Tom was the one who bought her love with a $ 300,000 necklace. He can give her all the luxury Daisy needs for living. Even her voice “is full of money” . Nick says that Daisy's voice "couldn't be over-dreamed" . Her voice is "a deathless song".


Tom Buchanan
As for me, Tom is the symbol of masculinity in the novel: he posses all the features of the ideal man , except for being unfaithful to his wife. The thought occurred to me after reading “ A farewell to arms” by E. Hemingway where one of the motives is the motive of masculinity, the idea that is often , if not to say always, depicted in his novels and stories. And as we already know, that both Fitzgerald and Hemingway were friends and belonged to the so-called “ lost generation” , it seemed quite sensible that their works  could have something in common.

In this novel Tom Buchanan is the “bad boy”. Mr. Buchanan, Daisy Fay's husband, comes from an old social and immensely wealthy family. He is a Yale graduate showing also his high social standing and profanity.
Because of his college reputation, he still has the nick-names “The Athlete” and “The Polo-Player” . He is oftentimes seen as an idol. Tom is a good-looking, sporty and though guy who has verifiable “physical accomplishments”. He is a sturdy, muscular man with “arrogant eyes” and a husky voice.
Nevertheless, he has a racial attitude he, for example, disapproves intermarriage between the black and white race . He is very egoistic and has a high opinion of himself . Therefore Tom has no moral problems about his affair with Myrtle Wilson. He says of himself that he “has almost a second sight […] that tells [him] what to do”. This shows his careless behavior and his supercilious manner.
Moreover he is a rude and violent person who sometimes acts boisterously and maliciously .
Never being confronted with the consequences of his faults, because of always running away when he is in trouble, he is described as a restless person.


Jordan Baker

Jordan Baker is also from Louisville, Kentucky. Different to Tom and Daisy, her only living relative is an aunt. Being a famous professional golf player, she represents the new type of woman in the 20s. She is harsh, self-sufficient and always does her own thing meaning she does not need a man to help and guide her through life. Jordan is a very sportive and also masculine woman with an erect carriage. She is a “slender, small-breasted girl” . Jordan always wants to win whatever it takes. Being a very dishonest person she even lies in order to get what she wants. This is a reason why she tries to avoid meetings with clever men . Nevertheless she needs attention from the men surrounding her. Jordan basically just plays with the men's feelings and is not really interested in a relationship. You can see this very clearly when she tells Nick Carraway that she has a boyfriend.


Nick Carraway, though, has a special relationship with Jordan in a for us maybe unbelievable way. One second they love each other but later both of them go their own direction again. They are on the same wave length. In general, Jordan also likes going to parties at Gatsby's house although she does not like the host himself . In The Great Gatsby Jordan plays an important role. She is the one who introduces Nick to Gatsby and her curiosity also leads us through the book and helps us find out more about the other main characters.

Myrtle Wilson

Myrtle Wilson is a “thickish figure of a woman”  in her “middle thirties” . Even though she is not very beautiful, she still seems attractive.


Myrtle is George Wilson’s wife, as well as the woman Tom is having an affair with. She lets Tom push her around, just because she forgets the poor life, her husband can give her and feels like she is part of a life she dreams of, when she is together with him.
Myrtle would rather be treated like a dog by someone who has money instead of being cared for by someone who has no money.



George Wilson

George Wilson, "a blond, spiritless man”  who is faintly handsome and pale. He is a representative of the working class ordinary people, who were ,and some of them still are, eager to reach something, to win through the difficulties of the life, to make their AMERICAN DREAM  come true.
He is the owner of a garage in the Valley of Ashes, which shows that he is rather poor. His only hope for starting a new and better life somewhere else, seems to be Tom selling his car to him. But he does not see that Tom does not intend to sell his car and that it is just and excuse to show up there and to meet Myrtle.

Wilson is ”so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive”  and that is the reason why he never notices that Tom is the one his wife is having an affair with.
In the end, he is even so desperate that he is not able to think of another way than killing Gatsby and himself, to get out of his misery.


Meyer Wolfsheim


Wolfsheim is a “small, flatnosed Jew” who helped Gatsby making money in the bond business when he first came to New York after he returned from the war. He is Gatsby’s partner in selling alcohol illegally during the period of PROHIBITION. 

Wolfsheim seems to have a dark past. He supposedly is the one who fixed the World Series of 1919. He turns out to be one of the cruelest and heartless characters of the book, as he intentionally didn’t appear at Gatsby’s funeral fearing that this could damage his reputation.


Based on the material from http://www.ovtg.de