critics Flashcards
Parkinson: Jordan Baker
- foil
Jordan’s status ‘in the narrative is never quite clear, other than as a foil and a contrast to Daisy’
Tyson: Jordan Baker
-lesbian
‘associated with numerous lesbian signs’
‘even when dressed in her most feminine attire, she is described in rather masculine terms’
Parkinson: Myrtle
-death
‘the impersonal death machine violates Myrtle’s female identity and ravages her: it is a symbolic rape’
Person Jr: Daisy
-victim
Daisy in fact is more victim than victimiser; she is victim first of Tom’s ‘cruel’ power
Clark: upper class
Fitzgerald discloses in these people a meanness of spirit, carelessness, and absence of loyalties. He cannot hate them, for they are dumb in their insensate selfishness, and only to be pitied
Berman: Myrtle/Tom
Feelings and perceptions may even be provided by the marketplace. Myrtle buys her dog and Tom buys her.”
Mencken: Gatsby
-gatsby vs the rest
Only Gatsby himself genuinely lives and breathes. The rest are mere marionettes.
Eble: Daisy/Gatsby
-actuality
Daisy moves away from actuality into an idea existing in Gatsby’s mind
Flanagan: Gatsby
-colours
-outlines
Gatsby lives in the world of romantic energies and colours.
Gatsby is somewhat vague. The reader’s eyes can never quite focus upon him, his outlines are dim.
Lance: Gatsby/Tom
Becoming Tom was Gatsby’s dream.
Stocks: Gatsby/ Nick
Nick wants to portray Gatsby as ‘great’ and undermines anything that might undermine that image.
Bewley: Daisy
-morality
Daisy has monstrous moral indifference and vicious emptiness
Dyson: Gatsby
-rootless
Gatsby is the apotheosis of his rootless society… He really believes in himself and his illusions
Fraser: daisy
-freedom or stability
“Daisy is torn between a desire for personal freedom and the need for stability.”
Parkinson: Daisy
- images
“Daisy is only allowed to exist in the images of men create of her.”
Staveley: Gatsby
-like America
“Gatsby, like America itself … strives to reach a place he has created in his own mind, an impossible perfect.”
Stocks: Gatsby
- great Gatsby
“Gatsby is neither ‘great’ nor indeed ‘Gatsby
O’Keefe: Nick
- love
- commitment
“Nick has indeed fallen in love with Gatsby”
Nick has an inability to commit- we never know how much we should trust him”
Stavley: The Valley of Ashes
“The Valley of Ashes acts as a stark reminder to the rich that the poor they choose to ignore, manipulate or exploit can’t be brushed aside forever”
Tanner: Gatsby
-green light
“The green light offers Gatsby a suitably inaccessible focus for his yearning”
Bewley: American dream/ text
The main theme is the withering of the American Dream”
Scott: Fitz/nick
Neither Fitzgerald or Nick, his diffident mouthpiece, were immune to the seductions of hedonism and luxury’
Moore: Gatsby/Daisy
-rape
Gatsby’s love for Daisy, with its desire for possession and its hint…of something close to rape..”
Boggs: Wilson
Wilson offers the readers a sharp jolt of reality”
