Gatsby Flashcards
East Egg vs West Egg
“But the rest offended her… She was appalled by West Egg”
- Both Eggs are rich and close by but are opposite in the values they endorse.
- East Egg represents breeding, taste, aristocracy and leisure. West Egg represents ostentation, garishness, and the flashy manners of the new rich.
- East Egg is associated with the Buchanans and West Egg is associated with Gatsby.
- Gatsby can never be good enough for Daisy or alike her and who she is associated with as he can never change his working class background.
- The difference between their social classes will always separate them.
- The unworkable intersection of the two Eggs in the romance between Daisy and Gatsby will serve as the fault line for catastrophe.
- Highlights that the American Dream is not achievable for the lower class.
Gatsby’s Background
“so he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy was likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end”
- He comes from humble roots and rises to be notoriously wealthy through his businesses and crime.
- His success doesn’t last, he still pines for Daisy and loses everything in his attempt to get her back.
- Gatsby transforms himself into the ideal that he envisioned for himself and remains committed to that ideal, despite the obstacles that society presents to the fulfilment of his dream.
- He buys a mansion in West Egg and throws lavish parties, actively encouraging gate-crashers, in the hope that Daisy might appear.
- His dreams are all precariously wedded to Daisy and are as flimsy and flight as Daisy is herself.
- The American dream has, in the pursuit of happiness, degenerated into a mere quest for wealth.
- His dream of happiness with Daisy has become the motivation for lavish excess and criminal activities.
- Gatsby is a symbol for 1920s America - an avatar for the corruption of the American dream.
Colour
“bewitched to dark gold” / “slender golden arms” / “the golden girl” / “yellow cocktail dresses” / “two girls in twin yellow dresses”
- Gold represents old, real money that has been inherited through generations.
- Yellow is fake gold, veneer and show rather than substance.
- Gatsby’s car is yellow and is a symbol of his desire - and failure - to enter New York’s high society.
- The colours symbolise Gatsby’s desire to fit in with the upper class society that Daisy is part of.
- He is trying to bridge the gap between them but everyone can tell and realise that he doesn’t belong.
- Gatsby can never realistically be with Daisy and achieve his American dream.
The Green Light - Character
“He stretched his arms toward the dark water in a curious way… and distinguished nothing except a single green light.” / “Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had vanished forever… Now it was just a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.”
- Green represents envy, jealousy and material richness.
- Gatsby needs money is his quest for Daisy.
- The physical distance between them acts as a social barrier.
- The light becomes like a religious icon to Gatsby, a symbol of his hope of a new life with Daisy.
- Gatsby places huge value and worth on objects he associates with Daisy.
- The fact that he is physically reaching for this light, which we learn is at the end of Daisy’s dock, emphasises his intense yearning for her and her glamourous old money life.
- Once Gatsby has Daisy in his company, Nick considers the possibility that the green light has no meaning anymore. It seems that for Gatsby, the yearning for and dreaming for Daisy may be more satisfying than actually being with her in person.
The Green Light - Theme
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.”
- Green represents envy, jealousy and material richness.
- Gatsby needs money in his quest for Daisy.
- The physical distance between them acts as a social barrier,
- The green light that ‘year by year recedes before us’ shows that the dream is continually fresh and inspiring, yet unfulfilling. It remains out there somewhere but leads us back morally as it is based on economic lust.
- It shows that the American dream has become solely a quest for wealth instead for one for freedom and equality.
Gatsby’s Belief in the Dream
“Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!” / “Afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don’t think he ever really believed in its existence before.” / He paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.”
- Gatsby refuses to accept the passage of time.
- He is convinces that he and Daisy can go back to the way their relationship was before he left for war.
- He is so caught up in the illusion of his dream and doesn’t realise that Daisy has another life and a child from another man.
- This is the fatal flaw in his character.
- Fitzgerald makes it clear that he believes the false nature of this ideology is dangerous.
- Gatsby has become s obsessed with achieving his dream that the only possible outcome was his demise - he wouldn’t stop hoping until he had either achieved it (which is impossible) or through death.
Climax
“I did love him once - but I loved you too.” / “You loved me too?’ he repeated.” / “ He looked… as if he had ‘killed a man’. For a moment the set of his face could be described in just that fantastic way.” / “But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself… only the dead dream fought on.”
- Gatsby is grasping at his dream, but it is clear that with the realisation of his true status, it is beginning to slip away from him.
- Gatsby pushes Daisy to say she doesn’t love Tom, which shows how desperately he is clinging onto his dream.
- This is a turning point for Gatsby - his fantasy is ruined and his illusion that he can repeat the past is shattered.
- Gatsby loses all power and Tom gains confidence as he realises Daisy never intended to leave him.
- Nothing Gatsby does will change Daisy’s mind - she had never intended to leave Tom as he could provide everything for her.
- Gatsby has lost everything that he was living for - his dream is over.
After the Climax
“he found what a grotesque thing a rose is” / “voice is full of money”
- The rose has been a conventional symbol of beauty and romance throughout centuries of poetry.
- Nick suggests that roses aren’t inherently beautiful, and that people only view that that way because they choose to do so, much like Gatsby made Daisy a symbol for everything he values and has placed huge worth on objects he associates with her.
- The image of Daisy as perfect was etched in his mind, and he expected her to be exactly as he had imagined.
- Daisy does not stand up for him as she cannot leave her husband. Her ‘voice is full of money’; she places wealth and status well ahead of love. Gatsby finally has to face the truth that they will never be together, that Daisy will stay with Tom, that his dream is just a fantasy.
- He sees the rose, which is typically a beautiful symbol of love and romance, as ugly, because it is no longer covered by fantasy. He sees the truth - it has thorns and can hurt.
- Daisy is ‘grotesque’ as Gatsby has invested her with beauty and meaning by making her the object of his dream. Daisy would otherwise be an idle, bored, rich young woman with no particular moral strength or loyalty.
- Daisy will never leave Tom because she is aware of reality - the reality that Tom and Daisy are part of the social elite and even will all of Gatsby’s money, he cannot buy an education and a past.
- Gatsby is not in love with the real Daisy, but the memory of Daisy from 5 years ago. His whole world is built on the fragile basis of an unachievable dream.
Gatsby’s Death
“Yes,’ he said after a moment. ‘But of course I’ll say I was.” / “I call up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively…But she and Tom had gone away” / “He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn’t told him who owned the car.”
- Fitzgerald makes clear that a contributing factor in the fate of Gatsby is the carelessness of the upper class.
- Due to Gatsby’s unwavering devotion to Daisy cause by his belief in the American dream, he takes the blame for the death of Myrtle Wilson.
- Fitzgerald clearly portrays the careless and destructive nature of the elite in their ungrateful and selfish actions in the aftermath of Myrtle’s death and Gatsby’s self-sacrifice.
- Gatsby had stayed in West Egg hoping for communication from Daisy. It didn’t come and instead she abandons him to his fate in the name of self-preservation.
- Fitzgerald makes his criticism of the elite class - the richer get richer through having no concern or regard for the lower class.
- It is revealed that Tom sacrificed Gatsby in order to preserve his wife and himself in revealing Gatsby’s location to George Wilson.
