Gatsby A05

Question 1

Anne O’Neill, 2014

Answer 1

‘Fitzgerald himself always felt he was on the outside looking in amongst the elite that he mixed on the Riviera and at Princeton’

Question 2

Rothman (New Yorker)

Answer 2

‘In ‘Gatsby’, everyone wants to be simpler than they really are. Everyone wants to give himself up to something that will define, constrain and explain him - to be swept up into a fantasy that’s narrower than the life he really lives’

Question 3

Parkinson, 1988

Answer 3

‘The impersonal death machine violates Myrtle’s female identity and ravages her, it is a symbolic rape’

Question 4

R. Stallman, 1955

Answer 4

‘Gatsby is a symbol of America itself’

Question 5

Sebastian Fälth

Answer 5

‘Gatsby has a romanticised view of wealth and is unaware of the realities of the American society where wealth is not the only aspect when it comes to social class’

Question 6

Michael Pekarofski, 2012

Answer 6

• ‘Gatsby is Jewish and on many levels, this is really a novel about otherness, about passing’
• ‘Jimmy Gatz’s disassociation from his parents represents a very stark rejection of his genealogical and cultural heritage’
• Gatsby changes his name to assimilate into the Christian Anglo culture, in a time ruled by anti-immigrant nativist sentiment

Question 7

Zelda Fitzgerald in ‘Save Me the Waltz’

Answer 7

‘We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising’

Question 8

Careless People, Sarah Churchwell

Answer 8

• Fitzgerald was influenced by real life events, Hall-Mills murder case 1922
• ‘Fitzgerald’s up-to-dateness is one of his chief assets’
• Fitzgerald ‘was always trying to live up to the men who had all the money and social advantages’