Gatsby and Innocence critic

Question 1

Alonzo Vereen

Answer 1

Possibility of Fitzgerald wanting us to doubt Gatsby’s racial identity - question whether he might be suspected of passing as white
This might be why he struggles for acceptance

Question 2

Micheal Pekarofski 2012
The passing of J. Gatsby

Answer 2

Gatsby’s era defined by Nativism/race based nationality
Gatsby is a passing Jewish person hiding from anti-semitism
Post-reconstruction = big influx of European immigrants = hostilities and othering
Immigration Act of 1924 which was in favour of Western Europeans and limited Eastern Europeans

Gatsby changes his name to assimilate into majority Christian Anglo culture

Gatsby’s dad mentions James J. Hill = programmes for agrarian Jewish farmers for social assimilation - it failed

Association with Jewish gangster, Meyer Wolfshiem
Americaness is crucial to his identity/character - trying to be Old Money
Tom Buchanon’s ‘Rise of the Coloured Empires’

Significance of the older way of life in TGG + TAOI

Question 3

Parkinson 1988

Answer 3

The impersonal death machine violates Myrtle’s feminine identity and ravages her; it is a symbolic rape

Question 4

Pamela Knights

Answer 4

Replication seems everything (no individualism, TAOI)

Question 5

Max Herzberg

Answer 5

Archer and May’s marriage is ‘bound by the tribal code of the elite’

Question 6

Barbara Bleiman, 2023
TGG with Fresh Eyes

Answer 6

Gatsby is an invention of those around him whose own tragedies are bound up with their hopes and beliefs that they channel through him
Cypher of their own + the reader’s fears, dreams and desires

• Projection of others (T+D) random pastimes
• Nick’s infatuation with others over his own life
• Mrytle’s wishes to acquire wealth, prestige and respect
• Temporary adventure everyone eventually moves on from (Nick. T+D)

Question 7

Senegal NYT 2020

Answer 7

Nick + Novel are passive
Complicit in the spectacle they criticise
Readers have context and hindsight

AOI is completely retrospective - satire of the society she watched crumble
Fitzgerald did not know he lived in the roaring 20s

Question 8

Elizabeth Ammons

Answer 8

May - lovely human doll whose uselessness aggrandises her owner’s social standing

Archer is a product of convention

Question 9

Hildegard Hoeller 2011

Answer 9

Invisible blackness in Wharton’s old New York

Question 10

R Stallman 1955

Answer 10

Gatsby is a symbol of America itself

• Fake American Dream after Old War (lost generation)
• Newland quintessential American Dream but shows the reality of it
  (N’s AD = Ellen, G’s AD = Daisy)

Question 11

Katherine Joslin

Answer 11

Wharton’s old New York before the Great War was in a prelapsarian state (before the fall of man)

Question 12

Charles Lewis 2017

Answer 12

Parallels between Gatsby + Passing (i.e. the death of a character who attempts to pass)
Gatsby as German-Jewish = Fitzgerald as Irish-American (He was Black Irish/Scottish = passing?)

Question 13

Sebastian Falth - Marxist

Answer 13

Gatsby has a romantic view of wealth and is unaware of the realities of American Society where wealth is not the only aspect of social class

Question 14

Sarah Churchwell, 2013

Answer 14

Careless People, 2013
September 1922 - Mills and Hall murder case causes intense public speculation
This year, particularly the end, is a turning point for Fitzgerald, the Great Gatsby set in the year
Inspired Mrytle and Gatsby’s deaths

In 1922, the New York Times raised concerns about new ‘cocktail party’ culture - it ends in disgrace and murder - tragical and hard to distinguish as natural or murder

Gatsby dies the death Tom should die - wants to substitute himself with Tom