Key Methods Flashcards
methods that explain FSF’s outlook on the human condition (mythologising/idealising the past)
- framing narrative
- N’s imagined flashback
- symbol of the clock
- N feel’s G’s embarrassment
- N presents G as a courtly lover, anachronistic
methods that explain G’s fragmented identity (modernist)
- motif of rumours
- flashbacks, multiple narrators
- G as anachronistic
methods that explain FSF’s outlook on 1920’s USA’s moral vacuum
- motif of phone calls
- setting of the valley of ashes, Dr TJ Eckleberg
- characterisation of M, infidelity of M/T
- excessive listing (materialism), pink suit
- other couples act as foils (infidelity)
- materialistic imagery, shirts D’s character
Methods about love
- romantic anticlimaxes, narrative gaps, cliches
- bad driver metaphor
- women presented as disposable, extensions to men’s identity
Bad driver metaphor
- M’s death: “they saw her left breast was swinging loose like a flap, … she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality” - punished for being promiscuous, dehumanisation, sexualised even in death, commodity,
- T crashed car on honeymoon
- J and N
- G’s party
N’s imagines flashback
“He knew when he kissed this girl…his mind would never romp again like the mind of God.
Women as extensions to men’s identity, destruction
“Women run around too much these days”
Ella Kaye and dan Cody “An infinite number of women tried to separate him from his wealth”
“Tom Buchanan’s mistress”
“His wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control… I think he was afraid” - Tom’s lack of control
“she never loved you…‘She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me.
“He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you’… just as if it were five years ago. “
“My wife and I want to go west… now she’s going whether she likes it or not.”- Wilson tries to present his power, alike Tom, by isolating Myrtle
“my girl… his girl” - Tom’s possessiveness to M
G as a courtly lover, byronic
“Pale as death”
“Sleeplessness
“his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed”
“seemed to bear an enchanted life” - Gatsby attempts to woo Nick (courtly love) through his grand adventures, impress Nick perhaps Nick falls for this wooing more than Daisy, page 42
N mirroring G’s embarrassment
“Tropical burn”
“Aware of the loud beating of my own heart” - Gatsby being in love makes Nick want to find love, or he is upset because Gatsby has found love in someone else
Characters as living in the past
clock was “defunct”, “he caught it with trembling fingers”
“he was running down like an overwound clock” -
- “he stretched out his arms toward the dark water…I …distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away” - archaic courtly love archetype, love can’t exist in 20’s society
Characterisation of M
“carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can”
“The mouth was wide open and ripped…at the corners as though she had choked a little”
Old money as indestructible
“[d/t] were’nt happy… and yet they werent unhappy either. there was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture”
“pearl necklace” - TYPICAL RELATIONSHIPS = societal security, beats time, unbreakable
Nature of their relationship, shield of wealth, class.
“they were careless people… they smashed up things…and then retreated back into their money “ - “they”, personal pronoun = unity of elitism
Moral vacuum - conspicuous consumption, materialism over love
“every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head”
‘Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!’” - Myrtle fights by provoking and taunting, George is weak and timid. This information offered to the reader which has been narrated through Myrtle, Michaelis and now Nick, is 3rd hand, lack of reliability, page 87
“I’m sick” - Wilson is love sick, his romantic reaction to Myrtle betraying him, page
walking through her husband as if he were a ghost” - Myrtle is careless towards George, page 18
“I married him because I thought he was a gentleman… I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in” - Myrtle decided she didn’t like George when he wouldn’t give her materialistic items and that he wasn’t rich, always about money, page 23 and 24
“I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her…
“he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though…none of it was any longer real” - Gatsby is almost stuck in the past, magic realism, page 59
“Only Gatsby… was exempt from my rejection - represented everything for which i have an unaffected scorn”, page 3
’ ‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!” - illusion, foreshadowing, Gatsby as a tragic hero, page 70
“He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps” - Gatsby can’t deal with the reality of his life, what is / he has become Gatsby’s dissatisfaction, genre, page 71
“He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant” - Nick makes it seem that it isn’t Gatsby’s fault that he is like this, show his eternal love for Gatsby and Gatsby’s protection (protecting his reputation to the reader) page 57
“Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams” -
“it was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it… whole eternal world for an instant… elegant young roughneck” - page 32, ‘external’, shows Nick will be loyal to Gatsby throughout the novel
“There must have been moments…that Daisy tumbled short of his dreams… because of the colossal vitality of his illusion.- Nick is very critical of their relationship, strive to reach the American Dream;
“her voice is full of money”, page 62
“the officer looked at Daisy…in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at, and… it seemed romantic to me” - Jordan romanticises Daisy and Gatsby, makes the love seem more genuine, page 48
“For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids… summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes” - motif of flowers, links to the rose and how Daisy is a flower and yet she is ‘artificial’ and rotten. Puts Daisy on a pedestal; Gatsby separated her from reality, ironically she is unattainable. Even for the young aristocrats, decay and death loom, the flowers are full of sadness, page 96
“Gatsby’s very careful about women. He would never so much look at a friend’s wife” - Meyer Wolfshiem talking about Gatsby, IRONY, page 46 / 47
“I picked him for a bootlegger” - Tom reveals Gatsby as a criminal and where all of his money has come from, leads to Daisy’s decline in his interest for Gatsby because she realises his money and wealth isn’t pure and earned rightfully, unlike Tom’s, page 85
“men and girls came and went like moths” - inferiority of women, also how people are attracted to Gatsby’s parties, materialistic, but no one cares about him, page 26
“‘it makes me sad because I’ve never seen such beautiful shirts before’” - Daisy’s materialism, page 59
“‘She’s got an indiscreet voice’… ‘Her voice is full of money,’ … high in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl” - Nick describes Myrtle in chapter 2, using ‘discreet’ to explain the precautions she takes to hide her affair with Tom. Gatsby wants to collect her as a possession, she is a prize to be collected.
“the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars” - materialism, Gatsby offers Daisy her real affection and money (and not just money, like Tom),
“It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy - it increased her value in his eyes” - objectification, Daisy as a commodity vs the couple as star crossed lovers, page 94
“But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed” - Nick is always used or in awe of Gatsby; always presenting Gatsby as ‘different’ or godly; magic realism genre but also obsessive, unrequited love, page 57
“‘She had told him she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw”
‘I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife.
“walking through her husband as if he were a ghost” - Myrtle is careless towards George, page 18
“I married him because I thought he was a gentleman… I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in” - Myrtle decided she didn’t like George when he wouldn’t give her materialistic items and that he wasn’t rich, always about money, page 23 and 24
``-
false love for gatsby, love of material possessions
“A sudden emptiness seemed to flow…endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch,”
“but no one swooned backward on Gatsby, and no French bob touched Gatsby’s shoulder”
