native son and gatsby

Question 1

Media influences on Native Son

Answer 1

‘It was when he read the newspapers or magazines, went to the movies… that he felt he wanted: to merge himself with others and be a part of this world’ i.e. knowing what is on the outside world makes him want it even more. It further exacerbates the gap between the ruling class and oppressed class. Teases him, showing him what he can’t have.

Question 2

Media influences on Native Son

Answer 2

‘He paused and re-read the line ‘AUTHORITIES HINT SEX CRIME’. ‘Those words excluded him utterly from the world’. Bigger is two selves: the one the media presents and the one is really is. Yet, people only believe the media crafted persona. Media overrules his ability to have freedom of speech. Destructive force. Only heightens white paranoia due to Scottsboro trial.

Question 3

Media influences on Native Son

Answer 3

P275: ‘{the} Banker’s wife dismissed the negro cook for fear she might poison her children’
Juxtaposition between Banker and Cook. Banker holds financial power and holds power of cook. Capitalist scheme.

Question 4

Media influences on Native Son

Answer 4

The advertisement of Buckley: ‘huge colored poster… the poster showed a white finger’ Shows a finger pointing out straight, in South Chicago where the blacks live. Advertisement powerful in manipulating how people act. Accusative finger which almost pre-determines people to conform to their stereotype.

Warnes describes ‘the atmosphere of inevitability’

Question 5

Media influences on The Great Gatsby

Answer 5

Opening of chapter 6- prior to Gatsby’s reconciliation with Daisy. ‘About this time an ambitious young reporter from NY arrived on morning at Gatsby’s door and asked him if he had anything to say’.

Society’s predatory nature. He is a victim of his dream. Life is not private. ‘Jay Gatsby’ is a construct of himself and media influences.
TGG- novel of production in NY as much as self- production.

Question 6

Media influences on The Great Gatsby

Answer 6

Daisy to Gatsby Chapter 7 ‘You resemble the advertisement of a man’ i.e. Dr Eckleburg.
Gatsby may resemble the embodiment of economic success. But, this success is in another strata- i.e. the poster is in the valley of ashes. His success is less refined - bootlegging.

Question 7

Media influences on The Great Gatsby

Answer 7

Wilson in Chapter 8 ‘I told her she might fool me but she can’t fool God’
He was reminded later ‘That’s an advertisement’
Lost generation - moral ambiguity. Loss of direction. Belief in God replaced by belief in consumerism.

Question 8

Native Son: synopsis

Answer 8

Bigger Thomas is a poor, uneducated man in 1930’s Chicago. Having grown up under the climate of harsh racial prejudice, Bigger is burdened with a powerful conviction that he has no control over his life. He cannot aspire to anything other than menial, low wage labor.

Anger, fear and frustration define Bigger’s daily existence, as he is forced to hide behind a facade of toughness or risk succumbing to despair.

Wright forces us to enter into Bigger’s mind and understand the devastating effects of the social conditions in which he was raised. Bigger was not a born criminal. He is a ‘Native Son’ a product of American culture, violence and racism.

Question 9

The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: The Wall Street Crash

Answer 9

The Wall Street Crash took place in 1929.
During 1920’s, American experienced an economic boom- governments adopted a Laissez Faire policy meaning businesses were free to expand.
Pursuit of dis-inhibited pleasure.
The Wall Street stock crashed and the world economy plunged into a Great depression.
People were in a panic to get rid of their stocks. Since everyone was selling and no one was buying, stock prices collapsed.
Badly shaking confidence in capitalism.

Question 10

The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: The American Dream

Answer 10

Every man and woman shall, regardless of their birth, achieve what they’re able to. Everybody should be treated equally.
AD shaped by several collective values: individualism (moral worth of individual) , self - actualization (reaching one’s own potential) and self-reliance.
For those who did not prosper, it was not a dream that had betrayed them- but their faith in capitalism.
Pursuit ‘palpably available to everyone’ but was success?

Question 11

The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: The Lost generation

Answer 11

Reckless pleasure seeking
WW1- 1914 to 1918
hedonistic lifestyles - partying, drugs and alcohol.
Many were disillusioned after the war.
Moral ambiguity.
Lives aimless with no purpose.

Question 12

The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Racism

Answer 12

Tom Buchanan was a White Anglo Saxon Protestant- belief that white people are the superior race. Scientifically proven- other races are biologically inferior.
Fear of immigration in 1920’s- The Great Migration. Movement of 6 million AA’s from Southern US to the urban North. Occurred after the Civil War. Driven by unsatisfactory economic conditions. Harsh segregationist laws.
Conflict between North and South. North Opposed to slavery. Northern Abraham Lincoln became president. All of South’s wealth based on slavery - worked on plantations and cotton fields.
11 states in south decided to break away and have their own government and so Civil War declared. Lincoln declared emancipation - all slaves freed. 1865- South surrendered. Lead to abolition of slavery. Illegal for blacks to be denied votes or discriminated against.

Question 13

The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Jim Crow laws

Answer 13

Introduced 1890- 1965
Despite new laws, blacks still seen as inferior and second-class.
Jim Crow laws enforced segregation. South- white superiority enforced and slavery culture remembered and embraced. Inter-marriage between black and whites illegal. Public places had separated parts for black and white.

Question 14

The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: The Klu Klux Klan

Answer 14

It was virtually impossible for black AA to challenge segregation. To do so ran the serious risk of violence at the hands of white racists KKK. Its campaigns of hate and violence intensified: violence, beating, burning, branding, acid attacks and lynching rapidly increased.
Effective in limiting political power making it difficult for black population to vote.

Question 15

The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Women

Answer 15

Emerging acceptance in NY that women could be sexually powerful and confident. The 1920’s saw a changing role for women. Sexually liberated. In 1920 women got the right to vote. An increase in educated and independent women post WW1- took on roles of women- respected and admired. However, for many the new woman was a disturbing and socially divisive construct that was bound to have mental and physical repercussions and most importantly affect fertility.

Question 16

The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Prohibition

Answer 16

US put a constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages. Many believed alcohol was the cause of society’s sins- domestic violence, fighting and public damage. Believed importing, buying consuming alcohol was supporting brewers in Germany. Still a strong anti-Germany feeling.
Bars and clubs known as speakeasies secretly and illegally sold alcohol. Gangsters thrived- famous Al Capone - $60 million annually from bootleg operations.

Question 17

Native Son context: Richard Wright’s personal life

Answer 17

Wright wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin prior to NS. He was unhappy at the reception it received. It evoked pity and sympathy- letting white reader’s believe they were not responsible for the situation.
Instead her wrote NS to encourage them to accept their complicity in the misery of the American underclass.

Bigger Thomas
Bigger 1: There was a boy who terrorized Wright and all the boys he played with. They never recovered their toys unless they flattered him and made him feel superior. He was happiest when he had someone cornered at this mercy.

Bigger 4: The Jim Crow laws of the South were not for him and he cursed and broke them. But he knew one day he would have to pay for his freedom.

Question 18

The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Communism

Answer 18

The prominent leaders were opposed to racial segregation.
They considered discrimination of black workers to be an extreme form of capitalist exploitation.
Communism was based on Marxist ideology. Marxism believed that history was largely determined by struggle between the ruling classes and oppressed classes. Capitalism is dependent on racism as a source of profiteering.
Solution needs to be radical- Marxist revolution

Question 19

The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: The Scottsboro trial

Answer 19

Famous episodes of legal injustice in Jim Crow South.
Nine young black men were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train. They were falsely convicted- despite prominent lawyers arguing that the accusations were false. 8 sentenced to death and the youngest sentenced to life imprisonment.
The CP started national protest and gained much respect. Eventually all 9 lives were saved. One of the proudest moments of American radicalism- successfully beat the Jim Crow legal system.

Question 20

The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Generic elements of the Gothic novel

Answer 20

Setting in old-abandoned buildings. Darkness or shadow- to create sense of claustrophobia.
Women in distress- often left fainting terrified, screaming or sobbing. To appeal to pathos and sympathy of reader.
Women threatened by a powerful, tyrannical, impulsive male.

Question 21

The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Modernism

Answer 21

Challenged and rejected established ideas
Saw human environment as unstable, threatening, lacking in absolute meaning.
Individual’s struggle in an incoherent world. City settings- vacillation between excitement and fears,
Alienation from the big city and its dominating culture. Protagonists often find themselves feeling lonely.
Lack of faith and morals.

Question 22

The Great Gatsby context

Answer 22

Nick Carraway confesses what fascinates him about the NY is its mechanical vitality: ‘the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines give to the restless eye’.
‘constant flicker’ is oxymoronic. Became a key word for modernist writers. A powerful image of febrile superficiality.
NY represented a utopia were every type of dream and desire could become true.

Question 23

Native Son: KEY QUOTES

Answer 23

‘Turn your heads so I can dress’
‘A huge black rat squealed’
‘The rat’s belly pulsed with fear’
‘If you wasn’t black and if you had some money, and if they’d let you go to that aviation school, you could fly a plane’.
‘He hated his family because he knew they were suffering and that he was powerless to help them’
‘he had transferred his fear of the whites to Gus’
‘He knew the moment he allowed what his life meant to enter into his consciousness, he would either kill himself, or someone else’.
‘He committed rape every time he looked into a white face’
‘Rape was what one felt when one’s back was against a wall and one had to strike out, whether one wanted to or not’- redefining rape. Its just a response. a reflex.
Buckley poster- as described in media
Newspapers

Question 24

Native Son: Key quotes

Answer 24

Eager to prove their progressive ideals and racial tolerance, Mary and Jan force bigger to take them to a restaurant in the South side.
‘There’ll be no white and no black; there’ll be no rich and no poor’
‘You’ve read about the Scottsboro boys’

Mary’s murder gives Bigger a sense of identity and power he has never known
‘Now, who on earth would think that he, a black timid Negro boy would murder and burn a rich white girl and would wait for his breakfast like this. Elation filled him’.

‘Made him feel free for the first time in his life’.

Just as Bigger places Mary on her bed, Mary’s blind mother, Mrs Dalton, enters the bedroom. Though Mrs Dalton cannot see him, her ghostlike presence terrifies him. Worried that Mary, in her drunken condition, will reveal his presence he covers her face with a pillow and accidently smothers her to death.

‘A hysterical presence seized him… A white blur was standing by the door, silent, ghostlike.’

Gothic trope- white power all consuming, oppressive

Question 25

Native Son: key quotes

Answer 25

Bigger decides to use the Dalton’s prejudice against communists to frame Jan for Mary’s disappearance. He also takes advantage of their racial prejudices, continuing to play a timid negro who would never commit such an act.

‘Yeah; I killed the girl. Now you know. You got to help me. You in it as deep as me’.

‘She sank to the bed again, sobbing’ ‘Bigger, please! Don’t do this to me’ Please! All I do is work, work like a dog’. Gothic trope- a woman threatened by a tyrannical male into doing something intolerable. He bullies Bessie to take part in the ransom scheme.

Bigger writes a ransom note- playing upon the Dalton’s racial prejudice against communists. Signing it ‘Red’.

Question 26

Native Son: Key quotes

Answer 26

p263
Bessie and Bigger hide in an abandoned building ‘black darkness’. sense of claustrophobia. forebodes the rape.

‘A huge warm pole of desire rose in him’.

‘All he knew was that the room was quiet and cold and the job was done’

P389:
‘In Max’s asking of those questions he had felt a recognition of his life, of his feelings, of his person, that he had never encountered before.’

Involved an ‘explanation of his whole life’

‘I’m defending this boy because I’m convinced that men like you made him what he is’ i.e. he IS a native son.

Question 27

Native Son: key quotes

Answer 27

The whit authorities and the white mob use Bigger’s crime as an excuse to terrorize the entire South Side.
Jan and Max speak to Bigger as a human being, and Bigger begins to see whites as individuals and himself as their equal.

They urge that it is vital to see Bigger as a product of his environment.

Mrs Dalton:
‘Your philanthropy was as tragically blind as your sightless eyes.’

Mr Dalton exclaims he sent ‘ping pong table to the south side’.

‘But those things don’t touch the fundamental problem’.

p367: ‘It gripped him: that cross was not the cross of Christ, but a cross of the Klu klux klan’.- environmental construct

Bigger’s loss of faith: ‘He had killed within himself the preacher’s haunting picture of life even before he killed Mary’. If this is life , and if this is his justice then he has no belief.

Max asks Mr Dalton: ‘Why is it that you exact an exorbitant rent of eight dollars per week from the Thomas family for one unventilated, rat-infested room in which four people eat and sleep’?

he charges ‘twice’ as much rent as whites for the same kind of flats.

Mrs Dalton blindness used to symbolise her unawareness of her husband’s exploitative nature, using her money to build a reputation for philanthropy when in reality, it is just a smokescreen for his capitalist ventures.
perpetuates Jim Crow laws- only having their house on south side. in turn, restricts their freedom.
Membership of National association for the advancement of coloured people merely acts as a bandage to cover the wound caused by his immorality.

Question 28

The Great Gatsby: key quotes

Answer 28

Tom’s racism: fear of the great migration
‘Civilisation’s going to piece’ the white race will be utterly submerged…It’s all scientific stuff it’s been proved’

Divide between the west and east egg- East egg - old rich- with a social past- refined and well bred. Heredity. West egg- new rich.

Description of Tom: ‘Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face’ ‘A cruel body’
‘The flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots’. Shows Tom’s dominance.

‘I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said… as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged’.

Question 29

The Great Gatsby key quotes

Answer 29

‘They oughtn’t let her in around the country this way’
‘That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool’.

The valley of Ashes: consequence of disinhibited pleasure. Symbolises moral decay and ugliness hidden beneath glamorous surface.

‘ash-grey men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air’
Wilson’s garage: ‘The interior was unprosperous and bare’ ‘dust wrecked ford’.
Tom is a blatant adulterer.
Myrtle desires to assimilate.
‘She carried her flesh sensuously as some women can’ - lower social class. ‘With the influence of her dress her personality had undergone a change’. Described sexually- Tom’s relationship is based on exchange of sex. Drunkenness turns into rage- Tom breaks Myrtle’s nose.

Myrtle’s affair with Tom would suggest she is sexually liberated but perhaps it is just a way to improve her situation.

waste land based on T.S Eliot’s poem ‘Waste land’ focus on a sterile landscape where everyone is isolated an unable to love.

Question 30

The Great Gatsby: key quotes

Answer 30

Gatsby’s parties
Gatsby hosts weekly parties for the rich and fashionable. Gatsby remains apart from his guests. ‘no one swooned backward on Gatsby, and no French bob touched Gatsby’s shoulder’
stands ‘alone on the marble steps’. Gatsby is so concerned with maintaining his created persona he keeps his distance from other characters. desires to keep control.

‘Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in NY- every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves.

‘Floating rounds of cocktails’
Gatsby’s smile had a ‘quality of eternal reassurance’
‘I supposed he smiled at Cody- he had probably discovered that people liked him when he smiled’ deliberately crafted persona.

Question 31

The Great Gatsby: key quotes

Answer 31

Nick meets one of Gatsby’s associates and Gatsby’s link to organised crime- Meyer Wolfshiem- mirrors Arnold Rothstein who fixed the world series. one man who plays with the faith of fifty million people- which is the AD.

Gatsby and Daisy met years before he was in the army but could not be together as he didn’t have the means to support her. In the intervening years Gatsby made it his goal to win back Daisy. Gatsby’s love is idealised- Daisy embodies the wealth, charm, class Gatsby has wanted all his life

Chapter 6:
Gatsby changed his named from James Gatz to James Gatsby. Calls his family ‘shiftless and unsuccessful farm people’. Gatsby’s self production. never again would he acknowledge his meagre past; from that point on he was armed with a fabricated family history. ‘Oxford man’.

‘his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all’.

Question 32

The Great Gatsby: key quotes

Answer 32

Chapter 5: ‘He took out piles of shirts and began throwing them…shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel’.
excessive commodities.
‘They’re such beautiful shirts’ she sobbed.
Narcissistic wealth: Daisy’s love for Gatsby is conditioned by her fascination for wealth. Crying at pure satisfaction wealth brings.
Klipspringer plays ‘Ain’t we got fun’ Popular song jokes about resilience of Working class and how if you haven’t got anything, no one can take anything. Ironic commentary on their relationship- His excessive commodities- but will still be unhappy because he doesn’t have daisy and never will.

Question 33

The Great Gatsby: key quotes

Answer 33

Chapter 7: the plaza hotel
The hottest and most unbearable day of the year. Daisy pays Gatsby special attention and Tom deftly picks up. Wilson has just learnt about Myrtle’s affair- it has made him ‘physically sick.’ Wilson plans on taking Myrtle away.
Media: ‘You resemble the advertisement of a man’.
‘Her voice is full of money’ - tom
Tom feels in a hot panic- his wife and mistress had been lost from his control in a matter of hours.

‘Mr Nobody from nowhere’
Gatsby asks Daisy to say she never loved Tom and that she has always loved him. Daisy is unable to do this. Gatsby declares that Daisy is going to leave Tom.
‘Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on her finger’ Tom understands Daisy far better then Gatsby does. His wealth and power, matured through generations of privilege, will triumph over Gatsby’s newly found wealth.

Myrtle is hit by a car that never bothered to stop. Nicks learn that it was Daisy driving but Gatsby is willing to take the blame. Daisy’s social standing means she avoids punishment- gets away with murder.
The newspapers called it ‘the death car’
Gatsby’s car is yellow- the symbol of money
symbolises the manifestation of American materialism.

Question 34

The Great Gatsby

Answer 34

Chapter 8’You can fool me but you can’t fool God’.
‘Jay Gatsby had broken like glass against Tom’s hard malice’
‘Discernible barbed wire between them’
‘Penniless young man without a past’
‘he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same strata as herself’
Tom stitched Gatsby up- made Wilson believe it was Gatsby driving.
‘… found what a grotesque thing a rose is’
her beauty- voice- charm- manipulative

‘They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money’
Daisy- white clothing- void of coinsciousness

no one attends funeral. Not Wolfshiem, or the people who attended his parties. Only Nick, his father.