Revision of connections discussed in lessons: Flashcards
Both Bigger and Gatsby are presented as idealists
Useful for essay questions on ideas or themes such as…
- individuals vs. society
- characters shaped by social or economic settings
- aspiration and ambition
- identity
Gatsby:
“Jay Gatsby…sprang from his Platonic conception of himself”
“Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!”
Bigger:
“He remembered hearing…of a Negro chauffeur who had married a rich white girl and the girl’s family had shipped the couple out of the country and had supplied them with money. Yes, his going to work for the Daltons was something big.”
Both characters’ aspirations are based on hopes and dreams at odds with social reality.
Both Mary Dalton and Myrtle Wilson attempt to transgress social boundaries; both are killed
Useful for essay questions on ideas or themes such as…
- presentation of women
- individuals vs. society
- aspiration and ambition
- social injustice and prejudice
“[Bigger]knew that if Mary spoke she [Mrs Dalton] would come to the side of the bed and discover him, touch him.”
Myrtle:
“A moment later [after arguing with Wilson about his keeping her locked up] she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting- before he could move from his door the business was over.”
Mary’s naive cultural transgression- “I want to meet some [Negroes]”- results in her unwittingly manoeuvring Bigger into a desperate predicament that leads to him accidentally killing her; Myrtle’s fateful final dash into the road is prompted by Wilson’s discovery of her affair with Tom, and Fitzgerald underlines the unacceptably transgressive nature of her flirtation with the upper classes with the cruel poetic justice of having Daisy, the ‘wronged wife’, accidentally kill her.
Both Bigger and Gatsby are presented as having a reversal of fortune or peripeteia in their character development
Useful for essay questions on ideas or themes such as…
- individuals vs. society
- characters shaped by social or economic settings, or wealth vs poverty
- aspiration and ambition
- identity
Bigger: after he kills Mary Dalton and her bones are discovered in the ash, he becomes the police’s most wanted criminal.
P.272: “He felt that there was something missing, some road which, if he had once found it, would have led him to a sure and quiet knowledge. But why think of that now? A chance for that was gone forever. He had committed murder..and created a new world for himself.”
Gatsby: after reconciliation with Daisy in ch.5, the mood subtly shifts and soon “his career as Trimalchio was over” (ch 7 opening); even in ch.5 Fitzgerald reminds us “it was the hour of a profound human change”, using rush-hour to signal this wider symbolic idea, as “an expression of bewilderment” is seen in Gatsby’s face, “as though a faint doubt had occurred to him.”
Settings and setting details contrast to reflect the social and political context, and the change between the affluent twenties of ‘Gatsby’ and the Depression-era thirties of ‘NS’
Useful for essay questions on ideas or themes such as…
- wealth/poverty
- individuals vs. society
- characters shaped by social or economic settings
- aspiration and ambition
- identity
NS: dilapidation of the Chicago South Side black neighbourhood
“There were many empty buildings with black windows, like blind eyes, buildings like skeletons standing with snow on their bones in the winter winds.”
Gatsby’s mansion:
“It was a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side… and a marble swimming pool” (ch.1); later details include “a high Gothic library, panelled with carved English oak, and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.”
Gothic detail is used in both descriptions, to opposite effects; in ‘NS’ to accentuate the poverty the black community have been forced to endure, exacerbated by the Depression ( and the disingenuous ‘philanthropy’ of Mr Dalton); in ‘Gatsby’ it portrays the raw, vulgar materialism encouraged by capitalist excess and the American Dream; Fitzgerald’s emphasis on its imitative or borrowed qualities accentuates the idea of Gatsby as pretentious, ‘nouveau riche’ and superficial.
Imagery of machinery is used symbolically in both texts to comment on character and social context
Useful for essay questions on ideas or themes such as…
- wealth/poverty, American Dream and writers’ attitudes to it
- individuals vs. society
- characters shaped by social or economic settings
- aspiration and ambition
- identity
NS:
P.52, “A long sleek black car, its fenders glinting in the sun, shot past them at high speed”
P.46 “A plane was writing high up in the air…..’I could fly a plane if I had a chance’, said Bigger.”
Gatsby:
“In a ditch beside the road…violently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coupe which had left Gatsby’s drive not two minutes before.” ch.3
Jordan Baker also recalls how, shortly after Tom and Daisy got married, “Tom ran into a wagon…and ripped a front wheel off his car.”
In ‘NS’ this is used to highlight the social oppression, inequality and lack of opportunity suffered by young black men in the 1930s, while in ‘Gatsby’ it emphasises the careless violence and immoral extravagance of the moneyed classes during the ‘Jazz Age’ of the twenties- like Tom and Daisy, “careless people…[who] smashed up things and creatures then retreated back to their money”. The repeated motif of the lost wheel further implies Fitzgerald’s foresight of the end of materialist progress, a ‘Dream’ that rises out of reach for most.
Both texts present female characters as disempowered, disadvantaged, exploited or trapped between love and social pressures
Useful for essay questions on ideas or themes such as…
- presentation of women
- individuals vs. society
- aspiration and ambition (in Myrtle’s case)
- social injustice and prejudice
NS:
Bigger traps Bessie into complicity with his murder, before deciding it is safer for him to murder her as well: “You’ll tell if you ain’t in it too… you in it as deep as me! You spent some of the money…” p.209
Gatsby:
Ch.1, Daisy’s “tense gaiety” and how she “shook her head decisively at Tom” reveal her attempts to hide her distress at his affair with Myrtle and, worse, his apparently brazen maintenance of it in public (Jordan: “I thought everybody knew…Tom’s got some woman in New York.”)
Feminist readings could explore how and why women are presented like this at opposite ends of the social spectrum.
Both novels present societies affected by moral corruption, where deceptive appearances mask a warped reality
Useful for essay questions on ideas or themes such as…
- American Dream and writers’ attitudes to it
- individuals vs. society/alienation
- characters shaped by social or economic settings
- aspiration and ambition
- identity
NS P.222, when Britten is questioning Peggy about Bigger, before they know Mary is dead:
“‘Does he speak more intelligently at some times than at others?’
‘No, Mr Britten. He talked always the same, to me.’”
Bigger, earlier, p.79: “his [own] eyes held a look that went only to the surface of things… this was the way white folks wanted him to be when in their presence.”
Gatsby: having told Nick he had inherited money when his “family all died”, he later boasts of taking “just three years to earn the money that bought [his house]”; when Nick questions the contradiction, he claims to have “lost most of it” [his money] in the war, and is then cagey about his previous business: “that’s my affair,” before conceding some airily vague responses.
Both Bigger and Gatsby routinely prevaricate, misdirect or lie outright in their interactions with others in order to conform to social expectations re: the identity they wish to project; for both this stems from a reaction to the prejudices they know are endemic within their societies, prejudices which would limit their aspirations severely if called to action. Both authors thus present their corruption as a product of social determinism.
Both texts present characters with extreme right or left wing political views, each of which (a) reflects the prevalent economic state of society, and (b) attempts to either exacerbate or ameliorate (=make better) the social isolation and oppression of the black community (and other ethnic minorities).
Useful for essay questions on ideas or themes such as…
- social division/alienation
- ambition or aspiration
- political attitudes
- individuals’ predicaments
- moral corruption
Gatsby:
In ch.1 Tom complains “civilisation’s going to pieces”, citing a book he’s read that suggests “if we don’t look out the white race will be- will be utterly submerged.”
Even Nick describes the affluent blacks he sees in the car in New York with the rather dehumanising term “bucks”.
In contrast to Tom’s ostensibly fascist sympathies, in ‘NS’ Jan Erlone’s passion for communism is part of his motivation for helping the black community to stand up against injustice: he cites communists’ help with the Scottsboro Boys’ case, and urges Bigger to join the Party: “Don’t you think if we got together we could stop things like that?”
Fitzgerald’s presentation of Tom as the epitome of a racist W.A.S.P. male reflects the arrogance of his privileged class in tandem with the zeitgeist of capitalist complacency during the economic boom of the early 20s, whereas Wright’s presentation of Jan is a nod to the philanthropic principles of American communists in the ’30s that he himself was involved with for a time; Jan’s naivety and idealism, exposed by Bigger’s disinterest in his advances, conversely stem from Wright’s later scepticism and disillusionment with the party towards the end of the ’30s.
In both texts the writers either exhibit, or are influenced by, tropes of literary modernism: traditional ideals or social orders are challenged or shown to be fragmenting, leading to themes of loss, disorientation and social isolation for many characters.
Useful for essay questions on ideas or themes such as…
- social division/alienation/isolation
- ambition or aspiration, its success/failure
- political attitudes
- individuals’ predicaments
- moral corruption
In ‘Gatsby’, Fitzgerald’s presentation of the valley of ashes was influenced contextually by T.S.Eliot’s poetry, such as ‘The Wasteland’, and symbolises the failure of the American Dream for most of society: a place where “ash-grey men move dimly and already crumbling.” The old advertisement, the eyes of Dr Eckleberg, remain above like a relic of economically better times, despite the times being economically successful; Fitzgerald challenging perceptions, presenting the eyes as a symbol of failed aspiration, or-paradoxically- the blind hope of achieving the ‘Dream’ that men like George Wilson cling to. Daisy’s connection of Gatsby to it- “you resemble the advertisement of the man”, ch.7- comes just as Tom realises she is (again) in love with Gatsby, adding structural significance to the theme of loss in love, as Tom’s guard being raised leads, ultimately, to the failure of Gatsby’s aspiration of stealing Daisy from him.
In ‘NS’, ash is also used as a symbol of frustrated aspiration or the warped ‘success’ that Bigger feels after killing Mary Dalton: it is her ash that represents Bigger’s only sense of achievement in a society whose social order is pitted against young black men: “the thought of what he had done…formed.. a barrier of protection between him and a world he feared. …it was the first time in his life he had had anything that others could not take from him.” But as evidence of his horrific crime, it also shows the moral fragmentation within his racial demographic, young black men who as Wright says in ‘How Bigger was born’, “had become estranged from the religion and folk culture of their race”. This is exemplified specifically in ‘Flight’ p.284, when Bigger rejects the sentiments of the church gospel singing of “Steal away to Jesus”: the socially unifying “wholeness” of it “mocked his fear and loneliness”; he refuses to feel the “humility” that joining them would require, making his social isolation complete.
Both writers use references to popular culture to comment on characters’ predicaments, and further develop typical modernist preoccupations
Useful for essay questions on ideas or themes such as…
- social determinism
- ambition/ aspiration/ opportunity
- political attitudes
- individuals’ predicaments
- moral corruption
Reynolds: “ ‘Flicker’ became a key word for modernist writers”, as it brings together the contrasting ideas of uncertainty of existence (evocative of candlelight? The guttering flame?) and the excitement of movement in a technologically advancing modern world: light flicking on and off as vehicles pass through tunnels, past high buildings… In Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’, a seminal modernist text, he writes ‘we live in the flicker’, and Fitzgerald has Nick talking of “the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye.”
Allied to this idea is the use of popular culture such as snatches of contemporary songs or films (also known colloquially as ‘the flicks’ due to their flickering quality), fading in and out of the narrative, like short blasts of sound and vision heard from cars or seen through open windows as characters travel through their stories in search of existential meaning, resolution of ambition, freedom from oppression…
Compare Bigger’s rejection of ‘Steal Away’ (see previous slide) to Nick’s account of overhearing children singing “I’m the Sheik of Araby” as they drive through central Park, with its symbolic allusion to the irresistibility of Tom’s moneyed status for Daisy, despite her drunken wobble (“Daisy’s change her min’!”) as recounted by Jordan; similarly, the ‘Love Nest’, played reluctantly by Klipspringer in ch 5, seems to comment on the hollowness and hopelessness of Gatsby’s attempt to reclaim Daisy, in the face of Tom’s socially bulletproof status, while the cinema scene in ‘NS’ juxtaposes the racist depiction of blacks as savages in ‘Trader Horn’ with an affluent white society, symbolising the hopeless divide between races’ economic aspirations, as well as the paranoid prejudices within white society, as the Communist is presented as a dangerous bomb-wielding terrorist.
Both writers present the media as having a powerful influence over characters’ lives (1) :
Bigger is shown to use the media as a means of combating his isolation, in a bid to connect with wider society: “It was when he read the newspapers or magazines, went to the movies…that he felt what he wanted: to merge himself with others and be a part of this world, to lose himself in it so he could find himself”(p.271). The media is presented here as frustrating and tantalising in its alluring display of a liberal world denied to him because of his race, a place of transient escapism for Bigger which offers him a theoretical chance to redefine his identity, a chance which is denied him in the practice of his real, everyday experience of society. The constraining aspects of media are also presented in ‘Gatsby’ at the opening of ch.6: “About this time [Gatsby’s reconciliation with Daisy] an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one morning at Gatsby’s door and asked him if he had anything to say.” Fitzgerald presents the media as a moralising force that threatens to expose Gatsby’s corrupt rise into wealth, but while this certainly hampers his freedom of action, as with Bigger, in contrast to Bigger’s use of the media “to merge himself with others” it exacerbates Gatsby’s social isolation in forcing a redoubling of secretive behaviour, as Nick observes: “For several weeks I didn’t see him or hear his voice on the phone.” (ch 6)
Both writers present the media as having a powerful influence over characters’ lives (2) :
Wright also presents the media as having an acutely hostile attitude towards Bigger in its reporting of his killing of Mary: “He paused and re-read the line, AUTHORITIES HINT SEX CRIME. Those words excluded him utterly from the world.”(p.273-4) The sensationalism of the press, further shown in detail in the ‘Fate’ section, reflects the feverish white hysteria over the threat of black sexual predation in the ‘Scottsboro Boys’ 1930s context, showing how despite Bigger’s previous efforts to use the media to help his own social integration, it now demonised him beyond the actual truth of his crime; Wright also shows the wider social ramifications and injustices that were characteristic of 1930s American prejudices towards the Black community, in the reference to the “several hundred” Negro employees who had been sacked following Bigger’s actions, and makes a specific connection between capitalist values and white extremist actions in the reference to the irrationality of the “Banker’s wife who dismissed her Negro cook ‘for fear she might poison her children’”(p.275). Sensationalism in the media is also presented in ‘Gatsby’ to show how Gatsby, like Bigger, is condemned for a worse crime than the one he actually committed. The description of Myrtle’s fateful final moments is presented via the media’s report of it: “The ‘death car’, as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then disappeared around the next bend.” In this brief account Fitzgerald elevates the event to symbolise the deathly effect that being acquainted with Daisy and Tom had on the lives of both Gatsby and Wilson, and by extension the effects the wealthy and powerful have on the weak and marginalised in broader society, just as Wright shows the callous irrationality of the black community’s white employers.
