Themes Flashcards
1
Q
Love (DIFFERENT TYPES OF LOVE)
A
- Everyone seeks love. To love and be loved is the ideal, yet we see a multitude of relationships that feature different types of love (EVERYONE WANTS SOMETHING DIFFERENT)
- Wilson has unconditional love for Myrtle as we come to find out her death has deeply affected him “physically sick” and although he is completely aware of her infidelity he is still acts “sort of crazy”
- Myrtle has material love for Tom, she loves him for the opulent lifestyle he represents, we also see a glimpse of Myrtle’s materialistic ideology through the happiness she gets from the expensive gifts he buys her, she becomes attached and fantasizes over a life similar to Tom’s and this ultimately becomes the downfall of her marriage to George Wilson.
- Tom’s evident lust for myrtle is the centre of their relationship, Tom simply views her as an asset to fulfil his sexual desires, hence the lack of respect she receives from him “broken nose”
2
Q
Class/Social Stratification
A
- Contrast between the aristocracy(East egg) and the working class(valley of ashes)
- The tone which the novel adopts is one of wealth and glamour, perhaps to further emphasise the extravagance of the upper class in that era
- Fitzgerald reveals the glamorous lifestyle of people hailing from old and new money is MEANINGLESS and exposes the hollow reality of the roaring 20’s
- He exclaims that beneath the surface that everyone is bored due to their purposelessness “this afternoon…and the day after that and the next thirty years?”
- Friendships are superficial and pretence is widespread “enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each others names”
- Tragic fates of Gatsby’s guests “drowned”, “killed himself”, “strangled his wife” call attention to the darker reality of the roaring 20’s that was covered up by flamboyant displays of wealth such as Gatsby’s parties and silk shirts
3
Q
Love (SOURCE OF CONFLICT)
A
- Tom and Gatsby begin to argue over Daisy as if she is merely an asset, and it almost sounds as if they’re arguing over who gets to keep her( represents the dehumanization of women and the possessiveness of men due to society being constructed in a patriarchal manner)
- Most relationships lack stability and the men therefore resort to violence in order to maintain their dominance over their significant other, this is hinted at early on in the novel where we are told of two men removing their wives from Gatsby’s garden using brute force “both wives were lifted, kicking into the night”, “kicking” presages the imminent violence that we see later on.
- Fitzgerald portrays love as evil and ruinous through the unfortunate fate of relationships between characters (Gatsby + Daisy , Tom + Myrtle , Wilson + Myrtle etc.)
4
Q
Appearance vs reality
A
- Gatsby is a quintessentially an illusion, he has constructed a façade of inherited fortune and of someone born into aristocracy and uses it to conceal his impoverished past and criminal acquisition of wealth
- Myrtle begins to act upper class when she is with Tom, referring to the servants as “these people” and saying George “wouldn’t be fit to lick her shoe”, this poor attempt of posing as the upper class represents the working class dreaming of joining the upper class and how unrealistic this idea was. This way of thinking results in Myrtle’s unfortunate demise as she spends her life trailing after Tom and eventually throws herself onto a car she thought was his.
- Daisy and Tom do everything in their power to make it appear as though their marriage is stable, however this is seemingly untrue as we are exposed to Tom’s affair almost instantaneously. Fitzgerald uses Tom and Daisy’s marriage to embody superficiality and instability which were prevalent in almost all marriages during the roaring 20’s. One could say Daisy and Tom are a microcosm of the macrocosm.
