The Great Gatsby
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Within and Without in The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby isn't a tragedy in Fitzgerald's parallel worlds, which is supported by various concepts and lines in the book; e.g. Gatsby insists that he can repeat the past. Is this possible?"You can't repeat the past."•house: a publishing house.
"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"
He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.
•hand: writing.
•the past: a book about Gatsby's past. Every time The Great Gatsby being read, Gatsby repeats his past.
•repeat: Fitzgerald used the term "bring back" in his pencil manuscript, and changed to "repeat" later. He made the change may due to "repeat the past" fits better in reading a book for the result is always the same.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the impossible, come true. (The Crack-up, 1936)
After Gatsby's death, Nick can still hear Gatsby's protest:"Look here, old sport, you've got to get somebody for me. You've got to try hard. I can't go through this alone."Nick tries to get Gatsby's friends he knew but fails, a cruel set-up by Fitzgerald; however, by this Fitzgerald narrowed down suspects of that "somebody."
It's not the Owl Eyes. Fitzgerald emphasized that Nick doesn't know "how he knew about the funeral."
It's not the impatient Lutheran minister. "The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn't any use. Nobody came."
It's the postman. Gatsby dies in the book world and transforms to The Great Gatsby. He can't go through this alone but needs a postman to carry him to the human world. Fitzgerald often mailed his manuscripts to Scribner while he was in Europe. This explains why the postman appears at the end.
Nick as Fitzgerald's substitute is sent to the book world to join the civil war of Gatsby and Buchanans, or the West and East (Egg). It's vaguely buried in Nick's memory:my grandfather's brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War.In the book world the West loses the war, but wins in the human world. The fiction ends after Gatsby's death, and begins in a new world.
Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.• shadowy ferryboat across: a hint on Charon, a ferryman carrying souls to another world. Gatsby is crossing the gap of fictional and real world. Real world is a hell for Fitzgerald?
• breast: Shape of the West and East Egg is based on a woman's breast, another Fitzgerald's clever design related to Nemesis.
• his capacity: one's capacity in solving Fitzgerald's enigmatic writing.
This paragraph is full of hidden messages. In general, Fitzgerald proudly announced that Gatsby, The Great Gatsby, will be the last time in history one can make in two different worlds.
Fitzgerald shaped the West and East Egg as a woman's breast to enrich his book's art.https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Visualization. Fitzgerald watches the statue or painting of Venus with focus on the breast. He then draws the map of West Egg and East Egg on a paper shaping the breast, and marks "courtesy bay" between the two Eggs. (courtesy: a favor for eyes of men.)
The word breast appears three times in The Great Gatsby:
... her left breast was swinging loose like a flap ...
... She was a slender, small-breasted girl, ...
... a fresh, green breast of the new world ...
• breast: the seat of affections.
• left: radical; indicating the west in a map.
• flap: a state of agitation. (operculum)
• slender: narrow, limited.
• small: low, little. (Nick's description reflects Jordan's personality.)
Myrtle's death tells the West's failure ("left ... loose") in a civil war of affections and more. This can be checked by Fitzgerald's demand in a letter to Perkins:
I want Myrtle Wilson's breast ripped off—its exactly the thing, I think, and I don't want to chop up the good scenes by too much tinkering.Fitzgerald considered Myrtle's death a "good" scene, "the thing" he wanted us to find out.
Fitzgerald made the West and East Egg two opposite worlds, and used the term "Eggrans" but changed to "Eggers" in his pencil manuscript. He might borrow that from the South and North and Americans.Civil war of the Eggers from Nick's view:
Daisy kills Myrtle.
Daisy has her revenge, for
Daisy's husband has an affair with Myrtle.
Tom leads George to kill Gatsby.
Tom has his revenge, for
Tom's wife has an affair with Gatsby.
George kills Gatsby.
George believes he has his revenge, but
George is wrong. Judge kills George.
Gatsby dies, and resurrects to The Great Gatsby. This can explain why Nick says Gatsby is a son of God:
He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that.If "a son of God" means anything, the resurrection of Jesus, it means just that resurrection, the resurrection of Gatsby.
"Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money ..." [creatures: characters created by Fitzgerald.]
The term Nemesis appears twice in Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). I guess Fitzgerald believed the rich, their money, can buy indulgences in the 1920s.
Interpretation of "postman" in Gatsby's funeral here seems far-fetched, unless more similar schemes can be found.Gatsby's "extra gardener" is "the last one of Gatsby's former servants" who witnesses Gatsby's death.
And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day ..."The number "eight" was set to "seven" in the pencil manuscript. Fitzgerald often played with numbers (265 dollars, 127 times, etc.). The change from seven to eight could mean something, e.g., "one over the eight" after Gatsby's party. This source (https://wordhistories.net/2017/12/16/...) says more than OED.
The extra (beyond normal) gardener gives Gatsby one last chance:
The gardener, the last one of Gatsby's former servants, came to the foot of the steps. "I'm going to drain the pool to-day, Mr. Gatsby. Leaves'll start falling pretty soon, and then there's always trouble with the pipes."This gardener scene seems trivial, or it could be one of Fitzgerald's "good scenes." The word gardener appears only once in whole Bible after Jesus' death:
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. (John 20:15)
Locker C-18 (Caldwell 18 the dwarf?)Men in Black (MIIB 2002)
DANGER! DO NOT OPEN ("liable to collapse")
In Fitzgerald's design, a book world runs by itself parallel with the human world. He then went further to let a book world within a book world, and created the scene in Gatsby's Gothic library.
"It's a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too—didn't cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?"Collector's editions of uncut books are rare and valuable. Owl Eyes is praising Gatsby as a man of taste in book collection. Gatsby may have public editions too for reading. However, this scene targets something else.
He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf, muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse.
If Gatsby cuts the pages, like a brick removed from the wall of a sealed world, characters of opened books will break out and collapse his gloomy library, which is what Nick and Jorden, or we, should expect. Owl Eyes snatches the book from Nick, for he fears Nick might open it and free characters.
As Gatsby closed the door of "the Merton College Library" I could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into ghostly laughter.Owl of Minerva (Athena) is a symbol of wisdom and knowledge (books). Fitzgerald made Owl Eyes the guardian of books. Owl Eyes appears in Gatsby's funeral because Gatsby is transformed to a book.
"Go on!" He started. "Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds." He took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in.The man wipes his owl-eyed glasses, the symbol of wisdom, outside and in, for it's the way to see through the wisdom of Gatsby's death, and to disapprove "the hundreds" cannot.
"The poor son-of-a-bitch," he said.
An unopened book has some adjacent pages uncut and unreadable. Gatsby resurrects to a book and must be cut open first ("poor" Gatsby) for reading. Owl Eyes the guardian of books would prefer not to harm books.
He* was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he** must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.Line before the "—" turns Gatsby (He*) to The Great Gatsby.
Line after the "—" tells what's about the book (he**).
This paragraph is in Fitzgerald's pencil manuscript. It shows how he planned to turn a man (character) to a book and his goal for that book, in an ordained way.
OED defines father as "a constructor, contriver, designer." Fitzgerald designed Gatsby. A popular book with vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty would be Gatsby's father's, Fitzgerald's (ordained) business.
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Like The Matrix (1999), Fitzgerald disassembles himself in the human world and reassembles to Nick in the book world. When Nick doesn't know what to do, he'll try to make a phone call as in The Matrix. . . . When Nick is drunk, vaguely he feels he's "within and without."
In the book world, characters of Fitzgerald's books may visit each other, e.g. the postman from The Vegetable (1923) to Gatsby's funeral. In his mind, I assume, little people in and out of his books.
So how can Jay Gatsby come to the human world? He must die. After his death in the book world, he becomes The Great Gatsby in the human world where Gatsby has a happy ending. This can well reason various seemingly tedious lines.
Gatsby is Fitzgerald's Midas-self, supposed to make him famous and rich. Fitzgerald himself didn't see that. Gatsby does. — "shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Mæcenas knew."
Interesting thing is, Fitzgerald changed one name in the galley proof: "shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Rothschild knew."
He mixed the rich of Greek myth and contemporaries, fictional and real, or, from fictional to real.