The Great Gatsby

[Beau]

So I have read “The Great Gatsby” once again and honestly it is starting to grow on me a bit. “The Great Gatsby” is an original story, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, revolves around Nick Carraway and how he moves to New York as a bonds salesman. He meets Jay Gatsby, who is a millionaire who throws the most extravagant parties around. Gatsby and a woman named Daisy, who is Nick’s cousin and friends with the love interest of Nick, had a romantic encounter and he is trying to get that romance back. There is a crazy love Quadra tetrahedron between Gatsby, Tom, Daisy, and a woman named Myrtle. Gatsby is madly in love with Daisy, but she is married to Tom who is having an affair with Myrtle, but Daisy starts having an affair with Gatsby. Even though Tom himself is having an affair, he is furious when he finds out about Daisy’s affair with Gatsby. Push comes to shove and Tom confronts Gatsby about the affair with his wife and let’s just say the story does not end on a really happy note for Gatsby. I used to hate the Great Gatsby with a passion. I never understood why everyone loved this book so much, but I am beginning to think it was just because I was young and did not understand the content and the underlying story of things in the book. I still think the book is pretty dry in places and drags on, but none the less I can honestly say I enjoy the book. Even though I have started to enjoy the book, it still is not one of my favorites and there are many things that I still do not understand about the book. First off, I do not understand the green light. I know Gatsby compares the light to how America must have looked to the new settlers, but what is the hidden symbol behind the green light and what does it truly mean? Secondly, the eyes on the billboard, what do they represent? There are so many different things that the eyes could represent, but I do not actually know what Fitzgerald was trying to symbolize with them. Throughout the book, he mentions that symbols only have meanings because certain characters and people give them that specific meaning. Certain imagery could mean absolutely nothing until someone decides that they think that there is some crazy underlying meaning to something. The eyes on the billboard could just be eyes on a billboard that were mentioned, but someone decided that they thought the eyes could represent something huge like God. Lastly I want to ask about the weather. There are so many weather changes throughout the movie that happen when certain things happen. An example would be when Gatsby and Daisy’s love begins to spark back to life. The rain begins to stop and the sun begins to peak through the clouds. Gatsby confronts Tom on the hottest day of the summer, and different types of weather changes happen depending on the emotion like nervousness. My question is, what is the weather of Gatsby’s death supposed to represent? It is the first day of Autumn and Gatsby is floating in the pool on a chilly day. What is that supposed to represent?

[Geoffrey]

The green light means "Go for it", it´s available for you, you can have it all, yes, strive for financial success and you will have it. It beacons Jay to his highest ambitions, it´s the stop light that has switched to permission, striving, exhortation to the pinnacle of the American dream, yes, you too, lowly born can become successful achievers with the American Dream at your back, your green light at your sails. You can fly anywhere, conquer anything, rub noses with the captains of the elite, reach the goal of your romantic dreams of....well you get the picture.

As for the eyes on the billboard, that was failed imagery. SF´s intent is so murky, let us just say you can read almost anything in it. I suspect that SF was just getting around to catching the winds from Europe, ie. the Surrealism movement, and it is but a paen to his betters. It doesn´t cut it for me at all and is a weak link, of which there are many, in the novel. This is but another example of what makes this masterpiece a flawed bag of words.

Jay went to his watery grave, sunk by his own overweening ambition. When it came to sink or swim, that fish had no choice but the latter. His blind ambitions and naive belief in what America promised him with its Horatio Alger premise doomed him, belying the false hope of America.

Yes, terribly boring,especially the part about the gang going to NYC to party. Pathetic, tawdry characters all. SF had only sympathy for the poor devil.

[Geoffrey]

I am most intrigued by Nick's relationship with the women in the novel. He turns on the Parker woman for no apparent reason other than he has decided to move back to the midwest and he doesn't want to have anything to do with any of these atrocious characters. He is mightily offended by her accusation that he is untruthful and throughout the book harps on her cynicism. As for Myrtle, he considers her uncouth and low class, the snotty jerk he is. And yet she is the only one with any warmth. Remember, she's the one who insists on Tom buying her the dog. No one else in the novel really gives a damn about anybody or thing in the story. Nick emphasizes the Parker woman's sleight of hand with the golf ball in tournament play but at the point of writing the story he is still smarting from her remarks upon his breakup with her. The novel is a vehicle for revenge for him.

[Monty J]

Geoffrey wrote: "I am most intrigued by Nick's relationship with the women in the novel. He turns on the Parker woman for no apparent reason other than he has decided to move back to the midwest and he doesn't want..."

Baker.

[Geoffrey]

Sorry. Still thinking about Pi.

[Christine]

Beau wrote: "So I have read “The Great Gatsby” once again and honestly it is starting to grow on me a bit. ..."

The symbolism in novels is never 100% cut and dried, regardless of what the author originally intended. This is because a multi-layered humanity reads these novels and comes up with different things, one idea usually being as valid as the next.

Regarding the Eyes -- I always thought it had something to do with morality -- the Eyes are always watching and so nobody can get away with anything in the end. And you notice they don't get away with anything. Tom and Daisy get caught in their affairs. Gatsby's fake life is discovered, Myrtle and Gatsby get killed, etc. I don't think they could be just 'eyes on a billboard' because he bothered to include them... while all his characters do immoral things.

Regarding the weather, I always thought it had something to do with starting the story at the beginning of summer when everything is fresh, and ending it with fall coming and everything dying. And tempers heat up in the heat. Yeah that is simplistic, but that is what I think :)

[Christine]

I really don't get how anyone could think this novel is 'dry' or 'boring'. I think it is one of the most beautifully written and intricate novels -- extremely short on words yet full of rich details and nonstop action, along with extremely deep dimensions of characters. I think this book is really a work of artistic genius.

[[deleted user]]

The eyes on the billboard, to me, represents a God like figure and how God sees all, which is how many truths come out. I also think that the weather may have symbolism but I'm not entirely sure... everyone has their own interpretation.

[Geoffrey]

I am sure many of you have noted that literature from the beginning of the last century has themes that are very much absent from contemporary novels. I am referring specifically the notion of marrying for money, the arranged union for the financial enhancement of one of the parties. In GG, the two ill crossed lovers are both subject to those whims. Daisy marries Tom as he can provide her with the social status and material wealth Jay could not. Jay, also, as Daisy is several steps up the socio-economic ladder, also sees her as a stepping stone out of his working class background. Both are unabashed social climbers, hell bent on improving their positions in society.

In reviewing literature from this period we note these issues repeatedly throughout. From the Horatio Alger series, to Pride and Prejudice, and even STELLA DALLAS, as late as 1938, delves into issues of upward mobility. We even have movies about that time period, ie. THE TITANIC that explores social mobility.

But post WWII, the emphasis slacks off.

[Geoffrey]

The only character in the novel who changes in GG is the narrator, author of the memoir, Nick.

First,his attitude towards his golfing friend changes radically when she criticizes him for his dishonesty. From a casual lover, he turns vindictive, relating how she cheated at golf, how cynical she was and her boredom with life.

Secondly, for an aspiring nouveau riche whose trip to the East was fueled by his newfound position as a bondsman, he turns about face and returns to his home territory. He has learned some good lessons and others falsely arrived at. He sees the East as corrupt, but its his dalliance with the super rich of diva mentality, to be found anywhere where the indolent upper crust congregate, that exposes him to their perfidy. You will find the same in a similar community in Chicago, St. Louis, or wherever you hail from.

This is germane to the shallowness of SF himself, as, if I read it correctly, he too shares Nick's disdain for corrupt New York.

On the other hand, his basic integrity is restored. The Buchanan's have deeply offended, albeit not wholeheartedly acknowledged, his moral being. After meandering throughout the novel as a passive participant in the immoral behaviour of his friends, ie. he never reports Jay's provider of stolen bonds to the police, nor does he report Daisy for her negligent homicide or the very least hit and run, nor object to Tom's white supremacy rant,at the story's end he reaffirms his ¨mid-western morality¨.

Or for that matter, he participates in Tom's tryst with Myrtle as a friend in derelecto. Nor does he upbraid his ¨friend¨ for striking a woman. Nick's moral culpability may not be as much as the Buchanan's but on the other hand, he certainly is not walking with the angels.

But he has given up his half-hearted goal of upward mobility into the moneyed,capitalistic classes. He is disgusted by the treachery around him and wants no part of it, returns to Midwest and cleanses his soul with a novel his creator wrote.

[Monty J]

Geoffrey wrote: "The only character in the novel who changes in GG is the narrator, author of the memoir, Nick.

First,his attitude towards his golfing friend changes radically when she criticizes him for his dish..."

Well done, Geoffrey.

[Bruce]

Thanks Beau for starting this post! I read the book for the first time last winter and wondered a great deal about the symbolism also.

For me, the book got off to a slow start also, but the literature just seemed to soar when it came to Gatsby's parties in chapter 3.

For example, at the beginning of chapter 3:

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher.

Regarding the billboard with the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, I like what Geoffrey and Christine said above. The eyes are described as "blue and gigantic" where the "retinas are one yard high." That sounds to me also like something big like God or morality or maybe some of both.

When I read the book, I wondered about Gatsby's unrelenting desire for Daisy. The Great Gatsby has always been portrayed as a novel criticizing the American dream and the drive for financial success, but it seemed to me that Gatsby already had all that at the beginning of the novel. He wanted something more. He used his American Dream, his financial success for something immoral, (those eyes looking down) a woman who was already married. So it seems to me that there might be something else that Fitzgerald wanted to say? Does anyone else have any ideas on that?