Gatsby Response 1

The Great Gatsby is a narrative told through the eyes of the character Nick Carraway.  Fitzgerald does an excellent job crafting TGG in a way that allows you to see the events being played out before you, but only to a point.  He uses a number of devices, such as distance (Nick writing The Great Gastby a full year after the events have transpired) to keep the story moving at a reasonable pace.  This allows Fitzgerald to leave out unimportant details of the summer, under the pretense of being a full year removed from the incidences.  I was not able to find the exact page, but in one point in the narrative discourse, Nick says that he doesn’t want to give the impression that the events were all that happened during the summer, just that the events were the only things worth talking about.  Fitzgerald also creates some unanswerable questions through the use of focalization.  Nick is our focalizer, meaning we are only able to see the events through Nicks point of view.  This is similar to how we get things in real life, making the book more relatable.  An example of this was after the accident which killed Myrtle Wilson, Daisy and Tom were observed having a conversation through their window by Gatsby and Nick.  Fitzgerald doesn’t provide us with an omniscient view of what is going on because we would not normally be able to here through windows.  This conversation, consequently raises lots of questions as to the conclusion of the book.  Was Tom explaining to Daisy what he new about the car and did Daisy know of Tom’s intentions to sell Gatsby out to Mr Wilson?

I’d also like to comment on character development, and flat vs round characters.  I would describe most of the main characters in TGG as being intentionally flattened.  Each of the characters is serving a purpose in the narrative which, if Fitzgerald would have chosen to create more rounded characters (specifically in Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby), he would have lost some of the satirical elements of the novel.  Abbott has a discussion about “types” in chapter 10, using labels like “the strong mother”, “the good Samaritan”, and “the nerd”.  These types in effect flatten the character because it pre-establishes an identity, somewhat clouding our ability as readers to let the character take his/her full shape.  I believe, though not explicitly written, that Abbott is suggesting that people in real life are perfectly round characters. It occurred to me in class on Wednesday that the opposite is true; the only true place a character can be round is in a fictional narrative, and even then not perfectly round.  You see, in real life, people will always be constricted by their personalities.  In fiction however, an author can always create another dynamic in his character to continually make him rounder.  To conclude, can a character ever be perfectly round? No, there is no threshold where the author cannot simply add another motif to a character to further the anomaly.

My closing thoughts about The Great Gatsby

One thing I would like to point out about our discussion of Gatsby and the distinction we made between old money and new money.  I think the general consensus was that Gatsby was part of the East Egg, new money class, where as Tom and Daisy were part of an older, family money west egg class.  It occurred to me that maybe people’s reason for being put off by Gatsby was not the source of his wealth, but was derived from his nature, which I think may have lacked some of the social graces of established wealth.  I say this only because there is no substitute for being raised in a family with which places a high degree of emphasis on manners, education, the ability to handle one’s self in any circumstance, etc.  I counted many times in the novel where I would think, for a man with such tremendous wealth, Gatsby would choose to conduct himself differently.  For example, when Gatsby first meats Daisy at Nick’s house, he has a complete meltdown, which I thought was completely inappropriate given the circumstances.  Also, for Gatsby to actively pursue another man’s wife, even if Tom was guilty of the same thing, is inexcusable behavior for a man of Gatsby stature.  The point I am trying to make is maybe Tom rebuked Gatsby’s wealth on account of his actions and not due to where the money actually came from.

The Great Gatsby

This is the second time I have had the pleasure of reading The Great Gatsby, although it has been several years.  I remember liking the book the first time I read it, and now I am able to see why I think the book is so impressive.  The book is set in the summer of 1922, and was originally published in 1925.  When I think about 1925, my grandfather was a young boy, and I have always felt a certain disconnect between us due to the two generation gap between us.  The way Fitzgerald describes the people, feelings, conversations, and desires of the characters in Gatsby however, would never divulge the actual time origins of the book.  Fitzgerald describes emotions felt so commonly by me, I feel the strangest connection with the way he thinks despite being separated by nearly 80 years.  To illustrate this, I will reference our narrator, Nick Carraway in describing Tom Buchanan.  He says that Tom seems to give off the impression of “Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,…just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.”  This is a classic feeling I’m sure every man has had many times in their lives, and it’s these descriptions throughout that make this a timeless and ever relevant book.

As per our discussion today in class, I thought it was interesting how the story was framed so that our narrator Nick is telling us the Gatsby tale one year later.  It never occurred to me that the reason the book fluctuates between perfect clarity and fuzzy descriptions is that one year has passed, and that Nick is actually writing The Great Gatsby one year later.