Tuesday

Discuss “Hicks vs Slicks” the Urban vs Rural confrontation in the 1920’s. 

Analysis of Colors and Characters

Discussion Questions:

Chapter One 

1. Why does Nick move from Minnesota to New York? What is his vision of the American Dream? 

2. The first time Nick sees his neighbor, he is standing on his lawn, reaching his arm out toward the water in the bay. When Nick looks out at the water, all he sees is a distant green light which might mark the end of a dock. The first image of a character in a novel is significant. What thoughts do you have about Nick’s neighbor based on this scene? 

3. What does Daisy’s statement, “I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool,” reveal about the way she views her own life? 

4. What do Daisy’s and Jordan’s statements about Tom reveal about him, and what do they reveal about Daisy? Explain your answer. 

5. What does Nick’s opinion of Tom and Daisy seem to be at this point in the novel? Support your answer. 

6. What is your opinion of Daisy Buchanan, based on what you have read so far? Explain your answer.

Explicate the Following Quotes:

“I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.” (5)

“Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.” (6)

“Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it was what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.” (6)

“The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard--it was a factual

imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side,

spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool

and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion.

Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by

a gentleman of that name.” (9)

“Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and

gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not

even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous

power of that body--he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he

strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle

shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body

capable of enormous leverage--a cruel body.” (11)

“he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward--and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.” (25)

Homework- Keep reading…be through chapter 3 by Friday.

Wednesday

Chapter Two Discussion Questions

I. The Periphery of Poverty 

1. As Nick is riding on a train through the valley of ashes, he looks out the window and perceives a billboard advertisement featuring the enormous “eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg” (23). This eyeglasses advertisement is described as having been installed by an optician who sought “to fatten his practice” (24). In the pre-modern period, before the invention of billboards, what might a pair of enormous disembodied eyes peering down over humanity have symbolized? Why might Fitzgerald choose to position such a symbol above an ash-covered industrial “waste land” where working-class families like the Wilsons are forced to live and work (24)? Toward the end of the novel, George Wilson will look up at this pair of enormous eyes and declare, “‘God sees everything.’” But another character will immediately correct him by observing, “That’s an advertisement” (160). How might Fitzgerald use the billboard advertisement to deliver a subtle message about life in the modern age? Is Fitzgerald suggesting that the poor have been abandoned by God? Is he suggesting that the promise of religion has been replaced by the promise of shopping, and consumer capitalism? What evidence supports your answer?

II. Myrtle Wilson 2. 

In a letter to his Scribners editor, Max Perkins, Fitzgerald declared that he had done a better job of fleshing out the character of Myrtle Wilson than that of Daisy Buchanan. Because Fitzgerald seems to have taken a good deal of care in his construction of Myrtle, it may be important to discuss the significance of her character. How is she portrayed? What type of person does she represent? Is she similar to any other characters? How? 3. The magazines on Myrtle Wilson’s coffee table reveal a lot about her interests and values. They include gossip magazines like “Town Tattle” and several “scandal magazines of Broadway” (29). Can you name any modern-day magazines that would be the equivalent of Town Tattle? What do these magazines reveal about Myrtle’s aesthetic tastes? What do they reveal about her class position?

III: Puttin on the Ritz? 

4. When Myrtle Wilson first meets Tom Buchanan, she is attracted to his clothing: “He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him” (36). And when Myrtle becomes aware that her husband, George Wilson, has “borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in,” she feels that she’s been tricked into thinking he was a “‘gentleman’” (34-35). What might Fitzgerald be using these passages to reveal about the connection between clothing and socioeconomic status? Does a person’s clothing reveal their socioeconomic status? Or does it obfuscate their status? 5. Although Myrtle is initially wearing a “spotted dress of dark blue crèpe-de-chine,” she changes into a “brown figured muslin” and eventually into an “elaborate afternoon dress of cream-colored chiffon” (25, 27, 30). Why does Myrtle change her outfit multiple times over the course of a single evening? And how does her clothing affect how she behaves? Nick observes, “With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change” (30). How does Myrtle’s expensive dress change her personality?

IV. Tom Buchanan 

6. Do Tom and Myrtle share the same understanding of the nature of their relationship? First, does Tom want a permanent relationship with Myrtle? Or does he merely view her as a temporary expedient for his sexual appetites? Second, does Myrtle believe that her relationship with Tom will amount to a permanent ticket into his world of wealth? Or is she merely exploiting him in order to satisfy her material acquisitiveness? Finally, given your answers to the questions above, who would you describe as holding the power in their relationship? Who is taking the most advantage of whom? 7. What do you make of Tom’s assertion, as reported by Myrtle’s sister, Catherine, that he is unable to divorce Daisy because “his wife [is] keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic, and they don’t believe in divorce” (33)? If Tom doesn’t intend to divorce Daisy and marry Myrtle, why would he decide to flaunt his affair with Myrtle by “turn[ing] up in popular restaurants with her and [. . .] chatting with whomever he knew” (24)? What do Tom’s words and actions reveal about his personality?

- Settings and Themes

The Valley of Ashes - A Counterfeit Morality - Evolution vs that Old Time Religion

The fundamentalist revival. Fundamentalist Protestants felt their beliefs challenged in the 1920s. Secular culture of the time seemed to have little place for religion, and church attendance was in decline. A movement to defend traditional religion by emphasizing a literal interpretation of the Bible gained momentum in the '20s and especially targeted Darwin's theory of evolution as a symbol for what was wrong in modern society. By the mid‐1920s, a number of states had enacted laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution. The law was challenged in Tennessee by a young high school biology teacher named John Scopes.

The Rise of Big Top Evangelism and the Criticism of that Old Time Religion

Elmer Gantry vs. Evolution

Thursday 

- A Manufactured City, Manufactured Personalities, and a Manufactured Dream

Keynote Presentation - Modernist Art and the City

Who is Gatsby becoming and what do you think his motives are at this point?

The Cult of Personality - How are other characters following suit with the Freudian notion of “creating their personalties”?

Gatsby Quotes:

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life. (2)

The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself…So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen – year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end. (99)

…he had probably discovered that people liked him when he smiled. (101)

"Look here, old sport,." he broke out surprisingly.

"What's your opinion of me, anyhow?." A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that question deserves.

“Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before, and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream-colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room.With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment, and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.”

Several old copies of the Town Tattle lay on the table together with a copy of Simon Called Peter, and some of the Scandal magazines of Broadway. (29)

Socioeconomic of the 1920’s

Haves and Have Nots - Study the economic statistics of the 1920’s. What connections can you make between the statistics and TGG?

“Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”

“About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.”

The God of Consumerism- Selling the American Dream

The most notable image is the billboard in the valley of ashes, representing the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg (‘blue and gigantic – their retinas are one yard high’). They are separated from any face but look through ‘enormous yellow spectacles’ implying that there is an issue with sight, which of course a purchase of glasses can correct. Consumerism, as some critics have noted, is emerging as a powerful social force in the 1920s, with advertising of this kind shaping the desires and behaviour of its target audience. When George Wilson forces his wife to look at this billboard, he uses it to demonstrate to her that ‘God sees everything’, suggesting both that consumerism is replacing religion and that Wilson has a distorted perception of reality.

Christine Frederick - From “Selling Mrs. Consumer” 1929

    “The least understood thing in the entire chain of economics today is consumption and consumers. “Consumptionism” is the name given to the new doctrine; and it is admitted today to be the greatest idea that America has to give to the world: the idea that workmen and the masses be looked upon not simply as workers or producers, but as consumers. Pay them more, sell them more, prosper more is the equation. It is with the hope that a lifetime of work, study, and experience in just these matters may make an interesting mutual common ground, that I have written this book. . . . 

    For greater efficiency in production and distribution [Mrs. Consumer] positively must be consulted. Loss and bankruptcy may be the cost of failure to do it. This is the new knowledge which businessmen have, and in consequence great changes are taking place in manufacturing and marketing procedure through the use of consumer research. The producer and distributor cannot any longer impose their will upon consumers, for they are no longer docile as sheep. The consumer is partaking of the spirit of the times. Mrs. Consumer of today is the sophisticated flapper of yesterday, whoquite literally“knows her groceries.” As a speaker at a southern manufacturers’ sales conference in 1928 said, “we face a consumer remarkably sophisticated, with a buying power greater than ever before.” . . . 

    A civilization like ours—unlike that of the Roman or the Greek— centers its genius upon improving the conditions of life. It secures its thrills from inventing ways to live easier and more fully; means to bring foods from more ends of the earth and add to the variety served on the family table, methods to bring more news and entertainment to the family fireside, ways to reduce the labor and hardships of living, ways to have more beauty and graciousness in the domestic domicile, ways to satisfy more of the instincts of more of the family group. Inevitably in such a civilization woman’s influence grows increasingly larger, for woman is the logical center of peaceful living, the improvement of civilization and the gratification of instincts. . . .”

The Cathedrals of Fifth Avenue - Florine Stettheimer 1931

How is Stettheimer’s painting a commentary on consumerism in the 1920‘s? What do we learn from it?

“But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic--their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.”

Puttin On the Ritz - Irving Berlin

Have you seen the well to do

Up on Lenox Avenue

On that famous thoroughfare

With their noses in the air?

High hats and narrow collars

White spats and fifteen dollars

Spending every dime

For a wonderful time

If you're blue, and you don't know where to go to

Why don't you go where Harlem flits?

Puttin' on the Ritz

Spangled gowns upon the bevy of high browns

From down the levy, all misfits

Putting' on the Ritz

That's where each and every lulu-belle goes

Every Thursday evening with her swell beaus

Rubbin' elbows

Come with me and we'll attend their jubilee

And see them spend their last two bits

Puttin' on the Ritz

Boys, look at that man puttin' on that Ritz

You look at him, I can't

If you're blue, and you don't know where to go to

Why don't you go where Harlem flits?

Puttin' on the Ritz

Spangled gowns upon the bevy of high browns

From down the levy, all misfits

Puttin' on the Ritz

That's where each and every lulu-belle goes

Every Thursday evening with her swell beaus

Rubbin' elbows

Come with me and we'll attend their jubilee

And see them spend their last two bits

Puttin' on the Ritz

Come with me and we'll attend their jubilee

And see them spend their last two bits

Puttin' on the Ritz

“We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John D. Rockefeller. In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an indeterminate breed.”

Homework- Finish chapter 3.

Friday and Monday

Gatsby’s Party

I. Encountering Gatsby

1. It is not until the third chapter that Nick — and with him, the reader — finally meets the title character of The Great Gatsby. And when they do meet, Nick is initially unaware that the man with whom he is talking is Gatsby (48). Why might Fitzgerald have chosen to wait so long before introducing the title character? How does it fit with the ways in which other characters have spoken about Gatsby? In the same moment that Nick finally meets his elusive neighbor, Gatsby is ushered away to take a phone call: “Almost at the moment when Mr. Gatsby identified himself, a butler hurried toward him with the information that Chicago was calling him on the wire” (48). How might Gatsby’s sudden disappearance be significant? Does it recall any scenes from previous chapters? And does Gatsby’s being interrupted by a phone call resemble any scenes from previous chapters? Why might Fitzgerald establish a parallel between those scenes? 

2. At several moments in this chapter, Nick portrays Gatsby as a solitary figure frozen in a static tableau. At one point, for example, Nick depicts Gatsby as “standing alone on the marble steps and looking from one group to another with approving eyes” (50). As Nick departs from the party, he looks back and observes that the house “endow[s] with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell” (55). What do these two images of Gatsby have in common? How do Nick’s memories of Gatsby serve to cast him in a certain light?

II. Gatsby’s Speaking & Reading Habits 

3. From the moment of their first encounter, Gatsby begins to address Nick with the chummy term, “old sport.” Gatsby repeats the term “old sport” five times within this chapter (47, 48, 53). Yet Nick observes that Gatsby’s use of this “familiar expression held no more familiarity than the hand which reassuringly brushed my shoulder” (53). What might Gatsby’s attempt to invoke a “familiar expression” reveal about his character? Throughout the pages of Fitzgerald’s novel, Gatsby will end up repeating the term “old sport” no fewer than 38 times. What might Gatsby’s habitual recourse to this stock phrase reveal about his fluency with upper-class speech patterns? 5. A character affectionately named Owl Eyes is amazed that the books in Gatsby’s library are real: “‘Absolutely real — have pages and everything’” (45). What had he expected to find? Examining the books more closely, Owl Eyes declares, “Knew when to stop, too — didn’t cut the pages” (46). When books were printed using letterpress devices, large pieces of folded paper were bound together to make a book. Because the pages were folded, they had to be cut before they could be read. If the pages of Gatsby’s books remain uncut, what does that suggest? In Gatsby’s view, is the value of a book realized when it is read or when it is displayed?

IV. Mechanized Technologies: Machines & Automobiles 

7. This chapter opens with an account of the preparation that goes into Gatsby’s parties. For example, here is the description of how the fruit juice gets prepared: “Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York — every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb” (39-40). How might this description resemble the assembly line manufacturing process that was becoming the dominant form of industrial production in the 1920s? What happens to human labor in this account of how the juice gets made? What happens to the worker’s body? How might Fitzgerald’s account of a “machine” that processes hundreds of citrus fruits amount to a metaphor for what happens at Gatsby’s party as a whole? 8. As Nick is leaving Gatsby’s party, he encounters an automobile — a “new coupé” — that has veered into the ditch and lost a wheel (53). When the driver finally opens the door, he seems incapable of comprehending that he may have been responsible for driving the car off the road. The driver inquires, “Wha’s matter? [. . .] Did we run outa gas?” (54). He then admits, “At first I din’ notice we’d stopped” (55). What might Fitzgerald be trying to suggest about how people living in the 1920s were adapting to mechanized technology? Does he depict humans as willing to shoulder the moral responsibility that comes with driving an automobile? Why might Fitzgerald refer to the car’s detached tire as an “amputated wheel” (55)?

Gatsby’s Party

Small Groups: Find quotes describing the event. What do they tell us about Gatsby? Pay close attention to color.

Juxtapose the parties. What do you notice?

The Astor’s Parties - This video is goofy, but you’ll get the idea!

Discussion Questions:

1. What do you think Nick means when he describes Jay Gatsby in this way? 

“He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished—and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I'd got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.” 

1. Describe the relationship between Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby that occurred years before the events of the story. 
2. Give one example of irony in the character Jay Gatsby, or an example of something ironic about the party at Gatsby’s mansion in chapter three.
3. What is significant about the following passage? What does it tell us about Gatsby?

"See!" he cried triumphantly. "It's a bona fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella's a regular Belasco. 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?"

1. Pay close attention to color. How does Fitzgerald use color to describe Gatsby’s party? 
2. What are the characters wearing in this scene? What colors are used?

Homework- Read chapter four for Monday.