Marele Gatsby Un Roman al Anilor de Criza Economica

“The Great Gatsby – a novel of the Depression Years”

„Marele Gatsby- un roman al anilor de criză economică”

CONTENT

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. FITZGERALD’S MASTERPIECE AND THE 1920s

The Great Gatsby- the roaring twenties

The Great Gatsby’s atmosphere

CHAPTER 2. HOLLOWNESS OF THE UPPER CLASS

2.1 Daisy Buchanan- material, hollow woman

2.2 Tom Buchanan- a self-centered character

2.3 Nick Carraway- quiet, reflective Midwestern

CHAPTER 3. DISCOVERING JAY GATSBY

3.1 Jay Gatsby- failure of the American dream

3.2 Obsessive love

CHAPTER 4. KEY ELEMENTS OF THE NOVEL

4.1 Adultery in The Great Gatsby

4.2 Power, punishment and violence in The Great Gatsby

4.3 Colour symbolism in The Great Gatsby

CONCLUSIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

My thesis is entitled The Great Gatsby: a novel of The Depression Years, and I chose it because even though many years have passed since the publishing of the novel, it is still one of the most beloved, the characters are the type that readers love to hate, the society from the novel is not very different from ours, money and power still have an important place among people and finally it is the best portrayal of the way in which people used to spend their money recklessly before the Great Depression which led to the economical down-fall.

I structured my thesis in four chapters, each of them focusing on a particular and important element of the novel.

In the first chapter I wrote about the atmosphere of the novel, the elements that make it such a remarkable and powerful one but, also I contextualized it, identifying the elements of the dark 1920s. The women’s fashion sense, their new lifestyle, the obsession for having money and spending it recklessly, the new “values” of the family, are all the means that Fitzgerald used in order to depict the new society, prior to the Great Depression. At first the novel seems to depict a love story between a farmer boy who gained wealth and a rich, lovely girl but, the plot is more substantial focusing on the power of money, the carelessness of the people and also the effect of the lies.

The second chapter is dedicated to the most influential and significant characters of the novel: Daisy Fay, her husband, Tom Buchanan and her cousin, Nick Carraway. Their character, physical aspect and thoughts are thoroughly analysed in order to better understand their actions and to define their type according to the period in which they lived. If Daisy and Tom are alike, careless people, attracted by money, Nick is quite the opposite. He is the quiet Midwestern, with solid values, but also a critic of what is happening around him.

The following chapter spins around Jay Gatsby, the protagonist but, also a victim of the “old” rich. His American dream and motives are analysed and so is his obsessive love toward Daisy Fay. He represents the naïve rich, who dedicates his life to his romantic dream, and tries to accomplish it by luring Daisy with money.

In the final chapter, the focus is on the critical elements, the effects of colour on the characters’ actions and thoughts, the adultery, its causes and effects and all the present crimes with the lack of punishment in the case of the “old” rich. Each character has a specific colour which defines him/her in terms of personality, actions but, also dreams. Adultery rises from dissatisfaction, a desire for control and power, with no remorse for the cheated spouse. Almost every character commits crimes, but his/her punishment is dictated by their social position.

In conclusion, my thesis focuses on the dark elements of the 1920s, prior to the Great Depression, which led to the economical down-fall, that are present in The Great Gatsby, on the analysis of the corrupt and powerful character specific to that period but, also of the naïve, innocent ones, and on the obsessive love which led to the destruction of the romantic dream.

CHAPTER 1

FITZGERALD’S MASTERPIECE AND THE 1920s

1.1 The Great Gatsby- the roaring twenties

“The Great Gatsby offers some of the severest and closest criticism of the American dream that the literature affords” (Bewley 1954:1). It is a pastoral documentary of the Jazz Age, but also it provides critical insights into the nature of the American experience. “The Great Gatsby embodies a criticism of the American experience-not of manners-, but of basic attitude to life, more radical than anything”. (Bewley 1951:2)

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was a brilliant, romantic writer, whose works contain tragic elements, and obtained success with his first novel (This Side of Paradise:1920). He participated in the glamorous expatriate life in France during the 1920s and then experienced a series of personal and professional blows through the 1930s.

The author mentioned in a series of essays called The Crack up that “the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposite ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function” (5). It seems that the author’s life span around this idea. He both hated and loved money, being attracted by the life of those rich, as an outsider, but also criticizing and hating their falseness, power, hypocrisy and cruelty. He was aware of the fact that he possessed great mental and physical self-control to succeed as a writer, but he was often unable to exercises those very qualities he knew he would need in order to succeed. At the same time he hated and loved Zelda, his wife, more than anything. He hated her because he considered her to be the one who led to the destruction of his talent. He enjoyed the life full of parties, gaiety and show, knowing that this lifestyle would lead to nothing and that it was a complete sham. Fitzgerald put all of this doubling in his masterpiece The Great Gatsby.

“The roaring twenties, The Jazz Age and what Fitzgerald would later describe as “the greatest, gaudiest spree in history” have all come to describe America under the influence of Prohibition”. (Avery 2012 :1)

Fitzgerald tells us, in his short story “May Day” that the Jazz Age started in May 1918, and that the glorious period ended up with the stock market crash of 1929. “The Jazz Age brought about one of the most rapid and pervasive changes in manners and morals the world had ever seen. It was a period when the younger generation was rebelling against the values and customs of their parents and grandparents” (Barron 2005:5). After all, the older generation was responsible of leading thousands of young men into the most brutal and senseless war in human history. People of Fitzgerald’s age had seen death and when they came back, they were determined to live life at its fullest.

Prior to the Great Depression which happened in the 1930s, the United States was a wealthy nation with powerful people. At that time, both small and big businesses emerged, having great success and productivity. But, at one point the big companies merged with the small ones, which led to monopolies and finally to the big down-fall. The rich ceased to spend their money recklessly, and a huge difference between the poor and the rich was created.

In The Great Gatsby published in 1925, we are introduced to the opulent lives of wealthy east coasters during one of the rowdiest periods in American history, and the novel is considered to be a great literary document of that period. Because of the Prohibition, illegal businesses sprang out and many criminals became rich because they were bootleggers. The violence of the First World War determined many people to change their lives into wild and extravagant ones, while money, opulence and exuberance became the order of the day.

On the surface, the story seems to be about love and existential freedom, but as the action progresses, crime, infidelity and murder seem to take over the romantic scope. The book inhabits a different world where barriers between men and women, rich and poor, educated and half-literate are very well defined. “It was a more defined and morally harder world then: at no point in the novel does Daisy even appeal to the transcending authority of love or Jay Gatsby to that of equality” (Berman 2002:79). It is a world in which the rich know their power and place in society and where judgment matters more. Daisy, the main female character, the perfect representative of the effects of money, is self aware of the fact that there are many things more important than love and probably that is one of the reasons why she does not choose Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby uses much contemporary historical material; the place and the subject are not elected by chance. The action is placed in a fashionable, sophisticated geographical area in the vicinity of . The novel can be considered as a meditation on 1920s American life, on the destruction of the American dream and also as a criticism of prosperity and excessive wealth. Various elements of the dark side of the 1920s can be seen in the novel: “the carelessness” of the people, the way in which Gatsby obtained his money, the distorted American dream, lack of loyalty, changes of moral values, etc.

The Great Gatsby spins around money and the privileges it can bring, the Land of Opportunity has become a land of money, financial resources, but Gatsby is so innocent to think that he can buy anything – especially Daisy’s love, even though he does not have the right currency.

Gatsby’s parties are the perfect image of how the rich preferred to spend their money and time. Glamour and opulence are the main features, points of attraction. His parties are the place in which people representing “old money” and the ones with “new money” meet, and Fitzgerald is quite fascinated by the hierarchy and mood of America in the 1920s. East Egg is the “old money” with refinement, manners and taste that the “new” lacks. There seems to be a conflict between the two “values”, but they are set aside only for the sake of the party and appearances. A perfect example of the “reconciliation” of the two sides is that even though Gatsby lives in West Egg and is a “new rich”, East Eggers come to his parties.

When Nick meets for the first time Meyer Wolfsheim, Gatsby’s partner, he has the impression that Gatsby’s money is not obtained legally. He thinks that if Gatsby is connected with characters as strange as Wolfsheim, then he might be involved in criminal business. It is important not to forget the setting of the novel, a period in which people who obtained large amounts of money in a short period of time, usually were involved in illegal affairs. The pervasiveness of bootlegging and organized crime, combined with the burgeoning stock market and vast increase in the wealth of the general public during this era, contributed largely to the headless, excessive pleasure-seeking and sense of abandon that permeate The Great Gatsby. The fact that Gatsby is rich throws lavish parties and is involved in the world of bootleg alcohol, represents the perfect symbol of the strange combination of moral decadence, so present in the 1920s America.

Fitzgerald focuses on privileged young people of 20 and 30 years in order to provide a version of the “youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves” (GG 157). Nick Carraway seems to be the only centered character, not influenced and changed by money, even if at the beginning he is impressed by the luxury and glam of Gatsby’s house, parties and personal objects. As the action emerges, it can be clearly seen that lavish mansions, fancy cars and endless material possessions always surrounded Nick.

Even though the characters have money, they seem to be unhappy with their personal lives and as a result they look for happiness outside their social circle. Tom has a mistress from the Valley of Ashes, Daisy becomes romantically involved with Gatsby, and Jordan starts a relationship with Nick.

Fitzgerald finds himself both in Nick and Gatsby, because like Nick he was impressed by the lifinning he is impressed by the luxury and glam of Gatsby’s house, parties and personal objects. As the action emerges, it can be clearly seen that lavish mansions, fancy cars and endless material possessions always surrounded Nick.

Even though the characters have money, they seem to be unhappy with their personal lives and as a result they look for happiness outside their social circle. Tom has a mistress from the Valley of Ashes, Daisy becomes romantically involved with Gatsby, and Jordan starts a relationship with Nick.

Fitzgerald finds himself both in Nick and Gatsby, because like Nick he was impressed by the lifestyle of the rich and found it exciting, and like Gatsby he had idolized the very rich. The Great Gatsby reflects to a certain degree Fitzgerald’s feelings about the Jazz Age, his critical opinions and admirations are present throughout the novel, and like Gatsby, the protagonist of the novel, he was driven by his love for a woman who was everything he had envisioned, even if she led him toward everything he despised. The novel can be considered up to a certain extent to be a biography of his tumultuous marriage with Zelda Fitzgerald, for whom he did everything he could in order to offer her an extravagant lifestyle, with whom he attended lavishly parties, but at the same time he hated her because of the great influence she had on him. He loved her crazy, romantic steak which matched his own. He loved her beauty, her daring, her originality. He proposed to her and she turned him down because like Jay Gatsby he was too young and had no money. When Fitzgerald became famous after publishing The Side of Paradise, he and Zelda got married and became the most notorious young couple in .

The Great Gatsby is about American issues, a version of the new social world feared by the tradition of American moralists. It is a world of broken and false relationship; a word of money and success rather than one of social responsibility.

1.2 The Great Gatsby’s atmosphere

F. Scott Fitzgerald managed to construct in nine chapters a novel which entered in history as one of the most impressive and harsh criticism of the American lifestyle of that time, everything developing around a love story. Jimmy Gatz, a simple boy without money, falls in love with Daisy Fay, a beautiful, young woman who belonged to a wealthy family. Lacking courage, confidence and also because he thought that he could not financially support her lifestyle he did not propose marriage. As a result he leaves, changes his name to Jay Gatsby and steadily moves upward: he has been a farmer boy, a student and fisherman, steward and mate for the rich and mindless Dan Cody and eventually became the brave and decorated Mayor Jay Gatsby. He has loved and lost the love of his life and understands that in order to get her back he needs a big amount of money. Five years have passed since that loss, and Gatsby moves to West Egg. Meanwhile, Nick Carraway, a quiet Midwestern moves to New York in order to sell bonds. He rents a house in West Egg, next door to Gatsby, who throws enormous parties only to attract the love of his life, Daisy. Shortly after his arrival, Nick goes to East Egg, to his cousin Daisy who invited him over for a dinner table. Daisy was married to Tom Buchanan, a hulking, imposing man whom Nick had known in college. At Daisy’s house he meets Jordan Baker, a professional golf player, with whom he will start a relationship. Nick finds out that Tom has a mistress in and also he witnesses ’s gossip about it. He is impressed by the luxury of their lives and as he returns home he notices Gatsby, his neighbour standing in the dark trying to reach toward the green light from the Buchanan’s dock.

One day, Nick accompanies Tom to meet his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, a middle class woman, whose husband George has a modest garage in the Valley of Ashes. The three of them, along with some of Myrtle’s friends, will spend the afternoon drinking at her and Tom’s apartment in . The party ends with Tom breaking Myrtle’s nose when she repeats several times in a vulgar way Daisy’s name.

After the incident from New York, Nick turns his attention to his neighbour, Gatsby. He is the only one who receives a written invitation by Gatsby himself and decides to attend the extravagant party. At the party he encounters Jordan and the host himself, an observer more than a participant. Gatsby asks Jordan to see him in private and even though the subject of their discussion is not mentioned, Jordan is pleased by what she has heard.

As time passes, Nick and Gatsby become friends and when Gatsby realizes the family relationship between him and Daisy, he asks Nick to help him “accidentally” encounter Daisy. When the two former lovers finally meet, Daisy is impressed by the things that Gatsby has earned and he finds out that she is unhappy in her marriage with Tom. The group of three moves to Gatsby’s mansion where Daisy is impressed by the luxury and also cries over some shirts.

Daisy and Tom will attend one of Gatsby’s parties where Tom will spend his time looking after girls and the newly couple, with the help of their accomplice Nick, will share some moments of intimacy. Gatsby tells Nick about his past and relationship with Daisy.

Gatsby and Daisy’s affair begins to grow as time passes and on the hottest and most unbearable day of the summer, Gatsby and Nick go to East Egg to have a lunch with Jordan and the Buchanans and they decide to drive to New York. Daisy and Gatsby end up going together in the Buchanan’s blue coupe, Tom, Nick and drive in Gatsby’s yellow Rolls Royce. Tom, driving Gatsby’s car, stops for gas at Wilson’s garage, where he finds out that George knows about his wife’s affair, but does not know who the man is. George tells Tom that he plans to take Myrtle out West.

The five of them arrive at the Plaza Hotel. Tom, drunk and agitated by now, starts arguing with Gatsby about his past and attacks him for his phony English habit of calling people “old sport” and also questions him about his intentions regarding Daisy. Gatsby responds by telling Tom that Daisy is going to leave him. Tom accuses Gatsby of being a cheap bootlegger. The moment in which Daisy is not capable to admit that she will choose Gatsby, Tom considers himself to be the winner and because he is sure that there is no more danger he sends Daisy back home with Gatsby in his Rolls Royce. Daisy is not willing to go away with Gatsby, to leave her perfect life away, and the five-year dream is over. Daisy and Gatsby race in his car, and with Daisy at the steering wheal, she strikes down a woman, who proves to be Tom’s mistresses. When Tom, Nick and Jordan return they see a crowd of people and notice that a woman has been struck down. When Nick returns to East Egg, he finds his friend hiding in the shrubbery outside the Buchanans’ house, not wanting to leave, fearing that Tom might hurt Daisy because of her actions. Gatsby confesses to Nick that Daisy was driving, but that he will take the blame, not knowing that inside the mansions, Daisy, his trusted love, was already planning to escape with her husband. Nick leaves Gatsby, and the next morning he goes to work, worrying about what might happen to him. Sensing that something bad is going to happen, he takes the first train to West Egg, but unfortunately arrives too late. His friend’s body was floating on an inflated mattress in the swimming pool, while George’s body was lying dead on the grass. The ragging, suffering husband had spent the entire morning pursuing the driver of the yellow Rolls Royce, who had killed his wife and with the information given by Tom Buchanan, he found Gatsby before Nick.

Nick tries to phone Daisy and Tom, to tell them about what happened, but is told they have left town without giving any address. He calls Wolfsheim to invite him to come to the funeral, but the result is the same as with the Buchanans. Nick is Gatsby’s only true and most trusted friend. The funeral is attended only by Nick, Gatsby’s father, Owl Eyes (who loved Gatsby’s books), and some servants. Meyer Wolfsheim has refused to get involved in Gatsby’s murder.

Even though at the beginning the novel seems to be a failed love story, at the end it is an elaborate series of events, different from anything that had been written before, with a dense, distinctive structure, which makes the readers love it from the first reading, despite the tragic ending.

CHAPTER 2

HOLLOWNESS OF THE UPPER CLASS

2.1Daisy- material, hollow woman

“Fitzgerald’s simultaneous adulation and admonition of the modern woman is most obvious in his two best-known female characters, Daisy Fay Buchanan in The Great Gatsby and Nicole Warren Diver in Tender is the Night. Daisy’s depiction is particularly responsible for the feminist objection” (Curnutt 2007:74). Judath Fetterley has stated that Fitzgerald’s golden girls are “scapegoats” for male disappointment because “even the poorest male gain something from a system in which all women are at the same level his subject” (Fetterley 1972:26).

Reflecting to a certain degree the author’s wife, Zelda, Daisy is the most important and perhaps the most disappointing female character of the novel. Daisy is a beautiful young woman, and she represents the object of Gatsby’s love. She was born Daisy Fay in Louisville, Kentucky, and her colour is white (throughout the novel, white is considered to be a symbol of power, supremacy and innocence). In chapter seven, Jordan Baker tells Nick Carraway about the first encounter between Daisy and Gatsby, back in October 1917, that Daisy: “She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster and all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers form Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night” (GG 74). The colour white fits Daisy perfectly because on the outside she seems innocent and pure to those who admire and are always around her. Throughout The Great Gatsby, Daisy is described in fairytale language, all of her life seems unreal, and somehow she hopes to change the present according to her will:

“Talk about cold feet. Daisy knows that the fabulously string of white pearls that Tom gave her is about to become a chain. When she’s drunk, she wants to change her mind and marry the man she truly loves. In the cold and sober (and probably little hangover) light of day, however she does what she was born to do, marry the rich guy”. (GG 69)

By analysing her name we can find clues of her behaviour. Fay means “fairy” while “Daisy” refers to the beautiful flower, fresh, bright as spring, but also fragile, with no strength to survive the warmth and dryness of summer. Daisy may be a victim of the sinful, manipulated, moulded by the society in which she grew. In her home town, Daisy was every man’s dream, a princess, an object of possession just because of her looks. She is beautiful and rich, innocent and pure (at least on the surface) in her whiteness. But, she is not entirely pure and innocent throughout the novel. Her whiteness is mixed up with the yellow representing the gold, a precious metal, and also with the inevitable corruption which comes along with money and power. Daisy is a mixture of both good and bad; no one is born evil, just molded by the circumstances. She is just like the flower which she was named after.

Daisy is Gatsby’s inspiration from when he was in the military. Because of the fact that her parents did not consider Gatsby to be suitable for her, taking into account his lack of money, Daisy did not marry him. She is seen by the narrator as the golden girl – the quintessential rich beauty. Daisy is Gatsby’s reason to live, all that he wants and he is the only one who can see the corruption of money in her “her voice is full of money” (GG 144). Her voice is her identity, it is “the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbs’ song in it”. (GG p.127) She represents a twentieth century siren, luring men with her mysterious voice. Her voice makes Gatsby to center all of his actions toward her, trying to win her over. It also contains the promises of vast, impossible riches. Because of the enchantment of her voice, Gatsby is too blind to realize that money is the only thing her voice promises. She has no compassion, being cold as ice.

Daisy’s actions, feelings and motives are never explained. She is either scrutinized or romanticized. We only see her through male characters’ eyes. Nick is the first to describe her. During his first visit to the Buchanans’ mansion at East Egg, Nick is amazed by Daisy’s habit of murmuring, about which he knew it was a gesture made “to make people lean toward her” (GG 10). During his stay, Nick also notices her habit of talking as a baby, the mellifluous nature of her voice and the “thrilling scorn of her laugh” (GG 10). Because of her shown cynism, Nick categorizes her as a basic insincere woman:

“It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to extract a contributing emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk an her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged” (GG 15).

Daisy Buchanan exists at two well-defined levels in the novel. She is a superficial, material and flappy girl – but she also exists at the level of Gatsby’s vision of her. The 1920s were considered to be the era of the flappers, sophisticated women who used to smoke and party all night. Daisy has short bobbed hair and is a fashionable and charming woman, but on the other hand she is selfish and flirtatious. During Nick’s visit at her house, instead of speaking of her daughter as any proud mother would do, she speaks with him about her old life and . Daisy is an irresponsible mother, leaving her daughter in the care of a nanny while preferring to drink cocktails and party. She wishes her daughter to be a fool “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool-that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (GG 17), and to marry a rich man as she did, not no have many children with a poor one.

“The intelligence of no other important novelist has been as consistently undervalued as Fitzgerald’s and it is hardly surprising that no critic has ever given the author credit for his superb understanding of Daisy’s vicious emptiness” (Bewley 1954:4). Fitzgerald’s admirers regard Daisy as being good, but also as a silly little thing. The author knew that even at its most depraved levels, the American dream would merge with the dream of an American debutante – a woman with a deadly hollowness. Fitzgerald tells us straight what Daisy has to offer in a relationship with another individual. Being present at one of Gatsby’s parties along with her husband Tom Buchanan, Gatsby shows them a particular couple that attended his party “perhaps you may know that lady” (GG 120). Gatsby indicated a gorgeous woman, like a human orchid, sitting under a white plum tree. Both Tom and Daisy stare at her as if she were a ghost. They recognized her as being a celebrity of the movies:

“She’s lovely”, said Daisy

“The man bending over her is the director” (GG 120).

The lack of substance makes Daisy like the moving picture actress. She is focused and interested only on her physical aspect, her own image on the silver screen. She is a gesture, isolated from the old fashioned human reality. She is too good for what the society has to offer.

As a shallow woman, interested only in the physical aspect, she willingly or not likes to play with other people’s feelings. She is unable to decide between Tom and Gatsby: “oh you want too much!” she tells the later: “I did love him once-but I love you too” (GG 132). She fails to take responsibility for Myrtle Wilson’s death, whom she killed accidentally in a car accident while speeding away from the confrontation at the Plaza Hotel between Tom and Gatsby. By that time her vilification seems complete in the final chapter, Nick says that Daisy was no better than Tom, who with no remorse directed Myrtle’s grieving husband, George, to Gatsby, to avenge her death: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (GG 179).

Daisy is an inert character, even though she has a bubbly personality. She is capable only of reacting to situations rather than provoking them. When it comes to her relationship with her husband, Tom, Daisy is an abused wife, while her husband cheats on her (Myrtle is Tom’s latest mistress). Roland Bermanhas considers that the passivity of not being able to choose between Gatsby and Tom, is an indicative of her “psychological absence from events”

In a telling observation, Nick notices that the Buchanans’ “weren’t happy…and yet they weren’t unhappy either” (GG 145). The fact that Daisy is detached from taking the responsibility for manslaughter is not an escape from reality, representing in fact her natural state. She is unconscious of the gravity of the situation in which she is. Because of the fact that nothing was expected from her, she does not know how to be held accountable. Berman, by pointing to the flashback description of Daisy’s courtship with Tom, which began after Gatsby went to fight in the war, provides further evidence of her incapacity for action.

“All the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately -and the decision must be made by some force- of love, of money, of unquestioned practicality-that was close at hand. That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom Buchanan” (GG 151)

Daisy lets everyone decide for her, she is only a passerby in her life. Gatsby’s arrival is the best example to prove that she was waiting for an outside force which would reshape her life. Without the presence of that force she would not have entered an adulterous relationship. However, Gatsby’s great mistake was to assume that Daisy was mature enough, that she had the willpower to decide what she desired. If Tom uses violence in order to maintain the marriage, Gatsby gives her the opportunity to choose, a wrong decision, resulting in the exact opposite effect: “With every word she was drawing further and further into herself…Her frightened eye told that whatever intentions, whatever courage she had had, were definitely gone” (GG 132-5).

Daisy’s friend, Jordan Baker supports her in entering an adulterous affair “Daisy ought to have something in her life” (GG 85). She does not consider Gatsby to be a person, but a thing, a sort of a toy. “Daisy suggests the callous ennui of the beautiful society matron” (Quarterly 1954:556). She recommences her affair with Gatsby probably because of nostalgia for their beautiful past, to make her husband jealous, but the main reason for which she cheats is that she is bored “What do people plan?” (GG 14) she asks. This sentence is a symbol of her emptiness. She resembles the lady in Elliot’s The Waste Land who cries out “What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do?” Ironically, Gatsby, who was so enamored with her, is the one who notices that the only thing Daisy stands for is money. He makes the further remark “king’s daughter…the golden girl” (GG 120). The fact that she does not love Tom is of less importance, because she shares his callous selfish.

Daisy is the perfect representation of how corruption and wealth can mould a person. “Daisy’s unabashed materialism likewise does little to engender reader sympathy” (Cutnutt 2007:75). The scene in which she cries “stormily” over Gatsby’s beautiful imported English shirt makes her seem superficial. Her compliment to Gatsby “You always look so cool…You resemble the advertisement of the man. You know the advertisement of the man” (GG 99), suggests that she is enamoured with his image, not his wealth.

At first sight she seems to be a sweet, delightful woman, but in reality, she is self-centered and cold. She is careless with the lives of other people, letting Gatsby take the blame for the accidental death of Myrtle Wilson. Her carelessness finally results in the death of Gatsby, for which she felt no remorse or concern. After hearing about Gatsby’s past and illegal business, she runs back to her self-absorbed, corrupt husband. They shared the same “qualities”.

She has romance on her mind, but what we hear is the increasingly flat, reiterated tone of a phrase that does not have a place among those using it. The more it is repeated, the less it means, as when Tom tiredly agrees: “Very romantic” (GG 16), about something that has absolutely no importance to him. Her speech is not golden. She often cannot find her words and only manages to express sincerity or the appearance of it through repetition. If Tom uses his body and personality to bully and control the others, Daisy uses her money to protect her from the cruel reality. When reality strikes back she cries and hides beside the shelter that money has to offer.

Daisy is a product of her “white girlhood” (GG 19) whom Decker provocatively describes as a “version of all-American girl…a symbol of Nordic national identity in the twentieth century” (50).

Sarah Beebe Fryer agrees in her 1984’s essay Beneath the Mask: The Plight of Daisy Buchanan with Person and Fetterley’s discussions about the victimization of the character, but expresses her opinions in a different manner. She, in fact defends Daisy’s traits and personality. She analyses carefully the scenes of the novel, paying attention to Nick’s judgmental opinions while revealing the character beneath and praises Daisy’s “hopeful nature” (158), “capacity for feeling” (160) and “stubborn honesty” (165). Nicolas Trendell considers that Fryer’s discussions “treat Daisy as if she were a real person” ( Trendell 1999:137), but at the same time considers that the weight of decades of critical vilification warranted the approach. Fryer’s approach reminds us that our perception of Daisy depends largely on our readerly allegiance with – or subservience to, depending on how you look at it.- Nick Carraway’s perspective. Two weeks after The Great Gatsby was published, Fitzgerald attributed its lock luster sales to his unsympathetic treatment of Daisy: “The book contains no important woman character”

2.2 Tom Buchanan- a self centered character

Among all the characters of The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan is by far the most unpleasant. Because of his social status, that he is aware of, he lacks a code of ethics, and believes that because he is white (a symbol of the supremacy of white people) and wealthy he can do anything without being punished. He is the perfect example of the decline of the human being because of his brutal arrogance, complete lack of morality, sense of entitlement and power over the “poor”. However, despite his shown supremacy and courage, he is afraid of the power of the newly rich like Gatsby and also of the “political transformation, which may emerge from the proliferation of the new races in society” (Strba 2010:1). He hides his misbehaviour and moral crimes by keeping the appearances and throughout the novel is portrayed as a “delinquent protected by social convention” (Strba 2010:1).

Nick Carraway, the narrator, who has known Tom since they both attended Yale, is the first who describes him: “had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven-a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anticlimax” (GG 7). Tom is very wealthy and exposes his wealth by buying expensive and unnecessary things, like a string of polo ponies from to .

When Nick sees Tom for the first time, he appears “in riding clothes…standing with legs apart on the front porch” (GG 9). Both his clothing and relaxed pose suggest a way of life which has nothing to do with the actual production of wealth via means of fecund labour. Thus, Buchanan fits into the category of the leisure class, a term coined by Thornstein Veblen, which embodies a group of individuals who live off the fruits of the industrial community rather than within it. “A millionaire is thus free to waste money and time on idle amusement and unnecessary goods, whereas the rest of the individual population has to perform manual work in order to survive” (Veblen 70).

From the first time we encounter Tom, the only thing that characterizes him from the beginning to the end of the novel, without changing is power, financial and physical one. Because of his wealth and power, he is used with things moulding according to his will. He is describes as “a rather hard mouth” (GG 8) and “Two shinning arrogant eyes” (GG 8).

Since chapter one, at the dinner table organised at his mansion, he expresses his arrogant belief about his own supremacy. He tells Nick that he has read a book called The Rise of the Colored Empire, a book which warns the white that the black will rise up and take the power if they are not careful:

“Civilization is going to pieces,’ broke out Tom violently.’I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?…’Well, it’s a fine book, and everyone ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be-will be utterly submerged…’ ‘…This Fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things” (GG 14).

Every single word that Tom says is a reproduction of his sense of superiority. Even though he is telling repulsive theories about the white supremacy, he does not care about the consequences of his words as long as his point of view is told: “Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,…just because I’m stronger and more of a man that you are” (GG 9-10).

Tom is a cheater, a person who hurts the feelings of those surrounding him without thinking about the consequences. The only thing he cares about is his own satisfaction and well being. He has an affair with Myrtle Wilson, a middle-class woman, the wife of George Wilson, the owner of a garage service in the . He has no remorse to flirt with Myrtle even when George and Nick are around. Tom is attracted by a dark sexual vitality, representative for a woman of her class. He even buys an apartment just for Myrtle in . Even if he does not care for Daisy’s feelings, he wants to keep her image as a classy woman untouched, and because he does not want a vulgar woman to shout her name, he hits Myrtle, breaking her nose with the back of his hand.

The nature of this forbidden affair is best symbolized by the expensive dog leash that Tom has bought for Myrtle’s puppy. In this relationship, Tom is the owner, while Myrtle is the pet. As the master, Tom can do whatever he wants, and Myrtle as the “dog” has to obey the orders to receive the benefits of having a wealthy man as a lover. The unequal status of Tom and Myrtle reflects the failure of their relationship, which given its adulterous nature, was doomed to fail from the beginning. Tom could not have entered an adulterous relationship with a woman of the same social status, because he could not have had financial power over her, and as a result could not have controlled her.

Regarding his relationship with his wife Daisy, it can be said that he bought her with pearls “valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars” (GG 60), a thing that proclaimed her social status as a wife. Tom is well aware of what his properties are worth, especially his house on the fashionable Long Island shore “it belonged to Demaine, the oil man” (GG 10). Money, the sense of entitlement places him on a higher place on the hierarchical ladder. His enormous inheritance puts him in the opposite position of the self made man.

In her marriage, Daisy knows perfectly her husband and his manners. While they were attending Gatsby’s party, she offers him her “little gold pencil” (GG 121) so that he gets the number of a “common but pretty girl” (GG 121), he is interested in. Because they are both shallow, their marriage is based on wealth and power and the fact that they are aware of it, keeps them together.

The couple lived in the exclusivist, old money East Egg, Long Island and because they were both unsatisfied with their current situations, they look for happiness in extramarital affairs. They have traveled to France and drifted “here and there unrestfully wherever people were rich and played polo together” (GG 11)

Tom shows his carelessness regarding other people’s lives, when he tells Nick about what he had said to George the afternoon of the accident:

“I told him the truth”he said.”He came to the door while we were getting ready to leave…He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn’t told him who owned the car…’’He broke off defiantly,”What if I did tell him?That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust unto your eyes just like he did in Daisy’s but he was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle like you’d run over a dog and never ever stopped his car”. (GG 142)

Buchanan can be considered the master behind Gatsby’s death, because he contributed indirectly to the tragic ending, fulfilling his desire for vengeance. “His destruction of Gatsby, which avoids any direct confrontation through the subtle means that he employs, and his subsequent denial of any responsibility for his actions display a degree of cunning and sophisticated contrivance”

(Strba 2010:3).

After the death of Gatsby and Myrtle, the Buchanans do not even send their regards or show any kind of remorse. Like nothing has happened, they continue with their live, and even go on a short vacation.

Everything that the Buchanans do is a result of the effect that money has on people. All their actions are made to keep the appearances, even if in the process they destroy people’s feelings and lives.

“Tom Buchanan’s sentimentality is based on depraved self-pity. He is never more typical than when coaxing himself to tears over a half-finished box of dog biscuits that recalls a drunken and illicit day from his past, associated in memory with his dead mistress. His self-pity is functional. It is sufficient to condone his most criminal acts in his own eyes as long as the crimes are not imputable” (Strba 2010:4).

Tom Buchanan is a vengeful man, arrogant, who does not want to be depraved of his property, in this case Daisy, even if he neglects it. As long as he is pleased, he can play with the other’s feelings, and ceases every opportunity to make the poor pay for their tries to enter his world.

2.3 Nick Carraway – quiet, reflective Midwestern

Nick Carraway is the narrator of The Great Gatsby, but is also a vital character in the novel and through his narration we experience the events the way he sees them. When analyzing him, we must first of all think about Fitzgerald’s purpose when he created him. Can Nick be a reliable narrator, is he too judgmental, does he present the story the way it happened or was he influenced by his feelings regarding the main characters? Critics are divided into two main groups, and the majority considers him quite reliable, honest and affected by his relationship with Gatsby (Long 1996:257-76). The other group considers that there are many discrepancies in his narration “Nick progresses from innocence to experience before finally locating a moral vision” (Thale 1957:78-84), and that in certain moments he is quite unreliable, a sentimentalist. The characters of The Great Gatsby are considered to be quite tricky, they never are what they seem, making it difficult to analyze correctly their actions.

Fitzgerald uses Nick as his voice to tell the story, in order to make it more realistic. We believe Nick’s presentation because he experienced the events and is exposing them in his own style. Nick is not mentally passive at what is happening around him, and there are moments in which he is judgmental, but only because he was raised in a very different world, far from East Egg, and in a way, is shocked by what is surrounding him. He was raised in a solid Midwestern family who thought him the basic values, graduated from Yale, fought in the First World War and finally moved to West Egg, to sale bonds.

Nick is considered to be honest, but not in a Puritanical way. He lies to his cousin Daisy to help arrange an encounter between her and his new friend Gatsby. Nick is understanding and quite tolerant, but his toleration has limits.

Because in a way he reflects the author’s values, Nick is in the perfect position to tell the story. He is in close connection with all the major characters; he is Daisy’s cousin, he was in the same senior society as her husband Tom at Yale and also he is Gatsby’s neighbour. Due to all the relationships mentioned above, he has sufficient details to tell the story. He gets the information from the characters themselves because they find him to be a tolerant and sympathetic man.

Moving to the East after returning from the war, in order to start a new life, he soon finds out that the people in East Egg are heartless and shallow and begins to judge the glitz and materialism that surrounds him. Because his personality is deeply rooted in the values of the Midwestern family, he despises the rich and their hobbies. Nick’s American dream is considered to be, unlike Gatsby’s, closer to the original one, which focused on family and happiness rather than wealth and the quest for success. “It is the counterpoint to Gatsby’s sustaining dream, which it frames and interprets a dream of aspiration that moves Gatsby to fallow it to the imagined glory and unforeseen defeat” (Fahey 1985:79). Nick is the opposite of Gatsby, even though they both come from the , Gatsby’s values have faded because of his love for Daisy.

Regarding his relationship with Gatsby, Nick has two contradictory opinions. Because of his innocence he disapproves of Gatsby’s materialism and corrupt business. When Gatsby proposes Nick to have business with Meyer Wolfsheim, his underworld “connection”, Nick refuses, not wanting to gain wealth in a criminal way. Even though he criticizes Gatsby’s way of obtaining money, Nick is the only one who understands him, not even Daisy, the love of his life, is capable of understanding his sacrifices for her.

One explanation of why Nick feels so much compassion for Gatsby may be the fact that they both are Midwesterns and do not belong to the shallow society of West and East Egg. Nick knows that even if Gatsby belongs to a criminal world, a corrupted one, he is still a good man and also, he is the only one who knows all the details about his background. If he had not been a tolerant and understanding friend, Gatsby would not have trusted him with personal, unknown details about his past and also would not have asked for his help. Nick is also the only attendee at Gatsby’s parties who received a written letter by the host himself, even though he is an atypical participant.

When Nick first encounters Tom after moving to West Egg, he immediately stops to consider Tom a heroic figure:

“Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shinning 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. It was a body capable of enormous leverage – a cruel body. His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked-and there were men at who had hated his guts”. (GG 7).

Nick comes to Tom’s house in order to visit his cousin Daisy and while entering the house is struck by the glamour and charm and starts to admire the beauty. The two women present in the house are wearing white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering. The image fascinated him, but soon was brought to reality when Tom shut the rear windows.

Once the fascination gone, Nick started to judge, after finding out at the dinner table that Tom has a mistress in New York. Nick is the one who brings up for the first time Gatsby’s name in the Buchanan’s house, but the subject is hastily dropped. He remembers having seen Jordan, or a picture of her somewhere before. After the dinner he has a discussion with Daisy on the porch about her life in Chicago and the birth of her daughter, and Nick is suddenly struck by “the basic insincerity of what she has to say” (GG p.20). After the events at his cousin’s house, Nick begins to feel like a stranger in East Egg and while returning home he notices Gatsby standing in the darkness of his own land and looking across the water to the green light at the end of the Buchanan’s dock.

Throughout the novel, Nick becomes romantically involved with Jordan Baker, Daisy’s

friend. At first he is mainly interested in her looks and charm. He noticed her body “extended full length” (GG 10) on the divan, her “fluttering lips” (GG 10) and her “quaintly tipped chin” (GG 10). He noticed the lamp light that “glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms” (GG 17). He overlooks her gossipy chatter about Tom’s mistress, even if he does not approve of it, only because he is fascinated by her looks and did not have the opportunity and time to know the real Jordan, the one who cheated in a golf tournament. While attending Gatsby’s party, Jordan is the one who makes him feel comfortable, and while there are several moments in which Nick notes her dishonesty, he considers it a way of getting by in a man’s world. When Jordan tells Nick about Daisy and Gatsby’s past romance, he feels excited because she has confidence in him. Nick starts his love affair with Jordan by kissing her on the lips.

Every single piece of Jordan’s dishonesty is gathered in Nick’s subconscious and by the end of the summer the – so called love- turns into repugnance. Attraction is not enough to build a serious and honest relationship, and even small details of Jordan’s actions determine the final falling apart “Jordan’s fingers, powdered with white over their tan, rested for a moment in mine” (GG 132). Nick realizes that Jordan’s so called identity is based on cosmetics, that she has to keep the appearance, to always look physically good no matter the situation. Despite the disaster which surrounds them, Jordan invites Nick for a nightcap and complains the next day about his refusal. But, Jordan’s biggest mistake to Nick, is the fact that she did not stay with Daisy when she needed her. To betray a friend is a crucial mistake in Nick’s eyes. Loyalty is far more important than

anything else.

Throughout the novel, Nick describes the action rather than having a dominating position. He plays the role of the novel’s psychologist, being tolerant, open-minded and especially a good listener and due to all of this qualities, people trust him.

His contradictory feelings toward Gatsby do not change, his moral indignation and also

admiration are present until the end of the novel. After his death, he considers the Buchanans as

the only responsible and also categorizes them as “careless people” (GG 207). Having witnessed

all the actions of the novel, he had gathered enough evidence of their irresponsibility which made him reject all of the admiration for them. Even if Nick knew the entire truth about Gatsby’s existence (he was a poseur, a racketeer, a liar), Nick never changes his admiration toward him. Gatsby remains a suitable object for Nick’s admiration.

In the novel, the effect that alcohol has on Nick can be clearly observed. At Myrtle’s party he says “I sat down discreetly in the living-room and read a chapter of Simon Called Peter-either it was terrible stuff or the whisky distorted things because it didn’t make any sense to me” (GG 19). A couple of days later, at Gatsby’s party, he notes “I had taken two finger-bowls of champagne, and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound” (GG 31). It is strange how the substance that made Gatsby rich can have such effects on his best friend and confessor. Nick’s admiration of Gatsby goes to the point that by the end of the 1922 summer, Gatsby is his hero, and during the confrontation at the Plaza Hotel room, Nick states “I wanted to get up and slam him on the back. I had one of those renewals of complete faith that I’d experienced before” (GG 148). Even though he had known Gatsby for several months, Nick supported him rather than Tom, who was family.

At the beginning of the novel it seems like Nick is an insignificant character, but as

the novel progresses it is clear that he is quite important in the development of the events and of the discovery of the other characters’ true self. He is Gatsby’s voice, a mirror of what Gatsby should have been if it had not been for his love toward Daisy. Nick, unlike Gatsby wants to leave the past behind and also the people who belong in it. He goes forward with his life and does not change for the sake of money, wealth and false love.

CHAPTER 3

DISCOVERING JAY GATSBY

3.1 Jay Gatsby-failure of the American dream

The American dream is an ideal which has been present in many American masterpieces, an ideal in which the dreamer becomes financially successful while also having a beautiful family and power. The dream in based on the idea of freedom, self-awareness, confidence and intelligence, even though it went through various changes in time.

In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is the main character, who starts a new life with no money, only to accomplish his dream, that of having the love of his life, Daisy. Many critics of the novel believe, as John Chamber does, that Jay Gatsby “has a vitality and potential for intense happiness” (Chamber 1989:141). The critics who admire Gatsby find Nick Carraway a reliable character, while those who disagree with Gatsby’s actions and personality consider Nick to be morally obtuse, and that his ideas regarding Gatsby’s behaviour cannot be trusted.

In analyzing the character one question arises, why did the author decide to name the novel “The Great Gatsby” , since the character is neither great nor his real name is Gatsby, but Gatz? From the beginning it seems like we are asked to love the character, admire his dream and even feel pity for his failure. Gatsby’s dream is a kind of romantic idealism, as Nick calls it ”some heightened sensibility to the promise of life” (GG 4). “It is a belief in fairy tales and princesses and happy endings, a faith that life can be special, remarkable, beautiful” (Sirbulescu 2002:339). Gatsby is not interested in power for its own sake or in money or prestige, everything he does is for Daisy.

Jay Gatsby’s real name was James Gatz and, as a boy started to work at his parents’ farm, learned how to think and read with no great efforts, became irresistible to women, rescued a yacht from disaster and finally became a gentleman criminal. His story can be considered as that of a self-made man, even though his fortune was made through illegal means. Even if he should be proud of his past and of the fact that he became rich, having nothing at the beginning, he tries to hide all of these adventures, because he considers them to be profoundly uninteresting. Although Nick finds Gatsby’s past fascinating, he only wants to be praised for the present, for what he is now, a wealthy man. In this sense, he represents the tensions of the early 1920s. His desire for financial wealth makes him so blind, that he cannot see that money cannot buy love or happiness. Fitzgerald demonstrates how a dream can become corrupted by one’s desire of obtaining wealth and power by any means. In this sense, Gatsby’s dream “is a naïve dream based on the fallacious assumption that material possessions are synonymous with happiness, harmony and beauty” (Fahley 1986:70). His new American dream has become corrupted by the wealth, opulence and power that surround him.

The first time we encounter Gatsby is at one of his parties, where we are informed that he was gifted with “a hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing” (GG 100). If we want to understand Gatsby’s impersonal significance, we have to meet him just after Fitzgerald has created the fantastic world of Gatsby’s vision;

“There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-end his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before” (GG 60).

When Gatsby finds out the family link between Nick, who was his friend, and Daisy, he feels no remorse in asking Nick to accidentally arrange a meeting between him and Nick’s cousin. This proves that he is capable of everything, even manipulating his friend, just to achieve his romantic dream. But after Nick accepts to help him, he proposes to help him financially, by involving him in affairs with Meyer Wolfsheim. Gatsby thinks that every favour can be solved with money, and is unable to understand that there are good people who help just because of friendship. Despite this fact, it can be noted that Gatsby is aware that a favour is paid with another and also of the fact that he is in debt to Nick.

Even though his friendship with Nick becomes more intense, he does not have the courage to tell him the truth about his past, probably because he thought that Nick would judge him and mock him for his past poverty. When Gatsby says “here’s another thing I always carry“ (GG 53), it is the last proof that his life as a poor man has disappeared, his photo of “Oxford days”, representing the fact that he has always belonged among the privileged. Gatsby is the leading man of the Jazz Age, but he is also the great figure of the gentleman hero. Because he was born and raised in the Midwest, surrounded by the real values of a family, he knows how to be a gentleman, and even though he is “newly rich”, he has the class, which surprisingly, the “old rich” lack. He is aware, and at the same time accepts that inequality is characteristic for the democracy of that period. His past life, one around values, has its benefits: his character is thickened, made more vivid, intense by astonishing qualities of courtesy through fullness and honour. Whether dealing with Nick or Daisy or with a girl who has torn her gown at his party, he has the nobility unknown to the West Egg. The irony of the novel is that he has become far more of a gentleman than his social adversaries “the whole damn bunch” (GG 120).

When Gatsby tells Nick that it is “God’s truth” (GG 74) that he had been “educated at Oxford” (GG 74), by using the word “God” the deific theme is involved and as a result, his lie is not just an ordinary one. It is important to notice that even if Nick liked Gatsby from the beginning, the latter makes tremendous efforts and tells lies just to keep his perfect image untouched and also because he does not want Nick to think that he is “just some nobody”(GG76).

Gatsby really “sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God” (GG 104). Fitzgerald created him with a sense of his own election. “Even in the mindst of the blighted earthy paradise of West Egg, Gatsby bore about the marks of his birth, being a kind of exiled Duke in disguise” (Bewley 1963:4). Everything about him impresses us, throughout the novel he is the underdog “Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt and gold-colored tie…” (GG 89). His personality and physical appearance seem to be perfectly created by his own mind in order to fit in the new, wealthy society.

Gatsby is a dreamer, whose dream remains stubbornly out of his sight “it is as if a savage islander, suddenly touched with grace transcended in his prayers and aspirations, the grotesque little fetish in which he imagined he discovered the object of his longing” (Bewley 1963:3). The most representative scene of the failure of the American dream and at the same time a criticism of the values of the society, is that in which Gatsby shows his piles of beautiful imported shirts to Daisy and Nick. It is clear that Gatsby does not show them out of vanity or pride, but just to impress Daisy, which he succeeded because she ended up crying because of their beauty. His house and parties are enough to impress, he does not need little things that can fascinate only the shallow ones. He projects onto Daisy a kind of royal status, just because she is everything for him, she is “high in a white palace, the king’s daughter, the golden girl” (GG.99). All of his actions are a projection of his love, transformed in an obsession.

Gatsby is a “nouveau rich” and because of his innocence, lack of experience concerning the old rich and their habits and lifestyle, he is not prepared to fight dirty, and does not understand the subtle hypocritical messages that they deliver to him. He throws lavish parties for countless, unknown people, yet he has no real friends, except for Nick. Only due to his need to please and incommunicable desire for something better, he buys expensive things and entertains large groups of society. Among all of the attendees at his parties, the new comer, Nick Carraway, is the only one who can see the real Gatsby, the one who knows that he is a good man at heart even if he is involved in underhanded business and is fixated on money. Even if Gatsby obtained his fortune through illegal affairs, he seems untouched by the evil that surrounds him. “He has lived not for himself but for his dream, for his vision of the good life inspired by the beauty of a lovely rich girl” (Fahley 1985:71). Gatsby’s inspiration and committment came from the lovely Daisy Fay.

When Nick says to Gatsby “You can’t repeat the past” (GG 126), Gatsby is surprised by Nick’s beliefs and considers him to be a naïve “Can’t repeat the past?, he cried incredulously”, “Why of course you can!” (GG 126). He is childish to think that just with desire and money he can do something impossible like time traveling. Perhaps he thinks that love can solve anything. Gatsby wants for himself and Daisy to be back in Louisville, in love and to “be married from her house-just as if were five years ago” (GG 18) Gatsby lives in the past, a past which began from the first moment he kissed Daisy in 1917 and therefore he “talked a lot about the past…[He wanted to] return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly” (GG 110).

Gatsby is so naïve to think that even if Daisy is married and is his mistress, she will leave Tom, her husband and also will confess that she never loved him. “Not content merely to repeat the past, [Gatsby] must also eradicate the years in which his dream lost its reality” (Bloom 1985:78). Daisy has been his dream for the past five years, and this obsession does not allow him to see the things as they really are. Daisy is not that innocent girl from anymore; she is now a shallow, self-centered woman.

Throughout the novel, Jay is in the pursuit for happiness, and strongly believes in his dream and the object represented by it, Daisy. Along with Nick and George Wilson, he is a believer, a person who cares for someone else beside himself. He may be wrong about the kind of happiness that is possible, and about the woman who represents it, but at least he is committed to that dream. Of course, Gatsby is not flawless, but his pursuit of Daisy against impossible odds is perhaps the final form of the American will to create a new life different from what the destiny had in plan.

Regarding his possessions, probably one of the most symbolic and famous of the twentieth century is his car in “a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hot boxes and super-boxes and toolboxes, and tenaced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns” (GG 51). One of his signature possessions is the one that brought the final break-up between Daisy and him. Such an insignificant object, a sign of wealth, driven by a careless woman brought death and the destruction of a dream.

He was blindly confident to believe that only because he was wealthy and wasted money excessively with no reason, he could regain Daisy and their youth spent together. He is so blind that he refuses to believe that Daisy has ever cared for Tom, and during the confrontation at the Plaza Hotel, where Tom exposes him, he ceases to see the revulsion on Daisy’s face. After the incident, the illusion persists. Even after Daisy runs Myrtle down with his car, he continues to act like a gentleman and offers to take the blame for her careless driving. Gatsby takes her home and stands outside her house just in case she will have problems with Tom, without even knowing that she was busy planning with her husband ways of escaping the consequences. Gatsby, the adult, the wealthy man, capable of organizing a bootlegger’s ring is helpless as a child. Like George Wilson who is also a victim of the rich, Gatsby dies ignorant of the forces that preyed upon him and the essentially infantile quality of his dream.

On the last day of his life, Gatsby “no longer cared” (GG 186) whether Daisy would call or not. He goes on with his life like nothing has happened, begins the day by having breakfast with Nick, puts his bathing suit at two o’clock and gets the mattress from the garage. He uses the pool for the first time, at the end of the summer, which also marks the end of his obsession with an illusory dream. Gatsby was tired of fighting and perhaps, in the last moment, he saw Daisy the way she really was, a hypocrite, a liar and shallow woman.

Despite having the house filled with unknown, rich people during his lifetime, at his funeral the crowds are nowhere to be seen just to pay their respects for him. The only party attendee who calls Gatsby’s house is Klipspringer, but only to ask about a pair of shoes that he has misplaced.

Gatsby cannot accomplish his dream because of his lack of awareness regarding the corruption of the rich. Even though he reaches for that green light on the Buchanans’ dock, he is never able to reach it.

In conclusion, Gatsby has devoted his life to belonging to an exclusive group only to accomplish his romantic idealism, being unaware of the fact that no matter how far up he climbs on the social ladder, he will never fit in, always being the intruder. His romantic vision has not prepared him for the corrupt world of the old rich. He is surrounded by unhappiness and fails to see that money cannot buy it.

3.2 Obsessive Love

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a novel about a tragic love story between Jay Gatsby, a man who constructed his life around the woman he loved and Daisy Fay, a beautiful, young girl, whom he met before going to war. Jay Gatsby was a young, poor officer who went away to make fortune just for Daisy, while she enjoyed the riches and attentions of those who courted her. The social and moral differences between the two lovers are the ones which will finally set them apart. It is not until at the end of the novel that Gatsby realizes that Daisy did not love him, the way he did.

Gatsby met Daisy and fell in love with her five years before the novel opens. When he first met her, while being a young officer, he was impressed by her beauty and also by the fact that Daisy represented “old” money. Because he could not offer her the lifestyle that she was accustomed to, he went away; to fight in the war and afterwards made a fortune, while Daisy continued her shallow lifestyle. Daisy became a legend in Gatsby’s mind, one without which he cannot go on with his life and continues to live in the past. Distance, in Gatsby’s case made the love more powerful. But this love is only a result of his imagination, of his innocent, naïve thought that Daisy would wait for him and always love him. Daisy grew tired of waiting for Gatsby, and soon her husband Tom Buchanan, bought her love with a thirty thousand necklace. In fact, money was everything that Daisy desired, not sentimental things.

That moment of revelation when Gatsby first kissed Daisy in 1917, gave birth to his obsession. His vision is totally egocentric. “Daisy is the object of his worship, but she is not allowed to warm humanity, no autonomous life of her own as a woman” (Parkinson 1988:108). Gatsby lives in a world invented by himself, which spins around Daisy, without acknowledging the fact that she has changed. “The woman with the flower name is continually measured up to his vision of her” (Burdescu 2012:114).

Gatsby fallowed Daisy throughout that period, and this thing is obvious when he shows her the clipping on their first meeting “look at this, said Gatsby, here is a lot of clippings-about you” (GG 90). He knew what he needed in order to get Daisy, money, even if it was obtained through illegal means. Gatsby’s purpose in life was Daisy, while Daisy’s were material things and luxuries. Daisy’s own self and the people she surrounded herself with, are in contrast with Gatsby’s identity and dream. He was so obsessively in love that he could not see the real Daisy. He could not accept the fact that she has changed over the past five years, that she was a materialistic woman only attracted by wealth. When she discovered how rich Gatsby was, she felt attracted to him.

After five years, Daisy first hears the name of Gatsby from her cousin Nick, and seems surprised, somehow hopping that it is that Gatsby, the one from her past:

“You must know Gatsby.”

“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. ”What Gatsby?” (GG 16).

Even though she knows that there is a possibility that he could be the one, she does nothing in order to see him, hopping that, if he wants to, he will do the first step. But, as well as Daisy, he lacks the courage to invite her personally and asks his friend Nick for help. Nick is the one who invites Daisy, alone for a tea. Gatsby wants absolutely everything to be in order for their first re-encounter, and on a raining day, sends the gardener to cut Nick’s grass and fills Nick’s living room with white flowers, just to impress Daisy. Gatsby is afraid that even if things go on well, they will never be the same as in . Somehow, he is trying to turn back time. When Daisy arrives, Gatsby is nowhere to be found, and soon a knock at the door is heard and Gatsby enters, after running around the house in the rain. The walk in the rain can be a symbol of his desperation and nervousness.

When the two former lovers meet again, the atmosphere is very awkward. Gatsby knocks Nick’s clock over and finally Nick leaves them alone, returning after half an hour just to find them radiantly happy.

Outside, the rain has stopped and Gatsby invites Nick and Daisy to his mansion, where he shows them his possessions. Gatsby is the one who dominates the first meeting with Daisy, finally moving the action at his place. At his mansion, Daisy cries, being profoundly impressed by Gatsby’s collection of English shirts. Gatsby fails to see that she was only astonished by his wealth and possessions, not by his own personal charm. Gatsby tells her, that he has been looking towards her house, at night and envisioned their future together. Nick is the only one who sees that Daisy is no fit for his friend, that she cannot live up to Gatsby’s vision of her. He is so in love, that he projects the same amount of feelings on Daisy, and hopping that he feels the same, thinks that she will do everything she can to be with him.

When studying the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy, a basic question arises. What is the basis of the mutual attraction, if it is double sided, between Daisy and Gatsby? In Daisy’s case the answer is simple. She wants to be with Gatsby because she thinks that he represents that safety that she longed for. But, in Gatsby’s, Daisy is that green light after which he longs every night, she is his romantic dream, his idealism, the one without whom he cannot go further with his life, always being stranded in the past.

Daisy represents the woman of the Jazz Age, whose personal failure is related to the one of her lover. Her failure never becomes a personal or human one. There is a famous passage in which Nick sees his cousin as a perfect representation of the effects of glamour and wealth. Nick is speaking first to Gatsby:

“She’s got an indiscret voice”, I remarked.” It’s full of-“ I hesitated”

“Her voice is full of money”, he said suddenly

“That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money- that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the fringe of it, the cymbols’ song of it…High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl…”(GG 127)

In the passage in which, linked arm to arm, Gatsby and Daisy stand at the window looking toward the green light across the bay, it may be possible to fallow a little more sympathetically that quality of disillusion which begins to creep into Gatsby’s response to life.

Gatsby wants Daisy to see his house full of ”celebrated people”, in order to show her that he now belongs to a higher, popular class. His desire is for her to leave Tom, but he is not sincere to her regarding his own life. He does not want the real Daisy, the one who is five years older than she was when she first met him and who, now has a husband and a daughter. It is likely that Gatsby is only in love with the physical Daisy, not with the one who runs away from the accident, plans to escape with her husband, and finally does not even attend Gatsby’s funeral.

When they re-commence their love affair, their new love is a platonic one, even though in the past Gatsby “took her” (GG 178). The moment in which they are closer is neither when they speak or make love “they had never been closer in their month of love, nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat’s shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep” (GG 180).

One of the scenes of great importance, is the one which takes place in the suit at the Plaza Hotel. In order for their love to resist, it must exist in the world of money. This scene is the perfect example of the destruction of love when surrounded by money. Now it is Tom who dominates the encounter, a territory unknown to Gatsby. Daisy, because of her boredom was the one who suggested that the party should move to . This movement takes the focus away from Gatsby. Daisy’s voice moulds the “senselessness [of the heat] into forms” (GG 142), turning abstract feelings into concrete crimes.

Before the five characters move to New York, Gatsby makes his famous remark “her voice is full of money” (GG 144). This can be interpreted as his first moment of awareness regarding Daisy’s persona, that she was a perfect representation of the world of money. Gatsby states that Daisy’s charm is attached to the attraction of wealth, for her, money is the equivalent of love. “The fact that Gatsby’s money, like his love, should be self-made gives his description of her voice, authority and depth” (Bruccoli 2002:51).

Gatsby is the only one who could have made that remark, because he is aware of what money and love can do, all of his actions being dictated by these two factors. Tom could have never described Daisy like that because he was not attracted to her wealth and also because Tom had money. Money is not a goal in Tom’s life because he was “old” money, while Gatsby was “new” one. Everything that Gatsby buys with his dirty money, is to regain Daisy, his purpose in life. When he buys his house, in fact he buys a dream. But, because of his naiveté regarding the rich, he is completely innocent, unaware of the limits that money can have.

After the accident which led to Myrtle’s death, he wants to take the blame for Daisy’s careless driving, and even stays outside her house to protect her of what he thinks Tom might do to her, without realizing that Daisy was planning to escape with her husband.

Gatsby finally tells Nick his love story with Daisy from Louisville back in 1917, and confesses to him that he loved her for her youth, vitality and also popularity and social position. She represented everything that he did not have and desired. He also tells him that he lied about his background just to make her believe that he was good for her. Gatsby’s story allows Nick to analyze his love for Daisy. He identifies Daisy’s aura of money and her high class as being one of the components which determined Gatsby’s attraction to her. In addition Nick considers that Gatsby, because of his desire to conquer Daisy, gave up to all of his hope to the task of gaining wealth.

In the end, can Gatsby’s love for Daisy be considered an obsessive one, one which has nothing to do with reality, Gatsby being in love with the past, or is his love, a true, romantic one, which has surpassed all the difficulties, because of the money and high status only to be ruined in the end? Were all the sacrifices that Gatsby have made worth for Daisy? Daisy can be considered the bad in Jay Gatsby’s life. Because of her he enters the world of illegal business and also lies about his past, only to be killed in the end by her lack of responsibility. His love was not reciprocal, and his money was ntr enough to make Daisy leave her brutal husband with whom she resembled silently.

CHAPTER 4

KEY ELEMENTS OF THE NOVEL

4.1Adultery in The Great Gatsby

In The Great Gatsby, married characters, belonging to both the high and the low class, which are apparently happy with their spouses, cheat on them. Characters like Daisy Fay, Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson (the only one belonging to the low class), are cheaters, who feel no remorse in playing games with their lovers and also do not care if they hurt their partners. Adultery plays an important role in the novel, being present in all the mentioned marriages. Whether they cheat because of the lack of attention or just looking for control and financial stability, they are all longing for something that is absent in their marriages. Other reasons for cheating can be: boredom with a partner, lust, power, etc.

Myrtle Wilson, the wife of a garage and service owner in the Valley of Ashes, is a cheating character in the novel. Her reason for cheating is quite simple. Because she is poor, she looks for financial support in another man, Tom Buchanan, even if this means cheating. When Tom enters in her husband’s garage, Fitzgerald writes:

“[Myrtle] smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:”

 “Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.”

“Oh sure,” agreed Wilson hurriedly, and went toward the little office mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom”.

“I want to see you,” said Tom intently. “Get on the next train.”  (GG p.26)

George Wilson is an ignorant man, who does not care about his wife’s needs, even though he loves her. He fails to see that she is having an affair with one of his customers. Tom Buchanan, Myrtle’s lover, is a man with money, a member of the high class, who can fulfill all of her desires related to the lack of money. The moment in which Tom comes to George’s garage, Myrtle has her eyes set only on him, neglecting her husband. Myrtle does absolutely nothing in the house and garage, sending her husband to get chairs, leaving her alone with Tom, where she can, with no remorse, plan discreetly her next encounter with him in New York. Mr. Wilson is struggling with his business to make money and in order to keep things going, he needs the money of clients like Tom. In their adulterous relationship, Tom satisfies Myrtle with his money, the thing she longed for. It can be interpreted that the only reason why Myrtle engaged in such a relationship is for money. We do not know, if she loved her husband, and if Tom was a distraction, or whether she kept George as a lifeboat, not to be alone in case Tom got tired of her. Money is also the reason why she accepts to stay with such a violent man. Even though he pleases her with money, buying her all the things she wanted, he does not offer her protection and a permanent home, the apartment in New York only being used for their occasional encounters or just to party with the others like them.

If Myrtle is looking for money, Tom begins such a relationship because of his desire for control and power, and he did not choose his females from the higher class because he could not have exerted financial power over them. In the passage at the suit, Tom hits Myrtle, breaking her nose, just because she shouted his wife’s name. Fitzgerald writes that:

“Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face, discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy’s name. ‘Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!’ shouted Mrs. Wilson, ‘I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai–’ Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand” (GG 37).

He does not want a vulgar woman to shout the name of his precious, respected wife. The moment in which she disobeys, not following the unwritten rules of their relationship, Tom hits her to re-establish his control, power. The only thing that Myrtle has to do in order for the relationship to continue and at the same time to be productive for her, is to obey, to be submissive. He has over Myrtle both financial and physical control. Regarding this relationship, it can be interpreted that Tom cheats because he seeks mental stimulation. His confidence, determined by the financial wealth, exerted over Myrtle, is the one which draws him into the affair. Not just in the affair, but also during day to day activities, he needs to have control over everything, to manage each situation, but he fails to see that because he is neglecting Daisy, she is unhappy and unsatisfied. Daisy looks for the missing happiness in the arms of another man. She says:

“Well I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything[…]

Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born[…]It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about–things”.

“Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept”. “All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool–that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow”. (GG 16-17)

Daisy tells her cousin Nick about her daughter’s birth and also confesses to him that Tom was with another woman and because of that he could not be present at the event. She is unhappy, and even though she is aware that Tom is cheating on her, with a woman from New York, she does not take any action, does not even confront her. As a result, she wishes her daughter to be a fool, not to be aware of her future husband’s affair, because the lack of knowledge cannot hurt. She profoundly considers that ignorance is bliss. Because she knows that Tom is cheating on her, she focuses her attention on Gatsby, her former lover, either for revenge or nostalgia, if not for love. Gatsby loves her, his world spins around Daisy, even if she is married and has a daughter. Fitzgerald notes that:

“Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space. With an effort she glanced down at the table.‘You always look so cool,’ she repeated. She told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw. He was astounded. His mouth opened a little, and he looked at Gatsby, and then back at Daisy as if he had just recognized her as some one he know a long time ago” (GG 119).

They share an intimate moment, which goes to the point in which Daisy tells Gatsby that she loves him, without carrying that her husband, Tom was standing in the room. She is looking for the attention that she lacks at home. Gatsby, without knowing the real reason why Daisy started a relationship with him, does everything for her, even takes the blame for her “careless” driving which led to the murder of Myrtle Wilson.

Maybe Daisy entered the love affair just to make Tom notice her. He did not care about blaming Gatsby for Myrtle’s death, because this meant that he would no longer be a threat. A question though arises. Did Daisy know from the beginning of the affair that she would never leave Tom? All that she wanted was to get attention, without thinking about the consequences of her actions.

All the cheating characters in the novel cease to care about their partners’ feelings and about the consequences of their actions, being selfish, self-centered, only looking for what pleases them.

In the case of Daisy and Tom’s marriage, they both tolerate each other because they do not want their respected image as a lovely couple to be affected. There is no love in their marriage, only maintained appearances, while in the Wilsons’ case, George loved his wife, even forgave her for having cheated, and decided to start a new life somewhere else, everything leading to the final act of love, that of killing the one who supposedly murdered his wife and afterwards killing himself.

Tom’s desire for control, Myrtle’s wish for money and Daisy’s wish and need for attention, all lead to adultery in The Great Gatsby. Tom’s affair with Myrtle offers him the all needed physical and financial control, while Daisy seeks comfort in her relationship with Gatsby.

4.2 Power, punishment and violence in The Great Gatsby

Throughout The Great Gatsby, the characters act as dominators, or are submissive, according to their sex and wealth. If Tom Buchanan is a powerful, privileged white man, his wife Daisy resembles him, enjoying a life of privileges on the other hand, Jay Gatsby, Myrtle and her husband are marginal characters. Even though Gatsby is a self-made man, he cannot be dominant because of his past and also because he is a “new rich”. The ’ reason for being marginal is that they are poor. Nick is the only character who oscillates between being a marginal or dominant character. The characters have a criminal behaviour and thought, only because of their social background. Sex and class determine the making of crimes and the final punishment. From the scene of violence, in which Tom breaks Myrtle’s nose, to the car accident and the murder of Gatsby and suicide of George Wilson, Fitzgerald elicits the fact that it is impossible to change class position and when a character tries to break this rule, he/she will encounter violence and will be punished.

Tom Buchanan never changes his position as a dominant, powerful man, coming from a wealthy family of “old” money. In the novel he is described as following:

“Legs apart.. a man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner…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 shoulders moved under his thin coat.  It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body” (GG7).

The use of the sintagm “great pack of muscles” associates Tom with a powerful, forceful animal, found in his identity. The word “leverage” describes his ability to manage, solve things, so that everything ends up in his favor. This quality of taking advantage of everything, moulding things according to his thaught is a necessary condition to survive.

Because he comes from a wealthy family, he has no need to change his social class, and is aware of the privileges that wealth can buy. One might think that because of his superiority, he is not able to commence an affair with a poor woman. However this idea is totally wrong. His mistress, Myrtle Wilson, is a marginal character, a poor and uneducated woman, an opposite of the women with whom he is surrounded. Jordan refers to Myrtle as: “The girl who was with [Tom] got into the papers, too, because her arm was broken—she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel” (GG 77). It would have been an unimaginable thing for Tom to have started an affair with a woman of his own class, because the woman would have had the same power as him. It is quite strange how a strong, arrogant male like Tom is afraid of the power that a woman might have. He must have marginal, weak women just to keep his power through control and violence.

Nick is the one who describes his financial power “His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach…he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest.  It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that” (GG 6).  His “cruel” body and wealth are the ones that help him maintain his position over his opponent, Gatsby. Even though Tom commits many horrible acts, he receives no punishment, because he does not want to change his social position. He is innocent, even if he has an extramarital affair and is a physical abusive man. In Fitzgerald’s eyes, Tom is not a criminal.

Jay Gatsby, unlike Tom, has a suspicious past, he began his life as a poor boy, and because of his desire to enter a new, rich world, he is considered to be a criminal. Gatsby’s personality attracts and fascinates Nick, who describes him as:

“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 five times in life…[it] then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor…I was looking at an elegant roughneck…I could see nothing sinister about him’’ (GG 49-50).

During the confrontation at the Plaza Hotel, Gatsby is unable to see the power of the wealth of the Buchanans, and loses control of himself “Then I turned back to Gatsby–and was startled at his expression. He looked–and this is said in all contempt for the babbles slander of his garden–as if he had ‘killed a man” (GG 134).

For Tom, the desire to succeed is unimportant, a past full of wealth matters most. One’s identity lies in his ability to belong to the “old” rich, and Tom is threatened by the “new” rich who might steal his power. As a result he wants to know everything about Gatsby, to know what to expect from him. For Tom, knowledge is power “I’d like to know who he is and what he does” (GG 108). Tom refers to Gatsby as “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere” (GG 130). After having Gatsby investigated he finds out some of his secrets and the fact that his emotions and desires drive him. Emotions, in Tom’s opinion, are a sign of weakness. Gatsby already had wealth and wanted Daisy, and by finally obtaining her, he would realize his American dream. Tom considers Gatsby to be an incomplete man, only defined by his clothing and material objects.

If one character has to work to obtain his dream, that person is a criminal, and will be punished for it. Fitzgerald suggests that the American identity is criminal and connected inherently to violence. Wealthy characters like Tom and Daisy are in contrast with those who work in order to obtain their dreams like Myrtle and Gatsby.

Nick knows how to act in order to be accepted, but at the same time he does not change his position (he has a girlfriend, socializes with all kind of persons and goes to work). He has a set of values from his father and from his life in the Midwest “prominent, well-to-do people in the Middle Western city for three generations” (GG 3). If Tom despises Gatsby’s dream and desire, these very qualities are the ones that Nick admires. Nick considers Gatsby to be in touch with his feelings and obsessions.

Female characters also show signs of crimes and are punished in the end for them. Daisy’s rival is the poor, vulgar Myrtle Wilson. Daisy is a dominant character just because she has money and comes from a wealthy family while Myrtle embodies the opposite qualities and her poverty does not allow her to alter her social class. Their sexuality will lead to crimes and their final punishment. Myrtle, like Tom is represented by her body, as Nick observes:

“She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can.  Her face…contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smoldering” (GG 25).

Myrtle’s sexuality is represented by words like “smoldering”, “flesh” and “sensuously”. She is unable to hide her sexual identity. Her vitality was the one which attracted Tom, and determined him to start a relationship filled with aggression and lust. Her sexuality is considered a crime for which she must be punished.

If Myrtle’s only way of attracting men is her body, Daisy’s only physical appeal is considered to be the sound of her voice. Fitzgerald refers to her physical features as “Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it” (GG 9), and many times he refers to her voice as “There was an excitement in her voice that men who cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion,” (GG 9) “I had to follow the sound of it for a moment, up and down, with my ear alone,” (GG 67) and “Her voice is full of money” (GG 120). At the confrontation at the Plaza Hotel, Daisy is referred to as “the voice begged again to go” (GG 134), Daisy ceasing to exist as a human being. Daisy’s weapon is her voice not her femininity or sexuality. She lacks Myrtle’s vitality, but she has a secure financial identity.

The only moment in which Daisy shows her feminine side is when she receives a letter from Gatsby on the eve of her marriage, a moment in which she realizes what her life will be with Tom and also that she can lose true love ”Tell’em Daisy’s chane’ her mine” (GG.76). Fitzgerald writes:

“[Getting] her into a cold bath.  She wouldn’t let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow…We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead…and the incident was over…she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver” (GG 76).

The ice represents the fact that Daisy will become an unaffected woman, thrived by her desire to keep her class identity, without being influenced by her feelings. When she tells Nick “I’m p-paralyzed with happiness” (GG 8), she presents her current position, that of a married wife, who does not have love nor freedom in her life. She is inert both physically and emotionally. She is defined by her wealth and power and not by her femininity. She does not receive any punishment because she lack sexuality, the object of crime in Myrtle’s case, and her wealth keeps her “safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor” (GG 150).

Myrtle is punished because of her attempt to enter the world of the rich and also because of her display of blatant sexuality. She thinks that if she has money, she can become Daisy’s rival in Tom’s heart. The clothes change Myrtle’s personality as Nick states “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 and smaller around her” (GG 31).  When she wants to become a part of another group, her sexuality fades, becoming less and less full of life and instead filled with violence. Tom breaks her nose, when she challenged her position, restoring the social, hierarchical order by violence, punishing her for her crime. By hurting her, Tom is telling her that her attempt to climb on the social ladder is unacceptable and will result in injury.

Daisy, unlike Myrtle will receive no punishment, because in Fitzgerald’s world she has not committed any crime. Even though she is responsible for Myrtle’s death, she never tries to change her position, rather embracing it.”She wanted her life shaped now, immediately and the decision must be made some force” (GG 151). She acts as she has to, as an obedient, respectable woman. Because of her position, she is never suspected for the death of Myrtle, Gatsby even excusing her actions:

“I told Daisy I thought so. It’s better that the shock should all come at once.  She stood it pretty well.  He spoke as if Daisy’s reaction was the only thing that mattered” and “But of course I’ll say I was [driving the car]…I tried to make her stop, but she couldn’t…Then she fell over into my lap and I drove on”

(GG 143- 4).

In using the pronouns, Gatsby suggests that he is the guilty one not Daisy. For those who do not know the truth, she is innocent, even for him. Nick and Gatsby are the only ones who know the truth, but cannot tell it, and punish her because they are marginal characters.

Myrtle receives her final punishment when she is killed by Daisy, a powerful character. Fitzgerald explicitly depicts the scene of her death:

“When they had torn open her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath.  The mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long” (GG 137).

Only powerful, corrupted, immoral characters have the power to punish, even though in doing this they commit crimes of their own. Their power and wealth keep them safe from justice.

Fitzgerald uses violence to depict the omnipresent crime of the novel and the fact that attempting to change social class will be punished. The characters who do not try to change social class remain unharmed in the end. As a result, he indicated that in order to be fully American, one must accept a criminal mindset.

The Buchanans, even if they are mean and devious characters are safe within their class subject position in the end, while Gatsby and the Wilsons become criminals because of their dreams and wishes.

4.3 Colour symbolism in The Great Gatsby

Colours play an important role in The Great Gatsby, having a vibrant and rich meaning while depicting the American lifestyle and also the private lives of the characters. The colours help the reader create an image of the Americans during the Jazz Age. When the colours are not suggested, the all symbolic white replaces them. In the novel, the colours express ideas like hope, power, desire and emptiness. Nick’s descriptions of Gatsby’s parties offer the most colourful passages, showing the yellow of the fruits, the lavender dresses and also the coloured lights of Gatsby’s “blue garden” (GG 41). Being a newcomer, Nick is fascinated by the glitter and glamour which are all present at his friend’s parties.

The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock symbolizes Gatsby’s hope, his dream of winning her back, his lost love, and also his attempt to repossess her. When Daisy and Gatsby recommence their love, the light which at the beginning “seemed as close as a star to the moon” had turned into “a green light on a dock. His count of precious objects had diminished by one” (GG 90). Once the dream obtained, if only for a small period of time, the green light, which was a symbol for it, becomes ordinary, representing a disappointing reality. At the end of the novel, Gatsby’s friend compares the green light “to the fresh, green breast of the new world seen by the Dutch sailor’s eyes upon first viewing the eastern coast of America” (GG 171). Green is the colour of hope and possibility but it is also the colour of money. In The Great Gatsby the world spins around money. This colour represents Gatsby’s character, depicting the fact that he is an envious one. He is envious of Tom with whom Daisy is married, but also on many wealthy people, throwing huge parties just to attract them.

Through money, which colour is green, people obtain power in the society, the lives of them spinning around this concept. Gatsby needs money to live his new life but also to get Daisy back. He has a large green lawn and green ivy going up his house, while in his car, the passengers sit “in a sort of green leather conservatory” (GG 73) and later his car is described by Mr.Michaelis as “light green” (GG.158). Green is the symbol of future hope, happiness, especially for Gatsby, also representing his reunion with his love.

Being surrounded by luxuries and wealth he hopes to win back Daisy. The use of colours reflects his identity, the vibrancy of his outfits, the luxurious yellow car with green leather interior. For Gatsby, the colours are masks which show his success, wealth and new power. Behind the mask there is a self-made man, who does not allow and want people to see the real him, and uses the colours as a glimpse of hope and a hiding place.

The characters in The Great Gatsby are defined up to a certain extent through the use of colours. Nick describes a pair of twins who attend Gatsby’s party as “the girls in twin yellow dresses” (GG 44). Colours are so frequently used that the reader analyzes the characters and situations by the colours that define them. According to Andre Le Vot, blue and yellow are two competing colours in the novel. “Le Vot suggests ‘blue is ‘water, the sky, twilight, cool, restful, inviting. Yellow is wheat, gold and dead, combustible straw, and is thus ambiguous, for what seems attractive and warm may turn combustible, violent, too hot” (Tanner 1990:30). The “blue gardens” (GG 112) of Gatsby’s home and the “fresher blue ocean” (GG 112) are in contrast with the yellow image that surrounds the Buchanans, and also with their dryness.

“Le Vot has also noted that the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg are bright blue, framed by yellow glasses. The blue of the eyes have ‘dimmed a little’(GG p.26) over time whereas the yellow spectacles remain untarnished. Le Vot has seen this as symbolic of the wearing down of spiritual wealth and the rise of corrosive materialism” (Tanner 1990:30).

Green is the result of the combination of yellow and blue, and places the dream in a relaxing atmosphere which is not present in the novel. Green is an ideal and when Gatsby reaches for it, he, in fact destroys his own unrealistic dream.

He uses colours in order to lure Daisy, offering her a different life from her own, back in East Egg. Daisy both desires and is frightened by this world. At her first encounter with Nick, she wears white, when she arrives at her cousin’s house to meet Gatsby, she is wearing colours. As she is getting out of the car, she is wearing a lavender hat and a dress with bright bronze buttons “that gleamed in the sunlight” (GG.87). She had a “damp streak of hair, swept across her forehead ,like a dash of blue paint” (GG 82-3). She is joyful once entering Gatsby’s world created just for her. Gatsby shows her his “English shirts in coral and apple green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue” (GG 89). Being impressed by the beauty of the shirts, Daisy bursts into tears.

Myrtle is also a colorful character in the novel, one who, like Gatsby is trying to create a new identity. When we first meet her, she is wearing a “dark blue crepe-de-chine” (GG 28). She was living with her husband, George in the “valley of ashes” (GG 26), a territory between Long Island and New York. Critics consider that the valley of ashes symbolize the failure of the American dream. It is a territory in which only gas is sold, where nothing is accomplished and where the only hope for its residents is to go West. Myrtle can be seen standing ambitious in her blue dress against the grey background of the valley, while her husband, George stands hopeless, somehow shy, fading away into the grey walls of his garage. At the end of the novel, Myrtle will lie dead in the dust, while Gatsby will be obscured by the deadly dust. Both of them are victims of their hopes and failed dreams.

As well as for Myrtle, the colours symbolize hope, strength and offer a hiding place. In New York she lets “four taxi cab drive away before she selected a new one, lavender colored with grey upholstery” (GG 29). At her apartment in , she changes her attire, choosing a cream chiffon dress. By choosing cream, a colour close to white, to purity, she tries to play the role of a selected woman in a wealthy society. She passes from a life full of grey to one of cream. Nick states that with “the influence of the dress, her personality had also undergone a change” (GG 33). She uses cream as a way to cover her past life.

If Myrtle and Gatsby’s lives depend on colour, the lifestyles of the Buchanans and Jordan are marked by the lack of it. Whiteness is all present in their lives. White, even if it symbolizes purity, in the novel acts as a smokescreen, which hides the Buchanans’ crimes and behavior.

“Jordan remembers that in her youth Daisy ‘dressed in white, and had a little white roadster’(GG 73) projecting the image of virginal innocence and untainted perfection, yet we know that she made love to Gatsby out of wed-lock, at a time when this was highly unacceptable for a woman”( Paulson 1978:71).

The first time we meet Daisy and her friend Jordan, they are wearing white dresses. The fact that Daisy wears white and is surrounded by the lack of colour, represents her contentment with her current life. Nick says that they “talked at once… with a bantering inconsequence… that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire” (GG 17). They are trying to bleach the colours, just to create an image of perfection. Jordan has “powdered white fingers” (GG 110), while Daisy always dresses in white. If colours are hopeful, the lack of them represents hopelessness, which the Buchanans have in their marriage. The first time we meet Daisy she cries despairingly “[s]ophisticated – God I’m so sophisticated!” and laughs with “thrilling scorn” (GG 22). The fact that she uses white to symbolize perfection and purity is as false as Gatsby’s use of colours to obtain position, class and happiness.

The Valley of Ashes provides the scene for the majority of the use of the colour grey in the novel. Grey mostly symbolizes the utter hopelessness that thrives within the Valley of Ashes. Fitzgerald describes the valley as “…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 ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud…” (GG 25).

Throughout the novel, colours are used symbolically, as a way of expressing the characters’ hopes, wishes, and also their behavior.

CONCLUSIONS

Throughout my thesis I have proved that The Great Gatsby by the American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald is a novel which spins around the concept of money, the privileges and power it can bring in the characters’ life, all of this taking place in the period prior to the Great Depression. The novel uses the idea of an obsessive love in order to depict the carelessness of the characters, their reckless lifestyle, which are symbols of the fruitful period before the economical downfall and also of their crimes and violent behaviour.

Money corrupt people and Gatsby is the only character who changes his life completely, creating a new one filled with lies, crimes, even a new name, identity just to recover his lost romantic dream. He is childish in his acts, innocent, believing that money will bring Daisy back. He fails to see that he is just a distraction, a tool in Daisy’s hands, who only uses him to make her husband jealous, knowing that she would never leave Tom, who was her equal. On the other hand, Daisy is a flappy girl, a sophisticated woman, who used to smoke and party. She was a charming woman, but at the same time irresponsible and shallow. She resembles her husband, who represents the alpha male, always in control, always wanting to have power over the poor. Nick Carraway is a tolerant and honest man, who helps his friend Gatsby; he is the only character that does not want to have a prosperous life through illicit means.

Colours are used intelligently in order to portray the mental and physical features of the characters, each having a representative colour which embodies his personality. Adultery seems to be the cause of the conflicts, Daisy cheating because of boredom, Tom to satisfy himself and Myrtle for financial reasons. They are all careless with their spouse’s life and also with their lovers, not thinking about the consequences of their actions. At the end of the novel the only ones who do not get hurt are the rich who did not try to change their social status. Fitzgerald punishes the ones who choose to step outside of their social circle, the best example being Gatsby’s death at the end of the novel.

The Great Gatsby is a criticism of the 1920s America, a document of the attitudes of the “old” rich towards life, which offers an insight to the life, obsessions and actions of them in contrast to the poor and newly rich. The period depicted in the novel, prior to the Great Depression was one of perverse manners in which all of the old, honorable values had become twisted by the new generation whose main focus was obtaining money regardless of the means. The Great Gatsby offers us a perfect image of the life of the rich, filled with opulence, Gatsby’s parties being the image of how they used to spend their money and time. The novel encompasses a conflict between two generations, the “old” rich and “new” ones and Fitzgerald is quite fascinated by the hierarchy and mood of America in the 1920s.

The Great Gatsby is about American issues, a version of the new social world feared by the tradition of American moralists. It is a world of broken and false relationship; a word of money and success rather than one of social responsibility.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bewley, Marius. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A collection of critical essays. ed. Arthur Mizener, , 1963.

Bloom, Harold. Modern Critical views: F. Scott Fitzgerald. ed. Chelsea House Publishers, , 1985.

Bloom, Harold. Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: F. Scott Fitzgerald. ed. Chelsea House Publishers, , 2006.

Bloom, Harold. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby. ed. Chelsea House Publishers, , 2006.

Bruccoli, Matthew. Introduction. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. ed. press, , 1991.

Bryer, Jackson. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Critical Reception. ed B. Franklin,[f.l], 1978.

Chambers, John. The Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald. ed. Martin’s Press, , 1989.

Cousineau, Thomas. The Great Gatsby: Romance or Holocaust?”. Ritual Unbound Reading Sacrifice in Modernist Fiction. [f.e],Newark, 2004.

Curnutt, Kirk. The Introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald. ed. Press, , 1987.

Dahl, Curtis. Fitzgerald’s use of architectural styles in The Great Gatsby. American Studies. [f.e],[f.l],1984:91-102.

Del Gizzo, Suzane. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. American Literary Scholarship: An Annual. ed. J. Nordloh and Gary Schornhorst, , 2006, 109-37.

Fahey, William. F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream. ed. Thomas Y. Crowell Company, , 1985.

Foster, Richard. The Way to Read Gatsby. ed. Brom Weber, , 1970;94-95.

Fraser, Keith. Another of The Great Gatsby. English Studies in Canada. [f.e], [f.l], 1979: 330-43.

Godden, Richard. The Great Gatsby, Glamour on the Turn’ Fictions of capital: The American Novel from James to Mailer. ed. Cambridge University Press, , 2008.

Honzo, Thomas. The Theme and the Narrator of The Great Gatsby. Modern Fiction Studies 2, [f.e],[f.l],1956-57; 183-90.

Hook, Andrew. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Literary Life. ed. Polgrone Macmillan, Hampshire, 2002.

. Feeling Half Feminine: Modernism and the Politics of Emotion in The Great Gatsby. American Literature. [f.e], [f.l], 1996: 405-31.

Minter, David. Dream, Design and Interpretation in The Great Gatsby. Twentieth century interpretation of The Great Gatsby. ed. Ernest Lockridge, Cliff, 1968.

Paulson, A.B. The Great Gatsby: Oral Aggression and Splitting. American Imago: A Psychoanalytic Journal for Culture, Sciences and the Arts. [f.e],[f.l],1978: 71-85.

Rowe, Joyce. Equivocal Endings in Classic American Novels. ed. Press, , 1987.

Strba, Ivan. Decadence of the human character- Tom Buchanan. [f.e], Presov, 2007.

Trendell. Nicholas, F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby. ed. Icon, , 1997.

Turnbull, A. The letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald. ed. Penguin, , 1968.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bewley, Marius. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A collection of critical essays. ed. Arthur Mizener, , 1963.

Bloom, Harold. Modern Critical views: F. Scott Fitzgerald. ed. Chelsea House Publishers, , 1985.

Bloom, Harold. Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: F. Scott Fitzgerald. ed. Chelsea House Publishers, , 2006.

Bloom, Harold. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby. ed. Chelsea House Publishers, , 2006.

Bruccoli, Matthew. Introduction. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. ed. press, , 1991.

Bryer, Jackson. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Critical Reception. ed B. Franklin,[f.l], 1978.

Chambers, John. The Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald. ed. Martin’s Press, , 1989.

Cousineau, Thomas. The Great Gatsby: Romance or Holocaust?”. Ritual Unbound Reading Sacrifice in Modernist Fiction. [f.e],Newark, 2004.

Curnutt, Kirk. The Introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald. ed. Press, , 1987.

Dahl, Curtis. Fitzgerald’s use of architectural styles in The Great Gatsby. American Studies. [f.e],[f.l],1984:91-102.

Del Gizzo, Suzane. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. American Literary Scholarship: An Annual. ed. J. Nordloh and Gary Schornhorst, , 2006, 109-37.

Fahey, William. F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream. ed. Thomas Y. Crowell Company, , 1985.

Foster, Richard. The Way to Read Gatsby. ed. Brom Weber, , 1970;94-95.

Fraser, Keith. Another of The Great Gatsby. English Studies in Canada. [f.e], [f.l], 1979: 330-43.

Godden, Richard. The Great Gatsby, Glamour on the Turn’ Fictions of capital: The American Novel from James to Mailer. ed. Cambridge University Press, , 2008.

Honzo, Thomas. The Theme and the Narrator of The Great Gatsby. Modern Fiction Studies 2, [f.e],[f.l],1956-57; 183-90.

Hook, Andrew. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Literary Life. ed. Polgrone Macmillan, Hampshire, 2002.

. Feeling Half Feminine: Modernism and the Politics of Emotion in The Great Gatsby. American Literature. [f.e], [f.l], 1996: 405-31.

Minter, David. Dream, Design and Interpretation in The Great Gatsby. Twentieth century interpretation of The Great Gatsby. ed. Ernest Lockridge, Cliff, 1968.

Paulson, A.B. The Great Gatsby: Oral Aggression and Splitting. American Imago: A Psychoanalytic Journal for Culture, Sciences and the Arts. [f.e],[f.l],1978: 71-85.

Rowe, Joyce. Equivocal Endings in Classic American Novels. ed. Press, , 1987.

Strba, Ivan. Decadence of the human character- Tom Buchanan. [f.e], Presov, 2007.

Trendell. Nicholas, F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby. ed. Icon, , 1997.

Turnbull, A. The letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald. ed. Penguin, , 1968.