Revision Notes (The Great Gatsby)

The Great Gatsby

Revision Notes

Contents

1. Background

2. Setting

3. Characters

4. Narration

5. Themes

6. Symbolism

7. Imagery

1. Background

Economic extremes
The early part of the 1920s was a time of economic boom for the United States. Their industries had supplied the war in Europe, generating enormous profits. The automobile industry and those related to it, such as the oil companies, were expanding very rapidly.
In The Great Gatsby, we are told that Tom Buchanan had bought his palatial mansion from an "oil man".
In the novel, cars play a prominent part. Gatsby has a yellow Rolls-Royce, and Tom a blue coupe.
Railroads (railways) and aviation were also thriving.
We are told Gatsby has a 'hydroplane', a plane which can take off and land on water.
This economic expansion led to a rise in consumerism and this materialistic attitude is satirised in the character of Myrtle in The Great Gatsby:
"I'm going to give you this dress as soon as I'm through with it. I've got to get another one tomorrow. I'm going to make a list of all the things I've got to get.
However, other parts of the economy were in decline, particularly agriculture.
Increased mechanisation in farming had led to land being over intensively worked, and this, coupled with a prolonged period of drought, led to severe soil erosion problems in certain Midwestern states.
This area of the country came to be known as the 'Dustbowl'.
One of the states affected would have been North Dakota, where we are told Gatsby's parents were "unsuccessful farm people".
John Steinbeck also deals with this issue in his novel 'The Grapes of Wrath'.
In addition, workers on the lower rungs of the ladder did not share in the prosperity. George Wilson struggles to make a living, and the "ash-grey" men who "swarm" to unload the railroad cars also seem to have missed out on the general bonanza.
Social Class
Although America was known as the 'land of the free', and the 'American Dream' embodied the notion that anyone could rise to the top in society regardless of their origins, Fitzgerald reveals in The Great Gatsby that strong social divisions were already in place, with "indiscernible barbed wire" in between them. When Nick describes the difference between West Egg and East Egg (based on the Hamptons in Long Island), he seems slightly embarrassed, saying West Egg is "the less fashionable of the two".
The difference is actually one of class, partly between new money and old money, but also of social provenance. In the USA, Protestants of English, Scottish, French, Dutch or German origin formed the social elite. They were the descendants of those immigrants who had originally come to the USA in search of religious freedom, like the Pilgrim Fathers, or to develop business interests. They were well educated and able people, often already wealthy, who quickly formed an aristocracy in all but name.
Poor migrants from Eastern Europe, Poland and Ireland were looked down on. Jewish immigrants, although they might be wealthy, were also excluded socially. Nick makes this clear in his vivid description in chapter four of the visitors to Gatsby's parties.
"From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and a man named Bunsen, whom I knew at Yale and Doctor Webster Civet…" The listed names of the East Eggers: Hornbeam, Voltaire, Blackbuck, Ismay, Chrystie, Hubert Auerbach, Clarence Endive are clearly all of Western European origin, like the characters Buchanan and Carraway.
By contrast, those from West Egg sound East European, Irish or Jewish, "the Poles and the Mulreadys, Cecil Roebuck and Cecil Schoen and Gulick…Eckhaus…Clyde Cohen and Don S Schwartz and Arthur McCarty."
In the novel, Gatsby's real name is 'Gatz'. He has anglicised this to 'Gatsby' in order to be more socially acceptable.
Prohibition
A major social feature of the 1920s was Prohibition.
A law introduced in 1920 prohibited the manufacture, sale or transportation of alcohol, although it was not actually against the law to drink alcohol.
The law was motivated by the temperance movement which began in the 19th century as a protest against the drunkenness which was common in the lawless frontier towns of America.
Profits from bootlegging
Huge profits were being made in the manufacture of alcohol. In the novel it is represented by Gatsby's house having been built by a brewer. The churches strongly supported the temperance movement which was particularly powerful in the Midwestern states. However, the Prohibition law, which remained in place until 1933, did not stop people abusing alcohol.
In 'The Great Gatsby', scenes of riotous drunkenness are described at Gatsby's parties and at Myrtle's flat. Despite the fact that in real life Fitzgerald and his wife drank heavily themselves, these scenes are presented critically in the disapproving voice of narrator Nick Carraway.
Female behaviour
The drunkenness of women was regarded as a particular social evil, and this is touched on a number of times in the novel.
For instance, Daisy is disgusted by a drunken Miss Baedeker at Gatsby's party, and Myrtle's sister Catherine is described as being "stupid with liquor" when she is informed of Myrtle's death.
Nick's disgust at the immorality of the East is embodied in a dream of a drunken woman being carried through the streets on a stretcher. Drunken misbehaviour was one reason that the decade was given the nickname the 'Roaring Twenties', along with the popularity of loud jazz music.
Below is video with an example of the style of music and dancing that was popular during the 1920s.
Organised Crime
Prohibition had the unwelcome result of promoting organised crime as the demand for alcohol meant it had to be supplied illegally. Unscrupulous traders could import it quite easily from Canada and Mexico. This was known as 'bootlegging', and in the novel there are rumours that Gatsby has made his money in this way.
Before setting off on the outing to New York, Tom says he might buy petrol at a drug-store, adding pointedly, "You can buy anything at a drug-store nowadays."
This leads to an embarrassed silence, as Tom is implying that Gatsby's business interest in drug-stores is a cover for selling illicit alcohol.
As well as being sold at drug-stores, alcohol was also freely available at clubs and saloons known as 'speakeasies', and although these were sometimes raided, the trade continued unabated.
The police were often bribed with some of the vast profits to be made. The renowned gangster Al Capone made a huge fortune through controlling speakeasies and the illegal alcohol trade in Chicago.
Corruption in sport
The corruption in the police forces allowed other forms of crime to flourish also. The fixing of sports results to enable gamblers to profiteer is referred to in The Great Gatsby, when Gatsby introduces Meyer Wolfshiem to Nick as "the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919."
This was based on a real incident. A top baseball team, the Chicago White Sox, favourites to win the World's Series, conspired with their contacts in a criminal gambling syndicate to lose to their opponents, the Cincinnati Reds. This seems to have been another branch of crime in which Gatsby dabbled. When Nick answers the phone in Gatsby’s mansion, the speaker says, “Young Parke’s in trouble… they picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter.” The speaker hangs up abruptly when he is told that Gatsby is dead.
The Mafia was behind much of the organised crime at this time, and murder was part of its activities. Guests at Gatsby’s party pass on the rumour that Gatsby himself once killed a man. The criminal bosses were based in the large cities, particularly Chicago, and it is a hint of his criminal activities when Gatsby gets phone-calls from these known centres of organised crime: “Chicago was calling him on the wire”; “Philadelphia wants you on the phone, sir.”
Huge fortunes could quickly be made. Tom Buchanan speculates Gatsby is a bootlegger: “a lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers, you know.” In an unguarded moment, Gatsby tells Nick it took him ‘just three years’ to earn the money to buy his ‘colossal’ house. Al Capone, who successfully avoided being implicated in his crimes, was eventually arrested and imprisoned – for tax avoidance!

2. Setting

The Midwest
In the novel, the settings relate to the themes of the book, in addition to providing a backdrop against which the reader can imagine the characters.
The main action of the book takes place in and around Long Island, New York. However, there are flashbacks and many references to the Midwest.
The main characters in the book all originate from this area. The narrator, Nick Carraway describes the book as:
"a story of the West…Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners."
Nick says he comes from a "Middle-Western city", which may be assumed to be Minneapolis in Minnesota, although it is never named.
Tom Buchanan comes from Chicago and he and Daisy lived there before moving East.
The Midwest of America is associated with an upright, conservative lifestyle and strong family values.
By the 1920s, Midwestern society had remained unchanged for generations. Nick describes his city as one where "dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name".
While this creates a secure environment, it can also appear stifling and old-fashioned, e.g. he describes "all my aunts and uncles" talking over his change of career.
He had been educated in New England and had been to Europe during the First World War. When he came back, the Midwest seemed to him "like the ragged edge of the universe".
However, Nick comes to appreciate his own area after becoming disgusted with the soulless immorality of the East. He recalls how much he enjoyed the "sharp wild brace" of the cold air when returning home at Christmas. After his involvement with the events of summer 1922, Nick turns his back on the East.
Gatsby also comes from the Midwest, specifically North Dakota, a relatively poor, agricultural area on the northern edge of the Midwest. He too abandons it in favour of the more glamorous East.
New York/Long Island
In the novel, New York represents a more vibrant, modern lifestyle. With a more shifting and varied population, moral values are much more lax than in the Midwest. In the 1920s it was the centre of the film industry which was associated with an 'anything goes' lifestyle.
At first Nick Carraway embraces the freedom that life in New York seems to offer, but he later rejects it. In the final chapter he admits that '"even when the East excited me most... even then it had always for me a quality of distortion."
He describes a scene from one of his "fantastic dreams" in which four well-dressed men are carrying a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress whose hand "sparkles cold with jewels". They take her to "the wrong house. But no one knows the woman's name and no one cares." This vision sums up the basic heartlessness of New York society in which Nick has detected a moral vacuum. This is the society which attends Gatsby's parties, but ignores his funeral.
East Egg v West Egg
Based on real settlements called East and West Hampton, these are two very wealthy residential areas on Long Island, separated by a bay.
Gatsby's house is in West Egg, which Nick, aware he is oversimplifying, describes as 'the less fashionable' of the two, although he adds that the differences between the areas are 'bizarre and not a little sinister'.
Although Gatsby's house is huge and lavish, it is tasteless, showing his lack of real sophistication. Nick sneers at it for being unattractive and looking like a copy of a Normandy Hôtel de Ville.
This suggests its design is inappropriately grandiose for a dwelling house. It is significant that it is an imitation, as Gatsby himself is an imitation. The fact it is obviously new is a negative feature because it means it has a lack of heritage, something Tom mocks Gatsby for when he calls him "Mr Nobody from Nowhere".
Fitzgerald's use of personification in the phrase "a thin beard of raw ivy" is effective in again demanding comparison with its occupant. The image is comic, but also suggests youth and vulnerability, as well as a wish for concealment – just as Gatsby is concealing his real self.
Nick's house, which he mocks as a "small eyesore", is also in West Egg. However, Nick has admitted his family are 'well-to-do' and his poverty is only assumed. When he describes his little house as "squeezed between two huge places", this looks forward to Nick being caught in the emotional crossfire between Gatsby and the Buchanans.
Daisy and Tom live in East Egg, which is much more exclusive and where the old money set live. The phrase "indiscernible barbed wire" used in chapter eight sums up the social barrier between the two 'Eggs' which even money can't penetrate. While East Egg is also expensive and luxurious, it is beautiful: "the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water...".
The word 'palaces' evokes connotations of royalty, and although they have no titles, the Buchanans are the American equivalent of aristocrats. 'Glittered' perhaps suggests hardness and impenetrability as well as beauty. The use of plurals suggests that with the Buchanans, money is no object: following on from a huge lawn are "sundials and brick walks and burning gardens". Nick is enchanted by his first view of their house: "the front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold."
The Buchanans' house is the epitome of good taste: 'Georgian colonial' suggests an illustrious ancestral background, although we learn later Tom actually bought the house from "an oil man". Daisy's drawing room seems as delicate and charming as Daisy herself on first appearance: "a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house" …with a "frosted wedding-cake" of a ceiling and a '"wine-coloured" rug.
However, Nick's description includes discordant notes: the breeze blowing through the open windows causes the curtains to "whip and snap" and a picture to "groan". These sharp, negative monosyllables hint at the tensions in the household. Most significantly, Daisy's house has a private dock on the water with a "green light". It is this which comes to symbolise Gatsby's dream.
The Valley of Ashes
The 'valley of ashes' lies between Long Island and New York and the Wilsons live on the edge of this area. It is a desolate industrial wasteland, bounded on one side by "a small foul river". Fitzgerald uses an agricultural image to stress its barren nature through contrast: "a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens". The "spasms of bleak dust" which drift over the area turn everything grey so the men who work on the railroad there are themselves "ash-grey".
The imagery of dust and ashes recalls death – the people who are condemned to live and work there inhabit a kind of living death, shut out from the wealth that more privileged people such as the Buchanans enjoy.
'Ashes' also has connotations of penitence and humiliation. Tom humiliates Wilson both verbally and by his actions - he is having an affair with his wife. Myrtle despises Wilson for his poverty. As well as revealing the huge gulf between the haves and have-nots in America in the 1920s, in the valley of ashes Fitzgerald also hints at the spiritual barrenness of American society, which is materialistic and lacking in morals or decency. Nick says he always finds the area "vaguely disquieting", reflecting his feelings about the moral decay that it suggests.

George Wilson's garage
George Wilson's garage is a "small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land". Its interior is described by Nick as "unprosperous and bare", which reflects the plight of its owner who is one of society's losers. Nick describes the garage as "contiguous to absolutely nothing" which symbolises George's prospects. Although a sign on the garage claims cars are "bought and sold", the only car visible inside is the "dust-covered wreck of a Ford". This looks ahead to the car accident which claims Myrtle's life.
Myrtle's apartment
Tom has bought a small apartment in 158th Street in New York where he can meet his mistress, Myrtle. The first description of the building as "a long white cake of apartment-houses" echoes Daisy's room with its "wedding cake frosted" ceiling. However, although Myrtle feels very proud of her apartment (she casts a "regal" glance at it) it is clear Tom has not spent much money on it.
It is on the top floor of the block, which is usually the cheapest, and it is very tiny: "a small living-room, a small dining-room, a small bedroom and bath." The repetition of 'small' shows that Tom, who is very wealthy, has spent the minimum.
There is some comedy in the description of the over large furniture which people trip over, with its "scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles." The ridiculousness of the furniture shows Tom's contempt for Myrtle, and Myrtle's pride in her apartment is both comic and pathetic - she will ultimately become a victim of Tom's selfishness.
The Suite at the Plaza Hotel
The important confrontation between Gatsby and Tom takes place here. The room is described as "large and stifling", the heat a metaphor for the emotional tension that is building.
Nick had already described the weather as "broiling", noting in the train on his way to Daisy's that the "straw seats of the car hovered on the edge of combustion."
Nick notes how the "compressed heat exploded into sound" as they hear the Mendelssohn's Wedding March from the ballroom below. This seems like a mocking comment on Tom and Daisy's relationship as both are engaged in adulterous affairs
The Jazz Age
The name is derived from the increasing popularity of jazz music in the 1920s, but is taken to refer to a period of time in which there were great advancements in technology and significant economic growth.
This combination led to increased consumerism - there were more things to buy and more money to buy them with.
At the same time, there was a noticeable relaxing of the old social mores and 'modern' developments in the arts.
However, these two ideas, the American Dream and the Jazz Age, come into conflict.
Through his depiction of the Jazz Age in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald demonstrates how the American Dream failed in various ways:
Jazz Age characters such as the Buchanans are the inheritors of the Dream in its material sense – they have enormous wealth but they lack any purpose or vision in their lives. In the aftermath of the First World War, with so many young men dying in the war, old religious certainties were questioned. This led some survivors to adopt a 'live for the day' attitude.
Jay Gatsby (or James Gatz, to give him his real name) could be said to represent the pure, or original, form of the American Dream. We see his sense of aspiration in his boyhood schedule for self improvement. As a teenager, he was further inspired by the figure of Dan Cody – a man who fulfilled the American Dream in its traditional form prospecting in the Nevada silver fields and the Yukon.
The evolution of James Gatz to Jay Gatsby that concludes in the 1920s represents a corrupted version of the American Dream. Gatsby owns a palatial home full of expensive things and throws lavish parties. In the material sense, he has achieved the American Dream. But just beneath the surface we discover this dream is built on a foundation of lies and corruption. Gatsby's personality and personal history are invented, while his money comes from criminal activities. He justifies all this to himself as a means to an end - his reunion with Daisy.
What differentiates Gatsby from other characters is that he still has a dream, "an extraordinary gift of hope". It is this that sets him apart from the others and which makes Nick admire him: "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." Ironically, though, the object of his dream is a woman who isn't worth it, and the objective of his dream – "to wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath" - is impossible to achieve.
At the end of the book, the idea of Gatsby's dream is specifically merged with the birth of the American Dream – the arrival of the Dutch sailors and their wonder at the "fresh, green breast of the New World." The "transitory enchanted moment [when] man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent" is equated with "Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock." Fitzgerald leaves the reader with the thought that, while both these dreams may have failed, people could continue to strive for the unattainable and "stretch out our arms further".

3. Characters
Jay Gatsby
Gatsby is the eponymous hero of the book and is the main focus. However, although Gatsby has some qualities which are typically heroic, other aspects of his character are closer to the typical villain, e.g. he is a liar and probably a criminal.
Self made man
Gatsby is a classic example of a self-made man. But he can also be understood to be a self-made man in a non-typical sense - he invented the glamorous persona of 'Jay Gatsby'. Born James Gatz, to "shiftless and unsuccessful farm people'" in North Dakota it seemed that he virtually disowned his family. For instance, he told Nick that his parents were dead. Gatsby retains our sympathy, however, because he does not have a mercenary nature.
Gangster
It is hinted that Gatsby made his fortune through gambling and bootlegging. He has obviously been a close associate of the sinister Meyer Wolfshiem, the 'man who fixed the World Series in 1919'. During his parties he is frequently told that people in cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia are trying to contact him - these places were centres of organised crime in the 1920s. However, his activities remain shadowy, if murky, and we are not aware of any victims or any involvement in violence. Thus Gatsby never alienates the reader, and, paradoxically, emerges as an honourable man.
Dreamer
Nick comments on Gatsby's 'extraordinary gift for hope'. Gatsby's memorable first appearance in the book is in the moonlight, stretching out his arm yearningly. He even seems to be 'trembling' with emotion. Gatsby's dream is always expressed as a noble emotion, conveyed by the use of the language of Arthurian legend: "he had committed himself to the following of a grail." Nick describes Gatsby's 'sensitivity to the promises of life' as a unique and admirable quality.
Lover
Gatsby is devoted to Daisy. He buys a mansion in Long Island and throws lavish parties, actively encouraging gate-crashers, in the hope that she might one day appear at one. His love for her, although physical, is also spiritual and altruistic. His bashfulness when he meets her again is comic and endearing, and he is at his most heroic when he takes the blame for Myrtle's death in order to spare Daisy from any difficulties.
The 'Great' Gatsby
Gatsby is "great" because of the magnitude of his dream. Nick is touched by Gatsby's "wonder" and "belief", and is reminded of the positive feelings of the first Dutch settlers in New England, arriving at "a fresh, green breast of the new world." Gatsby remains optimistic and true to his dream. However, there is more than a touch of irony in the use of "great", as Daisy is so unworthy of his adoration, and when Gatsby dies, nobody attends his funeral.
Nick Carraway
Nick is the narrator. The story is told in flashback, through his eyes, looking back on the events of two years earlier (1922). Nick guides our views of Gatsby, for example, by telling us at the start that he "turned out all right at the end."
Reliable narrator
Nick tells us his father taught him to "reserve all judgements" on people, since they may not have shared his "advantages". Nevertheless, he says his tolerance has "a limit", which is intriguing as an introduction. Modest and unassuming, one of the few things Nick takes pride in is his honesty: "I am one of the few honest people I have ever known". We thus expect a fair and unbiased account of events from him.
Midwesterner
Nick comes from the Midwest of the USA (possibly Minnesota – although this is not specifically said) and moves East to pursue a career working in the finance industry. The Midwest is associated with traditional, conservative values, unlike the more glamorous, racy lifestyle of New York.
An 'everyman'
In some senses Nick can be seen as an 'everyman' – a normal person observing how the rich live and play. But his own family are 'well-to-do' (they own a wholesale hardware business), and his cousin Daisy is rich. He is also a graduate of Yale, one of the most prestigious and expensive universities in the USA.
Observer and participant
Nick spends a lot of time, particularly at the beginning of the novel, observing and reporting on the action, rather than being involved in it directly. But he does become a participant too – he has the classic supporting role as the hero's friend, while his girlfriend is the heroine's friend.
A moral voice
Nick seems more genuine and caring than some of the other characters. When he first goes to a party at Gatsby's, he seeks Gatsby out (presumably to thank him for his invitation), while the others at the party gossip about Gatsby and enjoy themselves.
Similarly, after Gatsby's death, Nick is the only one who shows concern. Nick can therefore be seen as the moral compass of the story. He refuses Gatsby's offer of a dubious scheme that could make him "a nice bit of money". When he meets Jordan, nothing happens between them at first because of the "interior rules that act as brakes on my desires…".
But it could also be argued that he's not a very effective moral compass. While Nick prides himself on his honesty, he pursues a relationship with a woman he states to be "incurably dishonest". He enjoys Jordan's company as she is beautiful (in an unusual, non-conventional way) and a celebrity – so he is willing to make the excuse that "dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply". His feelings for her are not clear – he says, "I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity".
Nick's feelings for Jordan perhaps mirror his feelings for life in the north-east as a whole, i.e. when he goes to a party in New York, he says he is "simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life".
Daisy Buchanan
The reality of Daisy
Daisy is charming but manipulative. Nick notes how she gazes at him as if "there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see", adding drily, "That was a way she had." Daisy is lazy and rather passive – she doesn't bother to stand when Nick arrives, joking that she is "paralysed with happiness" to see him.
Perhaps this attitude extends to her husband's infidelity, which she tolerates, an attitude which baffles Nick. Yet her life of luxury seems to leave her bored and dissatisfied:" 'What'll we plan? What do people plan?'"
Daisy seems to lack any strength of character or courage. She flees the scene when she accidentally kills Myrtle, and allows Tom go on believing that it was Gatsby who was driving.
Daisy's world
Coming from Louisville, Kentucky - which is in the geographic area of the USA classed as 'the South' - Daisy could be seen as conforming to the old-fashioned southern model of femininity: she hopes that her daughter grows up "a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." Daisy's attitude could alternatively be viewed as a shrewd (albeit cynical) one. In a world dominated by men, intelligence in a woman could lead to frustration and unhappiness.
Daisy has always been sheltered by money. After her initial fling with Gatsby, she "vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby nothing"; she survived, "gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor".
The image of Daisy
Daisy is presented initially as an ethereal, almost angelic presence, reclining elegantly with Jordan on a couch, each wearing a long white flowing dress, "fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after short flight around the house". Daisy is constantly linked to the colour white. Her name suggests a pristine white flower. When she was a young woman, she "dressed in white, and had a little white roadster".
Daisy's feelings for Gatsby
Jordan tells Nick that when Daisy's family prevented her from seeing Gatsby off to war, she protested by not speaking to them "for several weeks". This relatively short period of time suggests her feelings were not very deep. A year later, Daisy was rumoured to be engaged to someone else, and a few months after that she married Tom, although according to Jordan, Daisy had doubts the night before the wedding after receiving a letter from Gatsby.
When she rekindles her affair with Gatsby, she seems to be greatly moved by the opulence of Gatsby's home and possessions – she buries her head in his expensive shirts and sobs about their beauty. Jordan had said to Nick that 'Daisy ought to have something in her life'. We are unsure if Daisy finds the affair simply a diversion, or even a means of revenge on Tom, who is constantly unfaithful to her.
But the best she can say to Gatsby when he forces her to choose between him and Tom is that she loves him as well. When Gatsby tries to persuade her to leave Tom, she backs down: Nick comments, "she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all."
Tom Buchanan
Tom is a character with few redeeming qualities. He represents the worst aspects of the super-rich in American society whose money insulates them from the normal constraints of law or morality. Nick describes them as "careless people – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money."
Wealth and privilege
The first image of Tom is one of ownership and domination in front of his vast mansion: "Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch". Nick describes how the extent of his wealth "rather took your breath away". It has been entirely inherited – he doesn't work for a living and presumably never has.
The description of him as "Tom Buchanan of Chicago" suggests his high status and sense of entitlement. He despises Gatsby for his lack of background, dismissing him as "Mr Nobody from Nowhere", an insult that seems to destroy Gatsby in Daisy's eyes. Although he was educated at Yale, he seems limited intellectually, but made his mark there in sport where he was a famous player in their (American) football team. Nick describes him as "one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anti-climax."
Immorality and promiscuity
Tom is an compulsive womaniser, with a preference for lower class women whom he treats with contempt and violence. He breaks Myrtle's nose, Daisy complains he has hurt her little finger, and, in the past, he caused a chambermaid he was having an affair with to break her arm after crashing his car, while he himself, typically, was unscathed.
He does, however, seem to love Daisy in his own, possessive fashion, recalling moments of tenderness during the confrontation at the Plaza Hotel: "the day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry."
Physical power
Tom comes over as an intimidating figure, as he still retains the powerful physique of the star football player – "a cruel body", according to Nick. As well as frequently hurting people, he also bullies the people around him. He imposes his will on Nick and "insists" with a "determination... that bordered on violence" that Nick meet his mistress Myrtle.
His practised brutality is captured in the way he assaults Myrtle: "Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand."
Although cuckolding him, he treats Wilson with unabashed disdain, knowing that Wilson cannot retaliate as he needs his business. He seems to enjoy the confrontation with Gatsby at the Plaza hotel, "exulting and laughing" afterwards.
Racist and sexist
Tom is a racist: he supports the ideas put forward in a book called "'The Rise of the Coloured Empires'", describing it as "scientific stuff". He is a male chauvinist, complaining of Jordan and Daisy that they "run around" too much.
Minor characters
Jordan Baker
Celebrity
Jordan is well known for being a golf champion. Nick had had seen her photograph in magazines many times: "everyone knew her name". Nick admits he is flattered to escort her.
Beauty
Jordan is attractive, but in a non-conventional way, perhaps even somewhat : "like a young cadet".
Fitzgerald uses striking imagery to express Jordan's tanned, healthy beauty: "slender golden arm", "hair the colour of an autumn leaf"; and, humorously: "her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool as if a divot from a green golf-links had come sailing in at the office window."
She represents a new type of woman, with more freedom than those of previous generations.
Dishonesty
Nick describes her as "incurably dishonest" and remembers hearing a "critical, unpleasant story" about her when he first meets her, and recalls later that she was accused of cheating in a golf tournament. She also lied about ruining a friend's leather car upholstery.
At first Nick is too dazzled by her fame to condemn her for this.
Recklessness
Jordan drives so close to some workmen she "flicked a button on one man's coat", an incident which anticipates the death of Myrtle. Nick teases Jordan about being a "rotten driver". This becomes a metaphor for her careless attitude to life and other people.
After Myrtle's death, Jordan wants to go on socialising, and reproaches Nick for wanting to go home, saying "'It's only half past nine'". This causes the scales to fall from Nick's eyes and he ends the relationship soon after.
Myrtle
Lack of privilege
Myrtle (and her husband George) represent the lower classes. They live in the 'valley of ashes', an area literally and symbolically impoverished, a great contrast to the luxury of the mansions of Long Island. George tries to imprison her when he learns of her infidelity, and it is in her attempt to escape that she is killed.
Contrast with Daisy
Myrtle is described as having a raw sexuality, perhaps something that wouldn't be found in refined women of the upper classes like Daisy, who is cool and ethereal. Myrtle dresses in strong colours: dark blue and brown, which contrast with Daisy's signature colour, white. Myrtle's rowdy drinks party in chapter two is like a caricature of Daisy's elegant dinner party in chapter one.
Aspiration
Myrtle is attracted to the handsome, powerful (physically and socially) Tom, and is immensely dissatisfied with her husband. She enjoys playing the 'lady of the manor' in the flat Tom rents for her: "'I told that boy about the ice.' Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders." However, Myrtle's pretentions are as ridiculous as the overlarge furniture with its "scenes of Versailles".
Victim
Myrtle is a victim of the selfish exploitation of the upper classes, but she is not a sympathetic character, being herself hard and heedless of others' feelings.
Minor characters
George Wilson
Unsuccessful
George owns an ailing garage located in the 'valley of ashes'. Nick describes the interior as "unprosperous and bare" with the only car visible being the "dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner". This image, while symbolising much about Wilson's pathetic life, ominously prophecises Myrtle's death.
Tom patronises Wilson and tantalises him with the prospect of business. Myrtle despises him for his lack of material success.
Contrast with Tom
Whereas Tom comes across as strong, forceful and energetic, Wilson seems weak and demotivated, described as "blond, spiritless and anaemic."
The men do have some things in common though. They share a love for Myrtle, and each fears losing his wife.
Jealous
Although Wilson is portrayed as a weak man, he loves his wife and is tormented by knowing she is unfaithful. He dreams of taking her away – to somewhere unknown in the West - in order to save their marriage. His jealousy drives him to extreme action: he locks Myrtle into a room above the garage.
Tragic
George develops as a tragic figure in his grief over losing Myrtle, rocking himself back and forth and muttering incoherently. He is intent on avenging Myrtle's death and finding the driver of the yellow car. Tipped off by Tom as to the identity of the owner, his "ashen, fantastic figure" stalks Gatsby and shoots him. He then turns his gun on himself. Like Myrtle, George is ultimately a victim of the hedonism of the rich.
Meyer Wolfshiem
Criminal
Meyer Wolfshiem is an underworld figure, who associates with gangsters such as "Rosy Rosenthal" and is involved in various illegal activities. Gatsby tells Nick he is famous for having "fixed the 1919 World Series". His character was based on Arnold Rothstein, a real life gambler whom Fitzgerald had met. Wolfshiem clearly illustrates Gatsby has criminal connections as he knows Gatsby well.
It would be regarded as particularly reprehensible to fix a baseball game as this is regarding as the American sport. Nick says, "It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people – with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe."
Jewish caricature
While richly comic, the portrait may disturb readers of post-Holocaust generations as it mocks Wolfshiem's ethnic appearance with his "expressive nose" and his Jewish accent: "a business gonnection". However, this anti-Semitic tone is endemic in many pre-World War II English writers from John Buchan, reaching back through Dickens to Shakespeare. All the upper-class characters in the novel are WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant), who were considered the elite in the US at that time.
Plot device
Wolfshiem provides a source of information about Gatsby to Nick (and the reader), filling in the missing details of Gatsby's rags to riches career path after the war. He is an example of the type of fair-weather friends who have surrounded Gatsby: after the shooting he initially refuses to speak to Nick and then subsequently declines to come to Gatsby's funeral. This reveals the selfishness and callousness of this kind of society.

4. Narration
Nick as Narrator

I. Nick’s vision: the ‘modified’ first person technique
The story is narrated through a ‘modified’ first person viewpoint:
It is not the main protagonist (Gatsby) who recounts his own story but a secondary character, Nick Carraway, who is successively suspicious, wary and eventually fascinated by Gatsby. Nick is not trustworthy, not fully reliable: he oscillates.
Whenever Nick cannot obtain a firsthand version of facts, he does not hesitate to quote other sources. For instance, Gatsby’s love affair is told by Jordan Baker (chap.4 p80). Nick reports her words but the problem is that she is said to be a liar: how far can she be trusted?
Nick is obliged to reconstruct an event through the collage of different testimonies. Nick uses his logical mind to come up with a definitive story, result of words that have been filtered by different minds.
That is why this first person viewpoint is modified: Nick can only rely on what he has been told.
II. Nick Carraway: a privileged witness
Nick is not a random choice, it is very well calculated. He was the best possible witness to let the reader discover Gatsby. Indeed, through coincidence, he happens to be Gatsby’s next-door neighbour (p11). Besides, Nick has not vested interest in hobnobbing Gatsby. He has no axe to grind. Yet, without being acquainted with Gatsby, Nick is nonetheless a relative of Daisy and consequently introduced to the Buchanans and to Gatsby’s story.
A. An eye-witness account
Nick witnesses some of the events of Gatsby’s last summer and sometimes participates in them. He has two functions: seeing and acting. The emphasis is put on visual perception. The act of seeing creates mystery instead of providing information. A lot about Gatsby’s life is bound to remain unfathomable: there is more in Gatsby’s life than Nick’s eyes can meet. Nick’s scope of vision is limited. Yet, Nick is a good observer and can draw his own conclusions. He can analyse Gatsby’s facial expressions and put a meaning on his gestures. See chapter 5 with the re-union between Gatsby and Daisy. He is sometimes over-informed. When Gatsby dashes into the kitchen, Nick is made privy of his companion’s feelings. Through Nick’s agency, the reader is provided with the real feelings of Gatsby: ‘this is a terrible mistake’. This tends to suggest that Fitzgerald tried to favour the sentimental dimension of his character at the expense of his ‘business’.
B. The accounts of other people
Nick picks up most information about Gatsby and Daisy through other people’s accounts- mainly gossip and public rumours. The accounts repeated may be unreliable and called into question. Through the gossip of the beginning, Gatsby is almost all the time presented with a mixture of awe and dread, making of him an outsider. Nick is just echoing: ‘German spy during the war’, ‘he killed a man once’. Nick almost believes it: ‘he looked as if he had killed a man’. Nick has a varying attitude towards Gatsby. He passes on to the reader a lot of rumours which might prove later to be contradictory. Nick plays the role of the chorus in Ancient tragedy and is the link between the reader and Gatsby.
C. Nick’s reconstruction of events
Nick is a self-conscious narrator; he is aware of the difficulties of writing a report that would approach the truth. He uses his critical judgement to form an opinion not only on the events but on himself writing these events. For instance, p62: ‘reading over what I have written so far, I’ve given the impression that the events of three nights several weeks apart were all that absorbed me’.
There is a sense in which the Great Gatsby would concern Nick. Through the events of the summer of 1922 and his writing, Nick has changed. When he is involved in the action, he is a belated adolescent but he is an adult when writing back after two years.
Chap7: ‘I was 30. Before me stretched the portent menacing road of a new decade‘(p142). In a way, he has gained knowledge, passing from innocence to the consciousness of the complexity of the world.
III. Nick Carraway: an unreliable narrator
All the characters are not depicted with the same clarity. Those described with most lucidity are those for whom Nick feels indifferent: Catherine, Myrtle Wilson and McKee. In contrast, the closer the characters get to Nick and the more blurred they prove to be: Gatsby and Daisy, as if Nick was afraid to jump to conclusions concerning Gatsby. Because Nick participates vicariously in Gatsby’s adventures, he finds it difficult to come to a clear cut picture of the man.
A. Nick’s subjective account
Nick is unreliable: he has a romantic turn of mind pushing him to idealise certain characters. He is bewitched by Daisy’s voice, which he compared to a nightingale. He is in love with Daisy himself but remains aware of her selfishness and is not shocked by her carelessness.
Nick is influenced by his upbringing in the MidWest and stands for certain moral principles: ‘I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known’ (p66). He is a prig, smug and self-righteous MidWesterner. He is spineless (not very brave) and easily influenced. He is lured to the glittering false world of appearances. Nick is like all men looking for glory and high hopes (dream of making lots of money in a short while) provided they find out how it is possible. We cannot expect Nick to be totally objective -he is taken in by all those fake appearances.
B. Nick’s distorted vision
Fitzgerald’s novel emphasizes the difficulties of getting a clear picture of reality and it also underscores the impossibility of adjusting one’s eyes to obtain a faithful reflection of the ‘outside world’. From Dr Eckleburg’s gigantic spectacles on the advertisement to the Owl-Eyed man’s thick glasses, the eyesight is a recurrent motif, a metonymic allusion to the possibility of getting a distorted representation of reality.
It is often suggested that Nick is unable to get a clear picture of whatever goes on. Myrtle’s party in Chapter 3 offers a good example of the narrator’s distorted vision. There are several instances of misperceptions. First Nick does not see properly an over-enlarged photograph because lie is standing too close to it : lie sees ‘a lien sitting on a blurred rock’ but then taking a few steps backwards the sight changes into ‘a bonnet, and the countenance of a stout old lady’. The lesson could not be clearer; namely it is indispensable for the narrator to bring the ‘outside reality’ into focus. Indeed Nick’s vision is too often distorted either because lie has over drunk: ‘everything that happened had a dim, hazy cast over it…the whisky distorted things.’(chap2, p35) or because lie is in a dream-like state: half awake, half asleep as if sedated: ‘I think I walked into a deep sleep as I entered my front door’ (90).
Nick is also haunted by nightmarish visions. After the scene of the accident, in chapter nine he tells a fantastic dream reminiscent of a painting by El Greco (p183), which duplicates through its odd, baroque and surreal aspect the scene in chapter 3 at the end of Gatsby’s party when a car loses a wheel. (p61)
C. Nick’s own process of initiation
Even if Gatsby is the novel’s main protagonist, the novel bears witness to the process of initiation undergone by Nick. Gatsby, after all, does not change in the course of the story; he is and remains a static figure until the very end before being murdered when it finally dawns upon him that the Daisy he worshipped was no more than an illusory creation. On the opposite Nick goes through different stages as lie tells the story. Nick’s viewpoint evolves and his changing outlook bestows a further dimension on the novel.
First Nick overcomes his moral prejudices and strikes up a personal relationship with Gatsby (chap. 4). He stops being a Middle West prig with too simple a notion of right and wrong. Then he is given access to Gatsby’s past and Gatsby’s love quest; he is thus made alive to the power of illusion: ‘the unreality of reality’ (p106) to give life a sense of purpose. Nick, it should not be forgotten, had up until the novel’s beginning, led an aimless existence, he was unmotivated by his work as a bondman and used to let himself be carried along by events. In this respect his encounter with Gatsby proves a decisive step forward.
With Gatsby’s death, Nick is made aware of the barrenness and sterility of the East, of a world that is ‘material without being real’. As Gatsby’s former acquaintances each in their turn finds an excuse for not attending his funeral, Nick realises that the spree bas ended once and for all. The show is over and the actors have made their exits. Nick’s process of initiation ends with his sudden realization that his fascination for a gleaming, dazzling East was unfounded. After Gatsby’s death there remains nothing in the East but void and emptiness: the only music and laughter that Nick can hear are imaginary, hallucinatory: ‘I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter’ (p187).
Structure

Fitzgerald adopted the scenic method of narrative construction, he presents a sequence of scenes, each self contained, yet echoing others and containing elaborate cross reference.
This is easily understood if one considers the way in which the party in Chapter 2 is paralleled by the party in the Plaza Hotel in chapter 7. Larger parties are held at Gatsby’s mansion in chapters 3 and 6. In this way, a structural symmetry is constructed. At the centre of the book, in Chapter 5, Nick and Daisy are reunited over tea at Nick’s house.
Fitzgerald gives us the information as Nick gets it, just as we might find out information about a friend or acquaintance in real life, in bits and pieces over a period of time. Since we do not want or cannot absorb much information about a character until we truly become interested in him, Fitzgerald waits to take us into the past until close to the middle of the novel. As the story moves toward its climax, we find out more and more about the central figure from Nick until the reader is in a privileged position and can understand why Gatsby behaves as he does.
Thus the key to the structure of the novel is the combination of the first person narrative and the gradual revelation of the past as the narrator finds out more and more. The two devices work extremely effectively together, but neither would work very well alone.
Note that the material included in the novel is highly selective. Fitzgerald creates a series of scenes- most of them parties- but does not tell us much about what happens between these scenes. Think of how much happened in the summer of 1922 that Fitzgerald does not tell us! He does not tell us about Gatsby and Daisy's relationship after they meet at Nick's house in Chapter five, because Nick would have no access to this information. What the technique of extreme selectivity demands from the reader is close attention. We have to piece together everything we know about Gatsby from the few details that Nick gives us. Part of the pleasure this form gives us is that of drawing conclusions not only from what is included but from what is left out.

5. Themes
Love
To describe the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy as 'love' would be inaccurate. At best, it could be argued to be a case of unrequited love on Gatsby's part. Most people would see Gatsby's feelings towards Daisy as being extremely unhealthy. He had a short relationship with her as a young man which he never gets over. The idea of her (and winning her back) becomes the obsession which dominates his life. Even when he is finally reunited with her, Nick says she must have, "tumbled short of his dream". Yet his devotion to her remains undiminished.
Although Gatsby gets what he wants in being reunited with Daisy, it seems that he acknowledges that achieving this goal is not as satisfying as he would have hoped:
"'If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay,' said Gatsby.’You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock'... Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one."
Loss of Moral Values
We see Nick becoming increasingly judgemental throughout the novel. By the end he sees the people he has been associating with in the East as morally bankrupt and he returns to the Midwest so as not to be exposed to their superficial ways.
Nick ultimately accepts that his moral values are conservative, mid-Western ones. He begins the book by saying that he abides by his father's dictum in withholding criticism if he is not in full possession of the facts, and he is therefore "inclined to reserve all judgements". But he goes on to say that his tolerance "has a limit".
However, there remains a certain confusion and ambiguity to Nick's moral code. At one point in chapter eight, he simultaneously expresses disapproval of Gatsby and says something kind to him: "'They're a rotten crowd,' I shouted across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.' I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end." Another example of the paradox of Gatsby (in Nick's eyes) is that his lifestyle was funded by "corruption" but his dream was "incorruptible".
Although Gatsby does have a biological father in Henry Gatz, Gatsby is a created persona and so he doesn't really have a father. Or perhaps, Gatsby can be viewed as being his own father: after all, at the end of the novel, Nick remembers Gatsby standing outside his "ancestral" home. Either way, unlike Nick, whose aunts and uncles talk over every step of his career, Gatsby has no family to disappoint.
The novel is full of characters who are, by most standards, immoral people:
Gatsby made his money through criminal activity and lies about his past.
Jordan cheats at golf and lies regularly, even over really mundane things.
Wolfshiem is a criminal, e.g. bootlegging, gambling, fixing sporting events.
Tom cheats on his wife repeatedly and bullies and assaults people.
Daisy accepts Tom's infidelity, but then cheats on him herself.
People at Gatsby's parties spread scandalous rumours about him.
Social class
To begin with Daisy either overlooks, or doesn't notice or care that Gatsby fails to conform to how a gentleman should behave.
Ultimately she does choose Tom over Gatsby because of Gatsby's connections to the criminal underworld and his lack of connections with the upper class.
Tom, on the other hand, is very much of the upper classes, and has always been this way:
"Even at college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach… he'd left Chicago and come East in a fashion which rather took your breath away; for instance, he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest." Gatsby attempts to pass himself off as belonging to the old money set, for example, by calling people 'old sport'. But these attempts are a failure. Nick observes that his "elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd"; Tom laughs at the suggestion that he studied at Oxford, picking up on the fact that Gatsby does not wear the 'right' clothes': "An Oxford man… Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit." He also fails to pick up on subtle social signals, such as when he is invited home for lunch by the Sloanes and they don't really want him to come.
During this same scene Gatsby is alienated from the Sloanes and the Buchanans by the fact that he doesn't own a horse. This emphasises the old money/nouveau riche divide – they still ride and take part in traditional games such as polo, but Gatsby owns expensive modern vehicles, for example, a Rolls Royce car and a hydroplane.
The vulgarity of his West Egg house: "an imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy" contrasts with the tasteful Colonial opulence of the Buchanans' mansion in the more exclusive East Egg.
Other class divisions are emphasised, too: Myrtle Wilson would like to move in Tom's social circles but this would never be possible. It has been said that in the novel there are three classes: 'old money', 'new money' and 'no money' (e.g. the Wilsons).
Gatsby’s Pursuit of the American Dream
Gatsby’s Pursuit of the American Dream The Great Gatsby, a novel by Scott Fitzgerald, is about the American Dream, and the downfall of those who attempt to reach its impossible goals. The attempt to capture the American Dream is used in many novels. This dream is different for different people; but, in The Great Gatsby, for Jay, the dream is that through wealth and power, one can acquire happiness. To get this happiness Jay must reach into the past and relive an old dream; and, in order to do this, he must have wealth and power.
The American Dream had always been based on the idea that each person no matter who he or she is can become successful in life by his or her hard work. The dream also brought about the idea of a self-reliant man, a hard worker, making a successful living for him or herself. Jay Gatsby, the main character of the story, is one character that longs for the past. Surprisingly, he spends most of his adult life trying to recapture it and, finally, dies in this pursuit. In the past, Gatsby had a love affair with the attractive young Daisy. Knowing he could not marry her because of the difference in their social status, he leaves her to gain wealth to reach her standards. Once he acquires wealth, he moves near to Daisy, Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay (p83), and throws extravagant parties, hoping by chance she might show up at one of them. He, himself, does not attend his parties but watches them from a distance. When this dream doesn’t fall into place like he planned, he asks around if anyone knows her. Soon, he meets Nick Carraway, a cousin of Daisy, who agrees to set up a meeting, He wants to know…if you’ll invite Daisy to your house some afternoon and then let him come over (p83). Gatsby’s personal dream symbolizes the larger American Dream where all have the opportunity to get what they want.
Later, in the Plaza Hotel, Jay still believes that Daisy loves him. He is convinced of this and even takes the blame for Myrtle’s death. Was Daisy driving? Yes…. But of course I’ll say I was (p151). He also watches Daisy as she returns home to make sure her husband doesn’t harm her. How long are you going to wait? All night if necessary (p152). Gatsby cannot accept that the past is gone and done with. He believes that he acted for her and beyond his personal interest and that that should guarantee his success.
Nick attempts to show Jay that his dream is unobtainable, but Gatsby innocently replies to Nick’s comment by saying, Yes you can, old sport (p141). This shows the confidence that Jay has in fulfilling his American Dream. For Jay, his American Dream is not material possessions, although it plays a big part in the fulfillment of his true American Dream, Daisy. Gatsby does not rest until his American Dream is finally fulfilled. However, it never comes about and he ends up paying the ultimate price for it. Gatsby’s own characteristics, especially his obsession, contributed to his fate. Despite his attitude toward Daisy and her friends who are rich and play polo together, he, too, has been drawn in by the lure of money and fame. But one thing never changes about the American Dream; everyone desires something in life, and everyone, somehow, strives to get it. Gatsby is a prime example of pursuing the American Dream.
The Corruption of the American Dream
What is the Dream?
The American Dream is the belief that anything is possible as long as you strive to succeed. The foundation qualities of the American Dream depicted in The Great Gatsby are perseverance and hope. The most glorified of these characteristics is that of success against all odds. The ethic of hard work can be found in the life of young James Gatz, whose focus on becoming a great man is carefully documented in his ‘Hopalong Cassidy’ journal. When Mr Gatz shows the tattered book to Nick, he declares, ‘Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he's got about improving his mind? He was always great for that.’ The journal portrays the continual struggle for self-improvement which has defined the image of America as a land of opportunity. By comparing the young James Gatz to the young Benjamin Franklin, Fitzgerald proves that the American Dream is indeed able to survive in the face of modern society. The product of hard work is the wistful Jay Gatsby, who epitomizes the purest characteristic of the American Dream: everlasting hope. His burning desire to win Daisy's love symbolises the basis of the old dream: an ethereal goal and a never-ending search for the opportunity to reach that goal. Gatsby is first seen late at night, ‘standing with his hands in his pockets’ and supposedly ‘out to determine what share was his of our local heavens’. Nick watches Gatsby's movements and comments:
‘he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, as far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward--and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of the dock.’
By analysing high society during the 1920s through the eyes of narrator Nick Carraway, the author reveals that the American Dream has transformed from a pure ideal of security into a convoluted scheme of materialistic power. In support of this message, Fitzgerald highlights the original aspects as well as the new aspects of the American Dream in his tragic story to illustrate that a once impervious dream is now lost forever to the American people.
Gatsby's goal gives him a purpose in life and sets him apart from the rest of the upper class. He is constantly striving to reach Daisy, from the moment he is seen reaching towards her house in East Egg to the final days of his life, patiently waiting outside Daisy's house for hours when she has already decided to abandon her affair with him. Gatsby is distinguished as a man who retains some of the purest traits of the old dream, but loses them by attempting to reach his goals by wearing the dream's modern face.
Fitzgerald attributes the depravity of the modern dream to wealth, privilege, and the void of humanity that those aspects create. Money is clearly identified as the central proponent of the dream's destruction; it becomes easily entangled with hope and success, inevitably replacing their places in the American Dream with materialism. This replacement is evident in Gatsby's use of illegal practices and underground connections to attain his enormous fortune. His ostentatious parties, boundless mansion, and lavish clothing are all signs of his unknowing corruption. His ability to evade the law, demonstrated when his traffic violation is ignored by a police officer, reveals his use of status and privilege to get what he needs. Although Gatsby's rise to prominence is symbolic of the nature of the new dream, the most odious qualities of that dream are evident in Daisy and Tom Buchanan, who live their lives with no hopes and no regrets because the true foundation of their characters is their opulence. While Daisy is never heard from again after Gatsby's death, Nick confronts Tom one last time, at which point Gatsby's rival responds: ‘I told him the truth... What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him’. Tom admits to the fact that he is responsible for Gatsby's murder and Wilson's suicide, but continues to claim innocence because he has never known guilt nor shame as a member of the established elite. Through Nick, Fitzgerald pinpoints the effect of the modern dream on the upper class, thus condemning an entire people and its revered society:
‘It couldn't forgive him or like him but I saw what he had done was, to him, entirely justified... 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 ...’
Nick realises that Tom and Daisy represent a class of heartless citizens who have attained success at the cost of dehumanisation. Their vast wealth blocks out all inspiration and all true emotion, resulting in a void of apathy buttressed by status and power.
At the end of the novel, Fitzgerald creates a sense of utter hopelessness to prove that the purity of the American Dream is dead with the examples Daisy's baby, Gatsby's death, and Wilson's suicide. The first hint of this tragic loss is the introduction of the Buchanans' daughter, whom Daisy refers to as ‘Bles-sed pre-cious.’ When the girl is brought into the Buchanans' salon, Nick observes an obvious disturbance in Gatsby's attitude, thinking, ‘Gatsby and I in turn leaned down and took the small reluctant hand. Afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don't think he had ever really believed in its existence before’. Daisy then calls her child an ‘absolute little dream’, crushing all hopes Gatsby has of truly recreating the past. Society's complete replacement of the American Dream with materialism is pointed out moments later, when Nick and Gatsby attempt to discern the charm in Daisy's voice. At the moment Gatsby blurts out, ‘Her voice is full of money’, Nick stumbles across a revelation which changes his entire view of society:
‘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 jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it … High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl …’
At this point, all of Daisy's charm and beauty is stripped away, leaving nothing but money to be admired underneath. The dream Gatsby has been so inexorably pursuing is ripped apart into dollar bills as he discovers that for years he has been pursuing not love, but cold, hard, money, hidden behind the disguise of a human face. Subsequently, when Gatsby dies, any chance the American Dream has of surviving in the dehumanized modern world dies with him. The hopes and dreams which have strengthened and uplifted Gatsby are shattered as he lies in the pool, dazed and confused in a world which he no longer understands. After shooting Gatsby, George Wilson, Fitzgerald's symbolization of the common man struggling to achieve his own success within the realm of the modern dream, commits suicide. At the end of the novel, Nick returns to the mid-west with this disconcerting knowledge, reflecting on Gatsby's life as the struggle of the American people in a society losing its humanity: ‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past’. The dream is now utterly lost and can never be resurrected.
Through the unfolding events of a doomed romance, Fitzgerald simultaneously unfolds the tragic fate of American values. Gatsby and the other characters of his story act as vessels for the author's true message- the American Dream, once a pure and mighty ideal, has been buried and is pressed into the ground by the inhuman void of money. The Great Gatsby is not the eulogy of a man named Jay Gatsby; rather, it is the eulogy of an institution which once was, but is now gone and can never be.

6. Symbolism

The Eyes of Doctor T. J Eckleburg
A particular feature of the 'valley of ashes' described at the start of chapter two is the faded advertisement portraying a pair of 'blue and gigantic' eyes looking through a pair of enormous spectacles.
The oculist who placed the 'Eyes' there has either gone out of business, or 'forgot them and moved away', but the huge eyes remain, staring emptily out over the wasteland.
Later, in chapter eight, Wilson, although he is not a man with any religious faith, tells his neighbour Michaelis that "'God sees everything'... Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg". He has to remind Wilson "'That's an advertisement.'"
Various interpretations of the symbolic significance of the eyes have been put forward. The fact that "they look out of no face" symbolises the emptiness and lack of hope in the valley of ashes. Equally, they may suggest that belief in God has been replaced by capitalism and materialism.
The image of the watching eyes which continue to brood over the desolate landscape is a haunting one, suggesting that the licentious behaviour of the jazz age is being assessed and judged, but the fact that there is no soul behind the eyes conveys a troubling sense that nothing will be done to amend matters. The idea of the advertisement being forgotten anticipates the way in which Gatsby himself will be consigned to oblivion by the people who make free with his hospitality.
Weather
In chapter five changes in the weather correspond with the development of the characters' moods. On the day arranged for the meeting of Gatsby and Daisy there was pouring rain: Gatsby is worried that she will not come and he is described as "pale as death". When things go well, "he literally glowed... a new well-being radiated from him". Correspondingly, the rain stopped and "there were twinkle-bells of sunshine in the room."
Later in the chapter, however, it begins to rain again and Gatsby tells Daisy that the mist obscures the green light across the bay, symbolising the fading of the dream.
In chapter seven, heat is used as a symbol for the emotional climax of the novel. The weather is described as broiling. Nick notes the "shimmering hush at noon" as he returns from New York in the train before going to Daisy's house.
He mentions how the "straw seats of the car (railway carriage) hovered on the edge of combustion." He means that the seats have got so hot it seems they will burst into flames. This example of hyperbole suggests the emotional heat to follow as Daisy's affair with Gatsby is about to be discovered by Tom, and a furious confrontation will take place between the two men in the Plaza Hotel.
Cars

"It was a rich cream colour, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a hundred suns. Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green conservatory we started to town." (68)

During a time when cars were just beginning to become common, Gatsby's car is used as a symbol of the crass materialism of the 1920s. Factory-made cars were normally black, so Gatsby's specially-made car displays his wealth and delight in material possessions. In the novel, cars are used as a symbol of wealth and corruption.

Also used in The Great Gatsby is the bad driving motif. Jordan refers to herself as a careless driver, but says she'll be all right, so long as she does not meet anyone as careless as herself; and there is an incident of bad driving after one of Gatsby's party. Myrtle’s death is caused by bad driving on Daisy’s part, as she is driving whilst upset, perhaps even distressed. This idea also links into the symbolism of colour as the car that kills Myrtle is a brilliant shade of yellow.

We can also see that the cars of the rich help to illustrate the poverty of the Wilson’s. George is desperate for Tom’s car and is only able to work on the cars of the rich, not own them. This highlights the contrast between the lifestyles of the two men and shows us just how far apart they are in terms of class.

Valley of Ashes

"This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air"(27).

The image of a barren wasteland of ashes provides a stark contrast to the lavish parties of Jay Gatsby. The Valley of Ashes symbolises the moral decay that Fitzgerald saw behind the facade of wealth and happiness. It is in this dump that Mr. Tom Buchanan's mistress lived. It is fitting, then, that the valley is chosen as a setting for such events as Nick's meeting with Myrtle and Myrtle's murder by Daisy. The Valley of Ashes was based on the Corona dump in Queens. It was a swamp used as a landfill for ashes, manure, and other refuse. The ash comes from the industrial culture that is now flooding America and illustrates that this area is merely a dumping ground for the rich. The ash is seen to be suffocating the poor as it covers everything when the rich drive through the town in their fancy cars. Fitzgerald’s description of it also serves to highlight the contrast between the poverty of the poor and the opulence of the rich.
Flowers

"You remind me of a--of a rose, an absolute rose." (19)

"Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman..." (111)

"At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete." (117)

Flowers have long been symbols of grace, beauty, and love, so what more fitting name could there have been for the person whom Gatsby pines after than Daisy? Unfortunately, Gatsby's belief in her perfection is based more on the projection of his fantasies of her than on her actual character. Fitzgerald illustrates this with the colours of a daisy: white, for purity, is on the outside; but yellow, for corruption and money, is at the core. It is useful to note also that a daisy is actually a weed although many would suggest that it is simply a wild flower.

Other flowers, like the orchid and the rose, symbolise refinement and love, respectively.

Myrtle, Tom’s lover, is also the name of a flowering shrub which is traditionally used for medicinal purposes. Myrtle could be seen to be Tom’s ‘medicine’. The way in which Myrtle allows Tom to physically abuse her prevents him from doing the same to Daisy and therefore Fitzgerald’s choice of name for Tom’s lover is appropriate.

Colour
Green reappears several times during the book, representing the struggle that Gatsby has between his wealth and his dreams.
Green
Green is a mixture of the colours blue and yellow; it represents Gatsby's dreams and his wealth hopelessly tangled together. There is a green light at the end of Daisy's dock, which suggests Gatsby has kept his dream of the Daisy he knew and loved before he made his fortune, and the fact that their relationship will always be affected by money. The green light can also be seen to symbolize Gatsby’s envy over the life that Tom has built with Daisy. Green also traditionally represents spring or a new beginning. Gatsby sees the green light as hope for a relationship with Daisy.

In addition to this, green also represents the American Dream. A symbol of hope, the symbolism of this dream shows just how far the characters have fallen from the concept of the original American Dream. When immigrants came from Europe it is often thought that green would be the colour that they saw first: the banks of America, the green vision of the Statue of Liberty and the hope that they would earn enough money through the American Dream to afford them a better way of life. In the end, Nick associates Gatsby's dream and the green light to the American dream, "a green breast of new land" (189) where people could come to start over.
Green also traditionally represents spring or a new beginning. Gatsby sees the green light as hope for a relationship with Daisy.

Blue
Also used many times, blue allows the reader to add an element of "other worldliness" to the story. It shows the reader the dreams and thoughts of the characters of the novel.
F. Scott Fitzgerald uses blue to represent dreams and to add an element of other worldliness. Dr. T. J. Eckleburg has enormous "floating" blue eyes, which are said to be God's eyes. They are believed to view the world as God himself would. At one point Myrtle is clothed in a blue dress, which is present to represent her dreams of escaping her mundane life and running away with Tom. Most importantly, Gatsby's gardens are described as being shades of blue and are initially shown as a place where people could escape from the world and be out of touch with reality. In direct relation to Gatsby, the gardens were an essential part of his life. As Nick says in the story, "He'd come a long way to this blue lawn" (189). The colour blue is also reflected in the ‘blue’ music of the time and more abstractly is the supposed colour of wealth and family connections (people who are rich are said to be of blue blood).
Grey
Grey allows the reader to notice that the dreams of each character are slowly disappearing. It lacks life and happiness, which allows it to be used as a symbol for just those things.
The colour grey, lacking shades of blue, represents the disappearance of dreams. Objects described in The Great Gatsby using the colour grey (such as The Valley of Ashes) are also objects which are described as things one cannot escape from. There are no romantic dreams to which people cling in the Valley of Ashes. F. Scott Fitzgerald describes the people who drive grey cars and live near the Valley of Ashes with shades of grey because they lead a life that does not have dreams. Their lives consist mainly of work, and they have no hope of escape.
Jordan's eyes are also grey. Jordan does not have a deep love of anything. Love to her is superficial. She has no plan for her life and no dreams for her future.
Yellow
Yellow illustrates the greed and wealth of the characters.
Yellow is one of the main symbolic colours in The Great Gatsby. It represents the wealth and extravagance of the rich. It also demonstrates how careless the wealthy can be though they are considered ‘high class’ with all their money. Gatsby's car, with which Daisy kills Myrtle, is yellow. Yellow is also a shade used to connect a person's snobbery with their money- Daisy is referred to as "the golden girl," Jordan's hair has an "Autumn leaf yellow" tint, Gatsby wears a gold tie, and the twins at one of Gatsby's parties are dressed in yellow. As the novel progresses, we see Jordan and Daisy dressed in more shades of yellow rather than white and this seems to connect with the knowledge that the reader has about their true nature. As previously mentioned, yellow is also seen in the colour of Gatsby’s car and in the glasses of Dr. T. J. Eckleberg, proving that the corruption of this new American society is everywhere.
White
White is used to describe the original innocence of the women which associate with Gatsby.
White is the colour of innocence. It is how the girls, Daisy and Jordan, are dressed in the beginning before their true characteristics are revealed. It is also the major colour of Gatsby and Nick's wardrobe. They are both portrayed as innocent. Gatsby never loses his childlike faith in his relationship with Daisy, and Nick claims he never lies and that he is one of the few honest people he knows. The idea of the white exterior hiding and giving way to the rotten yellow core is an image which is used frequently throughout the novel. From Daisy’s name, to the fact that the characters are living in an ‘egg’, Fitzgerald shows us that this innocent and pure exterior is being used to conceal something which is more corrupt. This concealment is even carried through into their homes where the elegant and pristine exterior merely hides the corruption and moral decay which lies within.
Names
A number of the characters have names which can be seen to have some significance. In addition to the previously mentioned Daisy and Myrtle, we also see Gatsby as someone who is defined by his name. Gatsby tries to reject his past and therefore gives up his old name. However, this seems to come back to haunt him and it is evident that he will never fully escape the confines of his past. Gatsby is predominantly known by his surname, allowing him a sense of distance from the other characters. It emphasises that we never really know the real him and perpetuates the mystery and intrigue surrounding his character. *Also think about Western Europeans and how they were seen as the elite, so Gatsby chose a Western rather than Eastern name to appear more refined than he actually was.
Shirts
The expensive European shirts that Gatsby shows to Daisy show how he is trying to leave his past behind. Gatsby is desperate to reinvent himself as a distinguished person of wealth and heritage. He shows Daisy the shirts to emphasise that he is cultured and worthy of her affections. This reference to all things European is prevalent throughout the novel; from the European servants that Gatsby originally has, to the design of his house and his claims of being an Oxford man. It is telling that as Gatsby’s life unravels, as well as his past, his servants become brash Americans which criminal connections.
East versus West
The symbolism of East v’s West is carried on in a dual way in the novel. From the small concept of East Egg and West Egg to the fact that Nick and the others have come to the East in order to find their fortunes. However, it seems that this quest for wealth and prosperity has its problems. Nick says that he does not think that any of them were made for life in this modern part of America and that they should have stayed in the West. For Fitzgerald, the East seems to represent moral corruption and the West, the moral high ground. Nick provides us with judgement on the other characters in the novel and yet seems exempt from it himself. He resides in the less wealthy West Egg and is therefore deemed moral enough to show us where the other characters have gone wrong. At the end of the novel he leaves not only the company of the ‘East Eggers’ but also the East coast.

7. Imagery

Imagery
Many other individual descriptions involve similes and metaphors which are related to the symbols discussed above.
For example, in addition to the spectacles, there are other frequent references to sight and blindness.
For example, Nick calls the man in Gatsby's library who later turns up at Gatsby's funeral 'Owl Eyes', and in the car accident in chapter three Owl Eyes is "blinded by the glare of the headlights", signifying his confusion.
Nick refers metaphorically to his view of events in terms of sight imagery. In chapter six he says "now I was looking … through Daisy's eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment."
While it would be easy enough to go through the novel in a mechanical way finding numerous examples of metaphorical language for their own sake, it is much more useful to concentrate on images that relate to the themes and ideas in the book.
Here are just two of many examples:
"The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house." This description of Daisy and Jordan in chapter one contains similes that refer to movement. The two figures are so lightweight that they seem to be floating and the imagery here reinforces the idea that the characters live restless, dissatisfied and aimless lives.
The last line of the book reads: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." The image of rowing a boat against the current signifies both determination to keep hoping for the future and the impossibility of succeeding. It recalls other descriptive passages involving water such as Gatsby, full of hope, stretching out his arms "towards the dark water" in chapter one.