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The Great Gatsby analysis, Myrtle Wilson, Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby -…
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Myrtle Wilson
The particular moment that encapsulates Myrtle's crippling class consciousness when she complains about their drinks not being cold enough "I told that boy about the Ice. Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair" (Ch.2) this is ironic as Myrtle shortly arriving to New York to meet Tom was still in her husband's garage in The Valley of ashes she tries to distance herself from the lower orders (put on a facade) through putting on a haughty air.
Myrtle's behaviour is characteristic of someone who is deeply ashamed of their background. She is acting in a way that she believes is upper class. Therefore is a character we can sympathise with.
Both Myrtle and Gatsby bind to this naive delusion that affiliation with the wealthy somehow wash them of their humbler identities and call them a better, happier and more successful life.
trapped in an unhappy marriage and poor and no family support compared to Daisy and Tom who are financially secured.
"small living room, a small bathroom, a small dining room..." The repetition of smallness tells us about Myrtles status ironically contrasting her voluptuousness physically she is much curvier than Daisy who is instead thin suggests Myrtle is small in significant at least in Tom's eyes she is unimportant and trivial no more than an amusing arm cand. The cramped pied-a terre symbolises the narrowness of the opportunities that Myrtle can and indeed will ever obtain in her life as well as in heroness of her owned mind- By associating herself with a rich man Myrtle can not see another way out of her otherwise deeply unfulfilling existence. The tragicomic juxtaposition of items "too large" and Myrtle's "smallness" speaks of Myrtles desire to fill shoes which are metaphorically too large for her because she can never really be a Mrs Buchanan. Myrtle's lack of sophistication are reflected in the Publications that she reads allusions to Town Tattle, Simon Called Peter and Broadway magazines these are sensationalist tabloids which Fitzgerald disapproved of which reveal Myrtle's vapid and uncultured taste. The tacky apartment highlights Myrtle to live out her fleeting fantasy of marrying and to wealth which Tom has control over.
"Myrtle Wilson her life violently extinguished" Myrtle death is brief which implies it being insignificant and quickly forgotten like a spec of dust- this is consistent to the smallness of her apartment with Tom and the suggestion of her unimportance. The deep poignancy in the observation of Myrle's "thick dark blood mingling with the dust" brings to mind sacrifice a women who sacrifices at the cruel altar of the wealthy careless men who use and abuse them only to cast them aside.
the graphic intensity with which "her left breast was swinging loose like a flap" seems almost out of character with Fitzgerald's otherwise polished Pros instead it carries the quality of it being seasonalise that one would find in tabloids. There is a sense of cruelty in the men's presumptuousness of there being "no need to listen for the heart beneath" there is a more gendered insight that men often decide on the basis of presumptuous power how women should be perceived by the broader society. Myrtles mouth being "wide open" symbolises the glaring hole that she feels even at the end of her life which is a gap of unfulfilled desires and unattained dreams the literal gap (metaphorical) is yearning to cry out against but it is too late.
"transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air." shows that during the train which the wealth use in order to pass this area can show the lack of responsibility and obstacles they can not handle.
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Nick Carraway
(Nick's self- mockery)
his tone is often sardonic and cynical and in less judgemental moments he is witty and credulous- compared to others who are either confused or deluded Nick seems to have the most common sense.
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"taken two finger- bowls of champagne... the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound" (chapter 3) - he may find superficiality as distasteful but he himself is not above those comforts that come with wealthy associations
Nick's gaucheness can be quite funny sometimes- After he sets Gatsby and Daisy up to meet at his flat he realises he is an awkward third wheel and that he feels odd amidst the heightened emotions between these two long-lost lovers as Nick makes himself scarce by leaving the house he knows that there's actually not much he can do except to stand outside his lawn under the pouring rain- Rather an awkward vignette Fitzgerald turns into a funny but somewhat pensive moment.
"huge black knotted tree...massed leaves" implies the stuff of caricature and the fact he makes "my irregular lawn...[and] small muddy swamps and prehistoric marshes" the centre of his attention suggests how ludicrous he feels about the mismatch of emotional feelings of Gatsby's and Daisy's meeting and the unsophisticated decor of the setting in which this affair is taken place. This sense of odd comical disproportionality is implied by the simile as Nick staring "like Kant at his church steeple" the allusion here is to the German philosopher Emmanuel Kant who thought that looking at steeples for long periods of time clarify his thoughts but given that there's nothing philosophical about this moment the comparison of Nick who is this uneasy broker of broken human relations with Kant who is this father of transcendental idealism seemed like another wild mismatch.-The irony is that Gatsby is in this state where he is in the house with the very woman who was the sort of all his confusion and delusion.
Nick as the nexus of the novel (he is Daisy's cousin/ Tom's ex-classmate/ Gatsby's neighbour/ Jordan's fling)
Nick as an unreliable, but self-aware, narrator
Gatsby in reality would seem so alluring a character had it not been for the somewhat rose-tinted filtering of Nick's narration
Nick acknowledges and alerts us to the fact that he has fallen to the charm of this man the implication is that his portrayal of Gatsby will be romanticised.
"[Gatsby] told me all this very much later, but I've put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumours about his antecedents, which weren't even faintly true."
In chapter eight Gatsby does not come clean about his origins and Dan Cody's patronage until after Tom exposes Gatsby's shady business dealings
Nick keeps the vague with "very much later" our impression of Gatsby as a dishonest cagey character would have crystallized at this point of the narrative thus making it harder for the reader to stand behind the man as we go on to read the novel.
Nick's eagerness to explode the rumors about Gatsby shows his protectiveness towards Gatsby which is likewise reflected in Nick's quick rebuttal to Tom about Gatsby not being a bootlegger so from a narratorial standpoint by clarifying the truth about Gatsby's background but also withholding unflattering information which would have presented Gatsby negatively. Nick removes the mystique surrounding Gatsby and humanises him as someone whose financial ambitions stem from deep insecurities rather than having the reader focus on Gatsby's manipulative dishonesty.
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"as my father snobbishly suggested and i snobbishly repeat. a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth"
he cannot help but be judgmental to other people suggesting here there are such people who unfortunately suffer flaws in character.
The "scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me against them all" (chapter 9) Nick recognises he is subject to those same flaws he sees in everyone around him. The polysyndeton in "Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I"(final chapter) groups Nick with the rest as people who all possess some deficiency in common which made them subtly "unadaptable with the Eastern life". Like the rest of his Western ilk, Nick knows that no money in the world can rid them of that Midwestern stamp of birth which makes them forever strangers of the glitz and glam of the East which Nick calls its "quality of distortion" a bit of the Eastern quality has also rubbed off on Nick's narrative lens which is characterised by the distortion of subjectivity
Jay Gatsby
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Unlike Gatsby, Daisy sees love and marriage as separate concepts. It is entirely reasonable to her that she loves Gatsby and yet wants to remain married to Tom whereas for Gatsby this is unfathomable
This could be suggested on the day of her wedding to Tom Daisy cries over Gatsby's letter but pulls herself together in time to walk down the aisle. Jordan's account (chapter 4): "Daisy's change' her mine! She began to cry-she cried and cried." despite the momentary hysterics and regret "She didn't say another word" "the pearls were back around her neck 'and' the incident was over" use of polysyndeton (repetition of 'and') in the passage reflects Daisy's practical and historical acceptance of what must be done regardless of what she feels she must marry Tom because that's just what's socially expected of her and it's simply another step in a sequence of actions someone like her must carry out. In Daisy's pov marriage is not something that a woman has agency over it is a ritual that she must undergo and condition herself to accept.
It is central to Gatsby's tragedy that he cannot understand Daisy's approach to love and marriage. "You never loved him" (G to D) "I did love him once- but I loved you too" (Daisy) Chapter 7 climax Daisy is equally frustrated by Gatsby's wanting too much he's forcing her to take one side when she fundamentally cannot rid herself of Tom and all the social benefits and material comforts he provides.
"I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed..." he is still steeped in his delusional fantasy of Daisy one day leaving her husband for him. Exasperated over his hopeless romantic of friend Nick reflects Gatsby "left him standing there in the moonlight - watching over nothing." dramatically ironic because Gatsby is completely oblivious to the fact that Daisy and Tom have already started mending their relationship while he continues to pine after the possibility of daisy leaving Tom- The Buchanans are inseparable: The imagery of the untouched plate of fried chicken and two bottles of ale symbolises the staleness of their marriage and the mutual need for intoxication in order for either husband or wife to stand each other . "There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy" Unlike Gatsby they are people who prize the material over the emotional and want the comfort of the familiar tribe over the daunting prospect of self-discovery.
Gatsby loved Daisy but based on the identity and idea as she represents what he can never achieve i.e the blue-blooded stamp of old money- suggested from when Nick recalls Gatsby's anecdote about first meeting Daisy (chapter 8) "But what gave it an air of breathless intensity,was that Daisy lived there" "a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms" The descriptive emphasis is placed not on Daisy, but on the tokens and associations of wealth. There is the use of irony of "it" instead of "her" (Daisy). This implies the inherited land and wealth that comes is what Gatsby fundamentally desires.
"It excited him, too, that many men has already loved Daisy- it increase her value in his eyes" The many men are symbols of the upper class society that Gatsby so desperately aspires to be part of and they not Daisy's person hood are essentially what determines Daisy's value which carries monetary rather than emotional connotations
"Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily" (chapter 5) Daisy's bathetic and anodyne reaction The blinding Kaleidoscope of shirt colours such as "orange" and "apple-green" mirrors Gatsby's internal confusion which feeds on the distracting disarray of his material extravagance yet none of it manages to convert Daisy to leave Tom. The crying could suggest she sees through Gatsby's desperation and knows none of this will get her to do what he wants i.e to leave Tom and the familiar dominion of old money .