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Myrtle Wilson - Coggle Diagram
Myrtle Wilson
Toms Apartment in NYC
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Myrtle is naive and foolish in her belief that Tom can bring her her American dream, that tom will drop daisy for her, when the reality is all Tom sees myrtle as is simply another possession for him to control.
Her clothing = erzatz
superficiality of her personality, caricature,
She uses Tom as an attempt to climb the social ladder, and her extreme erzatz is an image of her attempts to use appearance to appear
Myrtle has the tenacity to try move up in life, but the success of her endeavour depends on Tom
'the living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too big for it... scenes of ladies swinging in the garden of versailles.' chp2
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Myrtles Death
The climax of the novel
Symbolic of how the upper class will always take advantage of the working class, Myrtle is the first sacrifice in the 'holocaust' that is the wrath of Tom and Daisy
Class
She is imprisoned by her social status and inability to move up the social strata of the 1920s american society.
Myrtle is ultimately trapped in the Valley of the Ashes, she is constantly at the will of others, particularly men.
She is trapped, stuck in her marriage with George, imprisoned by him with no escape.
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Myrtle dies at the hands of the UC, despite her ambition, she will never be a member of the elite and therefore she will be their victim.
'her life violently extinguished.', in death her 'vitality' is ripped from her, her 'left breast swings loose' that is the most prominent characteristic of her (her sexuality) when she is alive and in death.
Her death (and Gatsby's) can be read as a statement about the illusory nature of the american dream.
Her death is violent, grotesque and her femininity is disfigured: symbolic of the fate of women who attempt to shape their own lives in the 1920s
Myrtle speaks out
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Whilst Daisy and Jordan are described as well-groomed and understanding of social cues, Myrtle is loud and obscene: 'violent and obscene.'
This makes it clear that Myrtle is an outsider, she does not embody an UC habitus: not masking her working class roots.
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'beat me, throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward.' chp7