Megan Mulder

Notes for THE GREAT GATSBY

This isn’t an exhaustive list, because I think you guys should probably be doing that on your own. This is just cool
stuff. Because I am a big fan of cool stuff.

Also, I kind of started doing a slack job halfway through, when i realized that this is the same number of words as
my extended essay.

Themes:
Jeffrey Meyers, from the intro (xxvi)
“the frontier myth of the self-made man; the attempt to escape the materialistic present and recapture the innocent
past; the predatory power of rich and beautiful women; the limited possibilities of love in the modern world; the
heightened sensitivity to the promises of life; the doomed attempt to sustain illusions and to recapture the
American dream”

*all of these are true, but i find the most powerful theme is the one not expressed in that quote: the tension
between idealistic hope and realistic cynicism, and what that does to a person. Gatsby, the idealist, lost his
identity and ended up dead. Nick, the one in the middle, returned to the west, remained a snob, and didn’t lose
anything because he didn’t venture anything. I see Daisy as the cynic, the one who is willing to use other
people for her own pleasure, but who knows from the beginning that she will never leave tom. I don’t think
tom ever abuses daisy, she’s not afraid of him, and i don’t think he would have gotten any pleasure from it.
Instead, tom abuses daisy by cheating on her, and daisy shows her realism by getting him back (cheating on
him with Gatsby). Ultimately, no one wins.

Cool Stuff Awesome Quotes

Why James Gatz changed into Jay Gatsby – tidily Epigraph:

expressed in four lines of poetry. Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Contrast to HoD: Gatsby became a different person (or, Till she cry ‘Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
arguably, played a persona) to win Daisy. There was a I must have you!’
disconnect and the relationship didn’t work, because Thomas Parke d’Invilliers
Gatsby was lying to himself, and Daisy was lying to
Gatsby. In HoD, Kurtz “lied” by omission/absence, taking
an African mistress, while his Intended lied to herself to
prolong the “relationship”.

Link to Kafka: The same disconnect exists between

Gregor and his family (not becoming a different person to
win them over, but keeping his true self hidden). Also, in
the novel there are indications that he doesn’t truly realize
himself as a vermin, still trying to be human for Part I,
trying to go to work, etc. (disconnect even within himself)

Nick is fleeing a messy engagement breaking in the East. “Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an
As such, he wants everything to be solid, at “moral unaffected scorn.” (4)
attention” (3). So he should hate G, but he doesn’t. Why?
He had an “extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic
readiness such as I have never found in another person”
(4). G may be flamboyant and full of himself, but he
doesn’t use it in the “wan, charming, discontented” (10)
way that Daisy/Tom/everyone else do, to hurt others.
Instead, he is the only true idealist Nick has ever met.
Nick, being a cynic, is obviously drawn to the one thing he
cannot be.
Contrast with HoD: Daisy vs the Intended. The Intended
fools herself into believing Kurtz was a good man. Daisy,
on the other hand, knows that Tom is not a good man, and
she uses Gatsby. Though they inhabit opposite ends of the
spectrum, neither of them are admirable.
Similarities with HoD:
From the Introduction to the Great Gatsby, by Jeffrey
Meyers
“Conrad’s influence can be seen in Fitzgerald’s evocative
symbolism (the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock)”
Green is go
Good word: evocative. It’s gross, but it’s almost as if G is
embracing that light, making love to it, in a way, because it
is the only comfort and reminder of Daisy while he waits
for her to show up at one of his parties
Green is the future: green is permission to live into the
future, to take the first step out of the past.
Things to consider:
Obviously, eyes of god. Duh. But why is God so non-
present, then? He watches everything, but he doesn’t
interfere.
Double vision – why double? There’s a reason we have
two eyes – the two perspectives balance each other out, so
we see what is really there, and not what we want to be
GOOD QUOTES FOR DESCRIBING DAISY
“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically. (9)
“I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the
best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little
fool.” (15)
“Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like
Tom’s and she laughed with thrilling scorn. ‘Sophisticated
– God, I’m sophisticated!’”(15)
“She doesn’t drink. It’s a great advantage not to drink
among hard drinking people. [...] Perhaps Daisy never
went in for amour at all – and yet there’s something in that
voice of hers.” (58)
SYMBOLISM of GREEN LIGHT
“he stretched out his arms toward the dark water [...] I
glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a
single green light, minute and far away, that might have
been the end of a dock” (17)
“Gatsby believed in the green light the orgiastic future that
year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s
no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our
arms farther... and one fine morning – ” (134)
SYMBOLISM of DR. T. J. ECKLEBURG
“the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic –
their retinas are one yard high.” (18)
“the road under Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare.” (19)
there. But the people in the novel display a fabulous ability
to see what they want to see (eg: all the rumours that are
offered at parties as explanations for Gatsby’s identity),
except for Nick. Nick sees everything, notes everything,
and then makes a decision, even if he keeps it to himself.
In fact, nick is the only person who, at the end of the
novel, seems to know the whole story of what happened.

NB: nobody really actually knows what happened, it’s

shrouded in ambiguity. From intro “Fitzgerald is
deliberately unclear about whether Tom really thought
Daisy was driving, whether Daisy lied to tom and told him
Gatsby was driving or whether Tom knew Daisy was
driving and tried to protect her by blaming Gatsby.” (xxvi)

Daisies are flowers, light, faintly fragrant, delicate. They

flower for a week and then die. COOL STUFF! Daisy < ------ > Myrtle

Myrtles are trees. They are large, growing 5 metres tall.

They produce many flowers, an essential oil, and berries.

If significance is decided by how many glasses of alcohol

one has drunk, what is significance? This is a cool idea “I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger-bowls
that runs through the novel, because everything that should of champagne, and the scene had changed before my eyes
be real, isn’t. “charming” doesn’t meaning charming into something significant, elemental, and profound.” (36)
anymore – nick uses it to describe the disaffection in daisy
and jordan’s “impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire”
(11). And what is laughter, if the laughter is “vacuous”?
(37) what is marriage is everyone is cheating on each
other? And finally, what is the American dream if it is
built on bootlegging, and if the person who most believes
in it has turned himself into a “gold-hatted, high-bouncing
lover”? if everything is profound, nothing is.

The lure of Gatsby is that he shows us ourselves.

The LURE OF GATSBY
“[His smile] understood you just as far as you wanted to be
understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in
yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the
impression of you that, at you best, you hoped to convey.”
(36)
 DESCRIBING JORDAN
“she was incurably dishonest. She wasn’t able to endure
being at a disadvantage.” (44)

“they’ll keep out of my way” she insisted. “it takes two to

make an accident.”

NICK
“every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal
virtues, and this is mine: i am one of the few honest people
that i have ever known.” (45)

Gatsby has dreamed of Daisy for so long that she is more “he had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right
an idea than a true reality. When he finally meets her and through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at
his dream is actualized, he goes through numerous an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in teh reaction,
emotions. he was running down lik an over-wound clock.” (69)

“almost five years! There must have been moments even

that afternoon when daisy tumbled short of his dreams –
not through her own fault, but because of the colossal
vitally of his illusion.” (72)

I’m going to be honest – i still have no idea what this “they’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice
quote means. muffled in the thick folds. “it makes me sad because I’ve
never seen such – such beautiful shirts before.” (69)

A culture of people afraid to be alone. “i tried to go then, but they wouldn’t hear of it; perhaps my
presence made them feel more satisfactorily alone.” (70)

[Jordan] “i like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small

parties there isn’t any privacy.” (37)

James Gatz to Jay Gatsby “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island,
sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. [...] and to
his conception he was faithful to the end.” (73-74)
Gatsby and Daisy both don’t drink. But Gatsby doesn’t
drink because he saw Dan Cody disintegrate because of it.
Daisy doesn’t drink because it is to her advantage.
Gatsby’s reason is self-preservation, while Daisy’s reason
is self-promotion.
To describe West Egg, and the life of the roaring twenties
Gatsby wants the past.
I’m not sure what to say about this, except that it struck me
as interesting.
Huh. Interesting link with HoD: i wonder what the
Intended is going to be doing with herself for the next 30
years?
MONEY
See the article.
Nick isn’t one to take sides, but he wants Gatsby to
succeed.
“It was indirectly due to Cody that Gatsby drank so little.”
(75)
[on daisy’ abstinence] “You can hold your tongue, and,
moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own
so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or
care.” (58)
“she was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented ‘place’
that broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing
village – appalled by its raw vigour that chafed under the
old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded
its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing.”
(80)
“he wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to
Tom and say: ‘i never loved you’” (82)
“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “why of
course you can!” (82)
“what’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried daisy,
“and the day after that, and the next thirty years?”
“her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly. That was it.
I’d never understood before. It was full of money – that
was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the
jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it ... high in a white
palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl ... ”
“i wanted to get up and slap him on the back. I had one of
those renewals of complete faith in him that I’d
 experienced before.

The moment gatsby’s illusions of daisy, although slowly “Oh you want too much!” she cried to Gatsby. “I love you
crumbling before this point, come falling down. now – isn’t that enough? [...] I did love him once – but I
loved you too.” (98)

Daisy – the voice full of money “only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped
Gatsby – a dead dream away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible,
struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost
voice across the room.” (100)

Age of transition. Nick’s coming of age was during the “Thirty – the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning
hotel room, when he realized that it was his birthday, and list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of
that this was “the portentous, menacing road of a new enthusiasm, thinning hair. [...] so we drove on toward
decade.” (100) death through the cooling twilight.” (101)

Gatsby is standing watching to see if Tom is going to harm “so i walked away and left him standing there in the
Daisy, but really, he’s standing vigil over a relationship moonlight – watching over nothing.” (108)
that no longer exists.

Nick as the prespective of T. J. Eckleburg – he sees the “[Gatsby] was clutching at some last hope and I couldn’t
truth, and like T. J. E., he doesn’t get involved, instead, bear to shake him free.” (109)
only watching

And yet, Nick believes in Gatsby. Or at least, respected “i’ve always been glad [i complemented him]. It was the
him for giving himself over so completely to an illusion, only compliment i ever gave him, because i disapproved of
so much so, that he became an illusion himself. You can him from beginning to end.” (114)
disapprove of a person taking that path in life, but there is
still a pull, an admiration that cannot be suppressed,
because that person is doing what you wish you could
allow yourself to do.

But he lets us mortals run around and make messes of our “god sees everything,” repeated Wilson. (118)
lives. And he doesn’t offer help in cleaning up.

Written before wwii. “and the holocaust was complete.” (120)

Holocaust – greek, “everything burnt”
Utter annihilation. Systematic destruction of hope.
Link to HoD: G.’s dad is the equivalent of the Intended,
building the illusion for himself that his son built up his
country, instead of bootlegging. Nick fulfill’s marlow’s
role by lying
Further quotes about illusions, and the fact that nick didn’t
really fit
Nick, who doesn’t get involved in anything, has finally
chosen his side.
This quote must be seen in partnership with the ending
line.
These lines have a tired sweetness to them. They are not
resigned, though they speak of the human race never being
able to escape the past, always being pulled back into the
past by it’s lustre and illusion. Instead, the lines have a
tone of hope to them, and of determination to “beat on”.
Perhaps the nature of dreaming is that humans believe the
dream can hardly be failed to grasp. If so, then all dreams
are doomed to failure. And yet, nick chooses to hope,
anyways.
“if he’d lived, he’d of been a great man. A man like james
j. Hill. He’d of helped build up the country.”
“that’s true,” i said uncomfortably. (125)
“i see now that this has been a story of the West, after all
Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all
Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in
common which made us subtly un adaptable to Eastern
life. [...] even then it had always for me a quality of
distortion.” (130)
“on the white steps an aobscene word, scrawled by some
boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly int eh
moonlight, and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly
along the stone.”
“[gatsby’s] dream must have seemed so close that he could
hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already
behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond
the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on
under the night.” (134)
“so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back
ceaselessly into the past.” (134)