Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
Search This Blog
The Prophet
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
Followers
Blog Archive
-
▼
2010
(21)
- ► 05/16 - 05/23 (3)
- ▼ 05/09 - 05/16 (5)
- ► 05/02 - 05/09 (1)
- ► 04/25 - 05/02 (1)
- ► 04/18 - 04/25 (10)
- ► 03/28 - 04/04 (1)
-
►
2009
(20)
- ► 11/08 - 11/15 (5)
- ► 11/01 - 11/08 (3)
- ► 10/25 - 11/01 (2)
- ► 10/18 - 10/25 (5)
- ► 09/27 - 10/04 (5)
4 comments:
Chapter 6: Averill
At the start of Chapter Six, a reporter from New York arrives at Gatsby’s house, in the hope of extracting a statement from Gatsby, who has become a celebrity. While wild rumors that “weren’t even faintly true” about Gatsby spread around New York, Nick reveals to us the real events of Gatsby’s past. Gatsby “was really, or at least legally” James Gatz from North Dakota, who changed his name “at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career”: when he met Dan Cody, a wealthy miner who represented everything that Gatsby hoped to achieve. Gatsby adopted his new identity just as readily as he saw the opportunity for it to succeed and to reinvent his past, taking on Cody as a dominating figure since “[Gatsby’s] imagination had never really accepted…his parents at all.” Nick perceives that Gatsby’s smile was the reason that Cody came to like Gatsby, since people always tended to like him when he smiled. Gatsby was employed as a “steward, mate, skipper, secretary and even a jailor” for Dan Cody. Although Dan Cody died, Cody influenced Gatsby mentally by scaring him out of excessive drinking and physically by leaving Gatsby to inherit, but in some form sustain, both Cody’s legacy and some of his money. To Gatsby, Dan Cody represented a human incarnation of God; an ideal figure, one Gatsby models himself after, and one to whom Gatsby employs all possible service and devotion, during and after Cody’s life.
Several weeks later, Tom Buchanan and two other people arrive at Gatsby’s on horseback. A man named Sloane and a woman accompany Tom. After small talk between Gatsby and Tom, Tom learns that Gatsby knows his wife to an extent. Gatsby is in turn affected by Tom because it is the first time he sees a physical boundary between himself and the achievement of his dream—of Daisy. Gatsby urges them to stay for supper at his house, in hope to see more of who Tom is. Instead, to be polite the lady invited both Nick and Gatsby to join for her big dinner party. Nick, knowing that the invitation was only offered to not seem rude, politely declined, but Gatsby did not understand that she didn’t really want him to accept.
On the following Saturday, Daisy and Tom Buchanan attend one of Gatsby’s parties. Gatsby’s party easily excited Daisy, while Tom shows arrogance of being above a West Egg party. The distinction between West Egg and East Egg becomes more prevalent by Tom’s statement about how he doesn’t know anyone at Gatsby’s. Tom acts oblivious the whole night about the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy, but really attempts to keep an eye on them. He demands that Nick tell him about Gatsby, determined to judge him based on rumor, drawing lines between himself and the “new money” that Gatsby represents. When Daisy and Tom leave, Gatsby approaches Nick at the end of the party and is distraught because he thinks Daisy didn’t enjoy herself, the whole party having been hosted mostly (but not overtly) in her honor. Frustrated by his failed efforts to please her, Gatsby chalks it up to Daisy changing and retreats into a universe he inhabited five years ago and has closed off in his mind as his own Paradise. This is his weakness: he has anchored himself so firmly in the past that he refuses to accept the future. “He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you.’” Gatsby is overwhelmed by Daisy’s relationship with Tom since Gatsby himself has been committed to loving Daisy for so many years; he sees it as a choice he made between pursuing “the pap of life…the incomparable milk of wonder” and combining “his unutterable visions to her perishable breath”, a conscious decision to join himself with something—and someone—who would eventually die.
Chapter six looks good--there is a very detailed summary and a very good. Good because not only does it provide information about the plot but it also begins to detail how what is happening on the literal level impacts the more symbolic aspects of the novel.
This is a great, comprehensive, and well thought through summary.
Good job,
AK
PS--let's hope that chapters 5 and 6 will be just as strong.
Chapter 5: George
Chapter Five begins with Nick’s return from the city after his date with Jordan Baker. He is surprised to see the point of West Egg so illuminated and momentarily wonders if someone’s house is on fire. He discovers that it is Gatsby’s mansion that is displaying all the lights, but it also seems that no one is home. Nick is suddenly approached by Gatsby, who tries to bribe him into inviting Daisy, only Daisy, over to lunch at Nick’s house, where Gatsby would also attend. Though Nick refuses Gatsby’s offers, he still agrees to go along with Gatsby’s plan. Nick is nervous for the plan’s success because of how drastically Gatsby’s confidence level drops; the eternal gentleman, Gatsby, when the day finally arrives, is a nervous wreck. It is raining when Daisy arrives. When they see each other at first, they are awkwardly silent, sitting far apart, which is strange for the “old friends” that they claim to be. Gatsby almost knocks over a broken clock on the mantelpiece, on which the time had stopped, symbolizing how he is trying to recover a part of his past from which he had never really parted. However, the mood and the tension of the characters all suggest that his dream, while physically & externally still intact, is internally broken.
Nick leaves them for half an hour; when he returns, it seems that whatever invisible barrier of embarrassment, cordiality, or personal social conduct that had separated them has been broken; Daisy has been crying, and Gatsby is illuminated by a wonder that changes his perspective on the entire setting. When the rain stops, Nick, Daisy, and Gatsby cross the yard to Gatsby’s house. They take a tour through his house, and Daisy stares in wonder at his luxurious lifestyle. When they reach his bedroom—“the simplest room of all”—Gatsby turns immediately to the dresser and pulls out all the shirts he has accumulated over the years, throwing them on the bed in a pile of exotic colors and fabrics. Daisy begins to cry into them, because he is exposing himself fully to her—exposing himself through the last and crudest of forms: his possessions. He reveals part of himself through her because it is perhaps the last of many ways he has tried to open up to her, and perhaps because when they had met five years ago, he had been hard-pressed for money and would not have been able to pull off such a lavish display.
They retreat downstairs and while Gatsby has passed visibly through several states of emotion, he is entering on a doubtful and hesitating one, running down “like an over-wound clock.” He had been so consumed by maintaining a vision of Daisy that when he finally is reunited with her, “even that afternoon… Daisy tumbled short of his dreams.” In fact he had put so much into loving his own incarnation of Daisy that even the real woman “could not challenge what [he] could store up in his ghostly heart.” Gatsby has surrounded himself so deeply in this dream of Daisy and that of her loving solely him, that to some extent he will not accept the reality: that she is not perfect, complete with her beauty and charm and her own set of flaws. Also he will not accept his own inability to merge his fantasy with the reality, because he will not accept that she has not been as loyal to their relationship as he.
It is in this tragic realization that Nick leaves them, alone in Gatsby’s house. Nick doesn’t know what will happen when they are left alone, but decides to draw a curtain on the scene and not find out.
Chapter Four: Kyle
Chapter 4 begins with Nick listing all of the names of the rich men and women that had attended Gatsby’s parties that summer. Nick explains how Gatsby showed up in his drive way one day to go out to lunch in the city. On the way to the city, Gatsby tells Nick stories about his past, claiming he had been an Oxford scholar who was born out of wealthy mid western family—though he betrays that he was raised in San Francisco. Gatsby admits that he knows Nick is meeting Jordan for tea, and takes it upon himself to provide the topic of their conversation, which annoys Nick rather than fascinate him the way that it would anyone else. On the way through the Ash Valley Gatsby is pulled over for speeding, but is quickly released after showing the cop a small white card. When they finally arrive at the restaurant, Gatsby introduces Nick to a very strange and shady character named Mr. Wolfshiem, who is alleged to have rigged the World Series in 1919; everything about this man, from his name to the human molar cufflinks on his jacket, is shrewd and severe. Wolfshiem also has a trait characteristic of powerful figures in the book—he lacks a definitive nose (like T. J. Eckleburg, like the front cover of the book) which is symbolic of his inability to smell the corruption of his money; in the case of the other two, the sin ignored could be omniscient power, and power over a single person’s emotions.
Nick finally learns the information that fills up his idea of who Gatsby is: and instead of bootlegging or underground crime it’s actually a love affair. Daisy and Gatsby had been involved before Gatsby was stationed in Europe during WWI, and the romance had become the driving fire inside Gatsby that has compelled him just as far as he can reach—across the bay from Daisy’s green dock light. After Gatsby left for the war, it didn’t take Daisy long to involve herself again into another relationship, this time with Tom Buchanan of Chicago. On their wedding night, however, Daisy is found incredibly drunk and clutching two things: a pearl necklace, from Tom, and a letter, from Gatsby. She is in hysterics, shouting, “Tell ‘em all Daisy change’ her mind. Say: ‘Daisy change’ her mind!’” As readers we can see right through the gesture of the pearl necklace that she has received from Tom, and this shallowness seems to hold any comfort or passion their relationship has. The letter from Gatsby, while in material much less precious, is emotionally invaluable, because of the effect it has on Daisy; she would not let it go until “she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.” This episode in itself shows how much more Daisy values Gatsby over Tom, and yet how she does nothing actively to stop a marriage she knows will be an accident.
Post a Comment