Fransis scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. Chapters 4-6

THE GREAT GATSBY. Chapters 4-6

The aim of the lesson is to teach you to evaluate pieces of criticism getting back to facts and once more, to criticism, and on this basis to form your conclusions.

1. Explain what blues is. Imitate the speaker’s manner (make use of the lecture “ What is Jazz? ”).

“ The Blues is basically a strict poetic form combined with music. It is based on a rhymed couplet with the first line repeated. For example, Billy Holiday sings:

‘My man don’t love me, treats me awful mean; / Oh, he’s the lowest man I’ve ever seen.’

When she sings, she repeats the first line - so it goes:

‘My man don’t love me, treats me awful mean;

‘My man don’t love me, treats me awful mean; / Oh, he’s the lowest man I’ve ever seen.’

That is one stanza of Blues. A full Blues is nothing more than a succession of such stanzas for as long as the singer wishes.”

2. The structure of the novel is based on repetition as one of the chief devices. By repetition we mean a certain sameness of scenes witnessed by Nick Carraway or a presentation of the same periods in the heroes’ life viewed at a different angle. (e.g., a detailed description of a party at Gatsby’s in chapters 3 and 6). Account for such repetitions and the changes the author introduces at each level.

3. “Now, if you’ve noticed, each of these three lines got four bars apiece, making it all a 12-bar stanza. But the voice itself sang only about half of each 4-bar line, and the rest is supposed to be filled up by the accompaniment. This filling up is called “ a break ”; and here in the break we have the origin of the instrument imitating the voice, the very soil in which jazz grows. Perhaps the essential sound of Jazz is Louis Armstrong improvising the breaks in a Blues sang by Bessie Smith. From this kind of voice imitation all instrumental improvising has since developed.”

Though the story is largely narrated by Nick Carraway, sometimes the narration is taken over by the author himself, causing a kind of “break” in the narrative and a change of tone. Find cases of such breaks and account for them.

4. “A good way to understand syncopation might be to think of a heart-beat that goes along steadily and, at a moment of shock, misses a beat. It is that much of a physical reaction.

Technically, syncopation means either the removal of an accent where you expect one, or the placing of an accent where you least expect one. In either case there is the element of surprise and shock. The body responds to this shock, either by compensating for a missing accent or by reacting to the unexpected one.”

You can find “ syncopation ” in the book in the case when the author speaks practically simultaneously about several different things, different not only in tone, but in meaning as well. You will also find it in the change of rhythm within the same paragraph, from the one of pure narration to the exalted short phrases of the direct speech. Find cases of syncopation and explain them.

5. “Those are the basic facts of syncopation; and now we can understand its subtler aspects. Between one beat and another there lie shorter and even weaker beats; and when these get accentuated the shock is correspondingly greater, since the weaker the beat you accentuate, the greater the surprise.”

These weaker beats in a Blues correspond to the least significant details and episodes in the novel that come to acquire a symbolic meaning when the author accentuates them. Find such cases and explain their symbolic value.

6. The very nature of Jay Gatsby contains some features of jazz. Though all his life is dominated by one dream, as a Blues by one melody, much in it depends on improvisation.

Develop the idea and support it by facts.

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