Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapters 7-9

You are expected to focus on the theme of the novel as a whole, and on its system of imagery – from colour scheme to rhythm, from fleeting fantasies to matter-of-fact narrative details which also have an undercurrent of implication.

1. Gatsby goes out of his way to show that he is not worse than those who inhabit East Egg. Now, to be sure, five months at Oxford do not make an Oxford man, nor does a chestful of medals prove that a man is valorous. But Gatsby, with naïve innocence, believes they do. And what is ultimately important is not that he has gained these symbols of accomplishment - the medals, the pictures, the house, etc. What is important is Gatsby’s belief, his dream.

What is the essence of Gatsby’s dream? How is it reflected in chapters 7-9?

2. Daisy is unable to share the terrible simplicity of Gatsby’s dream. We are told that she saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.

What kind of woman is Daisy? Is she a human being or a social being, or both? Does she seem natural to you? Why does she reject Gatsby?

3. Gatsby’s “ greatness ”, which is both heroic and grotesque, is, of course, the center of the novel. Carraway has it just right when he describes Gatsby as a “turbaned character leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued a tiger through the Bois de Boulogne.” It is all there, the sordid and commonplace facts and the fantastic legend together. And, paradoxically, Gatsby has lived both…

Speak of Gatsby’s sham and genuine greatness. Is Nick right when, on an impulse of his heart, he shouts across the lawn, “You are worth the whole damn bunch put together”?

4. The sinister quality of Nick’s vision matches the nightmarish character of the concluding chapters. This concerns not only the events themselves but also the way in which they are presented. Here Fitzgerald uses Edgar Poe’s method of bringing the reader’s emotions into a state of tension, so that it seems that in a moment or two they might snap. This is the discovery that our feelings are most alert when we are in a state between life and death, dream and reality. The unattainable is vivid, and within reach, and when it’s just near and you might get hold of it, you feel up against a wall and it vanishes forever.

Give a brief summary of the chapters stressing the nightmarish quality of the events and the way they are told.

5. Daisy forgets Gatsby as quickly as she comes to accept Tom Buchanan. More quickly. For the comic grotesque scene of her drunken rejection of Tom requires the assistance of Jordan Baker, spirits, and a cold bath before she can face her bridal dinner. The anti-communion that ends the Gatsby affair - cold fried chicken and two bottles of ale shared in the Buchanan kitchen - requires no preparation to re-establish an “air of natural intimacy” between Tom and Daisy.

What other factual, matter-of-fact purely narrative details (that, at first sight, have no other function than that of telling the story itself) can be regarded as symbolic?

6. The orgiastic future that Gatsby dreams finds its opposition in Nick Carraway’s nightmare vision. Nick sees West Egg as a group of grotesque houses crouching beneath a lustreless moon. There, “four men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress, her hand sparkling cold with jewels.” In this sinister vision, “Gravely the men turn in at a house - the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares.” The nightmare fuses many elements: Gatsby’s alcoholic parties with their indifferent guests; Daisy, drunk, with the pearls that have bought her, poured into her wedding dress for delivery to the wrong man; Myrtle laid out on the garage bench, her indifferent slayer driving on; Tom turning in at the jewelry store to buy another pearl necklace and begin another affair.

Does the above-given information exhaust the implicit message of this image or are there some other associations that make it possible to accept Nick’s nightmarish vision as a generalized comment on the narrative he offers us? Suggest one or more other images (not narrative details, this time – give either fantastic images that suggest themselves to the story-teller or minor descriptive details that come to assume a greater significance).

7. Render the following passage and comment on it: be ready to supply what has been omitted (or, perhaps, misinterpreted) by the critic.

В лунном свете совершаются все метаморфозы: плиты тротуара превращаются в ступени лестницы, ведущей в небо, взобравшись по которой герой может пить чудесный сок жизни (с.112), а лицо Дэзи в лунном свете под звучание камертона, задевшего звезду (с. 119), превращается в цветок. Лунный и звездный свет сопутствуют не только герою как знак его романтического избранничества, но и самой лирической теме.

Символика лунного света соединяется, усиливается символикой цвета: голубого и зеленого. Голубой цвет выступает в своем традиционном значении извечного цвета романтических мечтаний, неземного желания, близкий в смысле к лунному цвету, сопутствующий ему.

Зеленый огонек, в сторону которого Гэтсби протягивает руки, - свет сигнального фонаря на той стороне залива, где живет Дэзи. Но эта реалистическая деталь введена в орбиту лирической темы.

Символика солнечного света, отраженная в оттенках золотого и желтого цвета, в переливах света различной силы от слабого поблескивания до ослепительного сияния, еще более сложна и многозначна, чем символика лунного света. С одной стороны, желтый цвет ассоциируется с богатством. Однако, кроме социального содержания, в нем содержание поэтическое, оба смысла переплетаются, так что в голосе Дэзи слышится и необъяснимое очарование, и звон монет, и сама она – не просто богатая девушка из общества, но «девушка золотой мечты» героя. Золото и серебро появляются в романе в двойственном свете и смысле: истинного и ложного, поэзии и мишуры.

8. Explain what the book is about. (Among other things, interpret the very end of the book, considering the usage of the generalizing pronoun “we”, the aposiopesis (=a break in the narrative), and the final metaphor:

“… tomorrow we shall run faster, stretch our arms farther… And one fine morning - -

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”)

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29