Transcript Foul Dust Floating in the Wake of Dreams: Why The Great

Welcome back! I hope your spring break
was everything you hoped it would be,
and that you’ve returned to class with
your batteries recharged!
You may sit where you like today, at least
for part of the day; we’ll do part of the
PowerPoint today, and use some time
during the second half of class to meet
with your party groups.
For now, please take out your notebooks
and a pen or pencil!
They Were Careless People:
Another Look at
The Great Gatsby
Feraco
American Literature
14 April 2008
It was all very careless and confused.
They were careless people, Tom and
Daisy – they smashed up things and
creatures and then retreated back into
their money or their vast carelessness
or whatever it was that kept them
together, and let other people clean up
the mess they had made…
Can you describe the other characters as
vividly? Give it a shot! Write a similarly
descriptive sentence about the
character of your choice (besides
Gatsby – we’ll get to him).
Our List of Characters

Major Characters
(The Big Seven):
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Nick
Daisy
Tom
Gatsby
Jordan
Myrtle
George
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Minor Characters:
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Meyer Wolfshiem
Owl Eyes
Michaelis
Klipspringer
Catherine
What’s the Real Story?
Early: James Gatz grows up in North
Dakota, meets Dan Cody, and begins to
pursue a life of wealth and fortune after
Cody’s death
 Semi-Early: While serving in the military
(before going off to serve in World War I),
Gatz (now Gatsby) heads to Louisville,
Kentucky for additional training


He meets Daisy Fay and (indirectly) Jordan
Baker while in Louisville
The Girl With the
Glittering Voice
Gatz (now Gatsby) fell head over heels for
Daisy
 She represented everything he aspired to
obtain
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Wealth
Status
Stability
The Girl!
She represented everything he aspired to
obtain

In order to seem worthy of her hand, he lied
about his heritage and history
Not Enough
 The
lies were enough for a while,
and Daisy promised to wait for him
while he went off to war
 Unfortunately for Gatsby, Daisy
married Tom during the conflict

Tom represents the type of person
someone with old money was expected
to marry – someone else with old
money, status, and tradition on their
side, rather than someone who’s new to
the party
When He Returns…
 Gatsby
came home to find that Daisy
has married another man…

Apparently, the letter that sent her into
a tearful tirade on the night before her
wedding night wasn’t enough to stop
her from going through with it!
 …and
we meet him at the peak of his
“new life,” the self-constructed
identity that aims to steal Daisy back
The New Arrival
 Nick
arrives just in time to meet our
colorful cast of characters before
they all crash into one another (and
destroy each others’ lives)
 Tom’s affair with Myrtle poisons two
marriages (and reveals that he’s an
unlikable person), but it also helps
to set the book in motion
Look at This!

Look at the way Fitzgerald structures his story!
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Chapter One: Nick arrives, meets Tom, Daisy, and
Jordan; we see them basking in their wealth,
carrying on empty conversations and generally
bathing in their own unhappiness
We see that Jordan is unashamedly curious – and
get hints that she’s somewhat dishonest
We see that the Tom/Daisy marriage is a sham
We even see that Daisy is somewhat dishonest
We’re also introduced (indirectly) to Myrtle - and to
Gatsby
Look at This!
Chapter Two: We’re introduced to Myrtle,
George, and Catherine
 We see that Tom is no nicer to his mistress –
or anyone else – than he is to Daisy
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We also have a “meaningless” item introduced
– the dog collar – that ends up playing a
critical role
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At least he’s consistent…
The old “gun on the mantle” rule
Finally, “God” and the valley of ashes are
introduced
Look at This!
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Chapter Three: We meet Gatsby and Owl Eyes, and
are treated to a longer look at Jordan Baker
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We now know that Jordan is dishonest – and Gatsby strikes
us as odd
We see that Jordan and Gatsby have something secret to talk
about; this turns out to be Daisy
Finally, we see Owl Eyes – an important introduction with
the books, as well as a critical “car crash” scene
The crash serves two purposes: It works as a metaphor for
Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy (“Let’s back up.” “But the wheel’s
off!” “No harm in trying…”) while simultaneously
foreshadowing the fatal encounter with Myrtle
We look at the phony, shallow, uninteresting people
that surround Gatsby – although they surround him
without getting close to him

Gatsby is alone in a crowd – a relic in a modern age that has
left him behind
Look at This!
Chapter Four: We meet Meyer Wolfshiem – a
very shady character – and learn Gatsby’s
backstory
 This is a particularly effective narrative
technique because it allows us to hear all of the
false impressions about Gatsby – thus placing
us in a constantly skeptical position
 Why should we be skeptical? Because Gatsby is
a deeply imperfect character in a deeply
imperfect world, and it’s important to
remember this without romanticizing him

Look at This!
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Chapter Five: We see Gatsby trying to bring Nick into
his “circle of work”; more importantly, we finally have
the Daisy-Gatsby reunion on our hands (note that it’s
at Nick’s house)
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It’s an incredibly awkward reunion, and it reveals a lot about
Gatsby – but it also furthers some of our suspicions about him
Fitzgerald foreshadows the importance of the
swimming pool on the chapter’s first page
He also shows Gatsby knocking over the clock; Gatsby
is able to catch it, but the moment symbolizes his
slippery grasp of time (and his futile attempts to
recapture the past)
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Nick finds himself thinking about whether Gatsby sees Daisy
as she is or as she was
Think about the “loss of the green light”
As We Begin…
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Sit wherever you like today!
Please take out your rough drafts
Trade with the person who looked over your
thesis, and sign your name at the bottom of the
first page
Spend the next ten minutes looking over the
draft; concentrate on content more than
mechanics, and offer honest feedback to your
partner
I will come by and check each paper as you
work; remember, each paper must be at least
three pages long in order to earn credit!
Look at This!
Chapter Six: We find out the truth about James
Gatz, and how he became Jay Gatsby (although
we don’t know the truth about how he’s
sustained his wealth until the last chapter)
 Establishes the pattern of Gatsby’s dreams
being thwarted by others (his denied
inheritance), as well as underscores Gatsby’s
attempt to recreate his past affair with Daisy
 Just as we looked at the loss of the green light
in Chapter V, Nick begins to look at the uneasy
balance between what we have and what we
want – and what dreams are worth once we’ve
realized them
 Finally, this is the first hint that Tom won’t go
quietly – he’s actively fighting Gatsby here
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Look at This!
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Chapter Seven: It all goes to pieces; we watch in horror
as Fitzgerald smashes his carefully laid “domino
structure” (think “V for Vendetta”)
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If you look at the novel’s message – as well as its
symbolism and characterization – you realize that
Myrtle has to die
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This is similar to the way that Gatsby has discontinued his elaborately
staged gatherings
She’s constantly described as vibrant, passionate – almost
overstuffed with life
You also understand why Gatsby won’t tell anyone
Daisy was driving, even though you instinctively
realize that this is serious – that this will probably
destroy him
Finally, we endure Tom’s bitter triumph – and watch
him continue to manipulate those around him even in
the face of a terrible personal loss

We also see that final, chilling night between Daisy and Tom – and
you realize, horrified, that Gatsby’s been wrong about Daisy all along
Look at This!
Chapter Eight: The end comes swiftly, and Gatsby and
George are sacrificed to the Buchanans’ plans
 Before dying, Gatsby confesses the rest of what we
really already knew; by the end of this chapter, the
“story” is basically over (but Chapter IX remains)
 We don’t hate George, even after he murders Gatsby
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We see that he’s been used and abused by Tom, and we redirect our hatred at Tom as surely as if he’d shot Gatsby
himself
The things Fitzgerald set up earlier in the book – the
dog collar, the unused pool, the unusually creamcolored car, and the eyes of God over the Valley of
Ashes – come together perfectly

It’s a truly masterful move; reading this chapter is like
watching a great painter put the finishing touches on a work,
changing it from a mere collection of paint into something
beautiful and sad
Look at This!
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Chapter Nine: Everything else is revealed in something
of a haunting epilogue; the introductory paragraphs of
the first chapter now make sense to us
We see Gatsby abandoned by those who once leeched
off his wealth, and by those who know the truth about
what happened
It is a frustrating, infuriating finale – but that’s the
point
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A happy ending wouldn’t send Nick back to the Midwest in the
state he’s in at the beginning of the story
Finally, we have the last line – where everything
Fitzgerald has been playing with regarding dreams and
time comes together
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Our dreams are dependent on our history – and we often find
ourselves unwittingly chasing something that’s already passed
This is why we beat against the current – we try to avoid
getting lost in our past, but it isn’t that easy
This also says something about our American dream
Parallels Between the
Characters
 Now
we’ll concentrate on the many
interesting parallels between
Fitzgerald’s main figures
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Daisy and Myrtle
Gatsby and George
Tom and Gatsby
Jordan and Daisy
Collars
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Look at the gifts Tom gives the women in his
life:
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Daisy receives pearls on the night before her
wedding – and, eventually, a child
Myrtle receives a dog collar the night Tom breaks
her nose – and a dog as well
The pearls are for his trophy; the collar is for his
possession
He also harms both women – Daisy’s finger,
Myrtle’s nose – underscoring his brutality and
ruthlessness; it doesn’t surprise us one bit when it
turns out that Tom told George that Gatsby was
responsible for Myrtle’s death
But did Daisy tell Tom the truth?
Dreamers
 George
is a Gatsby who does not
dare to dream
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He sits and wastes his life in the ashheaps, struggling to sustain a colorless,
unenjoyable marriage
Gatsby and George “lose” to Tom
Buchanan
• The women they love are drawn to Tom
• His dishonesty leads to their deaths
Frustrated
Tom and Gatsby are prisoners of the
fleeting glories in their past
 Both men are unhappily rich, chasing
something they’ll never get back
 Neither is really a “stand-up guy” – after
all, Gatsby is trying to steal another man’s
wife (and he’s a criminal!)
 Still, we have to root for someone – and
it’s better to root for the Great Gatsby
than for the simple, confused, nasty Tom

Shiny
Finally, we get to the two women we meet in
the first chapter – Daisy and Jordan
 Gatsby and Nick fall for them, but neither pair
is well-matched; for all of the hints that Nick
isn’t a completely noble figure, he’s still not
nearly as dishonest as Jordan
 I find it interesting that Jordan is suddenly
engaged to another man; while it’s not
identical to the Daisy/Tom/Gatsby triangle, it’s
meant to remind us of it

Now…the Thematic
Assignment!
I want you to do something more complex than the
“scavenger hunt” type of work we did before break.
 This week, I want you to look closely at why Fitzgerald
uses the themes you chose at the beginning of the
story, rather than simply where each theme appears.
 What is he saying through his decision to focus on
______?
 For example, if you were dealing with the “time”
theme, a sample sentence would not be “Fitzgerald
uses time a lot in The Great Gatsby.”
 Instead, try something else – something like
“Fitzgerald’s emphasis on time reveals a deeper flaw in
Gatsby’s American dream – the tendency of the
dreamer to focus on the past rather than the present.”
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 3.2
The Standard
Analyze the way in which the theme
or meaning of a selection represents a
view or comment on life, using textual
evidence to support the claim.
 You have two themes. Let’s start by
coming up with a sentence explaining
why each theme is important. What view
(or comment) is Fitzgerald expressing?
 When you are done, I want you to find
those who share your theme and trade
analyses with them.
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I’ll post the theme list on the board
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Loss – Kim, Stephen, Bruce, Curtis

Opportunity – Catherine, Anthony Gar, Alexandra, Matt S.
Love/Desire – Jei, Alice, Helena, Phil
 Community/Class – Anthony Gar, Matt S, Matt V,
Charlie
 Hope – Matt V., Melissa, David, Alice
 Truthfulness – Megan, Lauren, Julia, Phil
 Independence – Alexandra, Michael, Robert, Tinna
 Secrets – Tinna, Lauren, Andrea, Anthony W
 Enlightenment – Anthony Gab, Jei, Nilom
 Betrayal – Julia, Edmund, Anthony W, Helena
 Death/Decay – Curtis, Anthony Gab, Ashley, Jonathan
 Disappointment – Catherine, Bruce, Stephen, Kim
 Revenge – Jonathan, Grace, David, Charlie
 Identity – Robert, Nilom, Megan, Ashley
 Desperation – Kenna, Grace, Michael, Edmund
 Reputation – Kenna, Melissa, Andrea

Loss
Opportunity
Love/Desire
Community/Class
Hope
Truthfulness
Independence
Secrets
ENlightenment
Betrayal
Death/Decay
Disappointment
Revenge
Identity
Desperation
Reputation