THE GREAT GATSBY

Some key features for a critical approach to this chapter

(form structure language)

 Form

Satire of social Group

American Dream

Realism / film set

20^th century tragedy

Urban Drama

Discourse on social and financial divisions

Quest

Structure

Mystery/suspense:

• Gatsby embarrassed on meeting Tom 48
• The letter 49

Dates/Times

• ‘Late in July’ (1922) 41.  1917 – 48.  ‘By the next year’ 48.   ‘By the next autumn’ 49.  ‘That was in August’ 50.  ‘The next April’ 50.  ‘Six weeks ago’ 50

First person narrator:

• ConfirmsJordan’s view of Gatsby 42
• ‘Then it was all true’ 43
• Angry with distaste for the ‘overpopulated town’ 43.
• Resists Jay’s disarming ‘smile’ 46
• Indignant/shocked by break of faith with 50 millionpeople 47
• Links Daisy with Gatsby’s behaviour at end of Ch 1
• ‘There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.’ 51
• Has no dream-girl so kissesJordan52

Intradiagetic narrators

• Gatsby 42
  • ‘swallowed/choked’ on ‘Oxford’ 42
  • San Francisco as Middle West 42
  • ‘Argonne Forest’ unlikely 42
  • Regards Jordan as ‘great sportswoman’ 46
• Jordan49
  • Setting description includes the onomatopœic/metaphoric ‘tut-tut-tut-tut’
  • Narrates story of meeting Jay and Daisy 48, Daisy’s marriage day and France in chronological order.
  • Mentions motif of Daisy’s voice 50
  • Reveals Gatsby’s plan to Nick

Language

Characterisation

• Names of guests 40.  Fitzgerald’s symbolic reference to ‘grey’ names in the ‘Disintegrating timetable’ 39
• Jordan
  • See above under ‘Structure
  • ‘clean, hard, limitedperson, who dealt in universal scepticism’ 51
• Wolfsheim
  • Gloomy and  corrupt
  • Prefers the Metropole where they shot Rosy Rosenthal (actual event)
  • ‘business gonnegtion’ 45
  • ‘I had a wrong man’ (idiosyncratic grammar) 45
  • Human molar cufflinks 47
  • Gives view of Gatsby
    • ‘never so much as look at a friend’s wife’ – ironic
    • Gambler.
    • Fixed The World Series (actual event but it was Rothstein)
• Gatsby (see ‘Structure’ above)
  • ‘Old sport’ 41
  • The medal and the photographs – props!

Setting

• Filmic aspects
  • ‘sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker’ 44
  • ‘A dead man passed us’ 44
  • Cut to ‘Roaring noon’ 44
  • Cut to 1917 –  48
• Jordan’s description of setting, see ‘Structure’ above
• Children’s voices
  • Innocent yet morally ambivalent re ‘Sheik of Araby’ 50

Also see:

Chapter 2 Notes

Chapter 3 Notes

Chapter 5 Notes

Chapter 6 Notes

Chapter 7 Sample essay

Chapter 8 Guided reading 

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