Analysis of the book “Great Gatsby” by F.S.Fitzdgerald.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald - the greatest American writer, who entered in the history of world literature for his wonderful novels about the life of America in the 1920s. Nowadays the name of Francis Scott Fitzgerald was constantly mentioned alongside those of other American classics of the twentieth century - Faulkner, Hemingway, Thomas Woolf, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis. Among these brilliant writers Fitzgerald holds a special place – equal among the best, differing unique identity. Fitzgerald is known for the present reader as the author of the wonderful novel "The Great Gatsby" (1925) and several short stories. During his short life he wrote five novels, including an unfinished, four collections of short stories, a series of articles and scripts for movies. Already in the early works of the writer clearly comes through the main theme of his work: exposure of insanity powerful people, destructive effect of bourgeois America's younger generation. F. Scott Fitzgerald entered the literature as a singer of "Jazz Age", that short period in American history, which began shortly after the First World War and ended with the beginning of the Great Depression of the thirties. The concept of "Jazz Age", which became a symbol for the 20’s, which characterizes the common fascination of carnival lifestyle in anticipation of imminent disaster, get out of a storybook name of Scott Fitzgerald's "Tales of the Jazz Age." Unrelenting mind the transience of this holiday of liberation, which often went no further than a purely external forms, although the best of his characters genuine desire to carry out the spiritual potential of the individual, full of stories Fitzgerald. The "Jazz Age" was disturbing subtext. Sam Fitzgerald pointed out that in the early 20s the word "jazz" contains a special shade that does not have anything to do with music. "When people talk about jazz - he wrote -they have in mind the state of the nervous keyed up about this, which reigns in the big cities when it approached the front line. For many Britons that war is still not finished, because the forces threatening them, are still active, and, therefore, let’s live while alive, having fun, until tomorrow the death will not come for us. The same mood appears now - though for different reasons - in America ... ". Extravagant follies younger generation was heard hysterical, nervous tone. The madness of this were in some sense was an act of protest. F Scott Fitzgerald's first novel was the first book, created by a representative of this new generation, which Gertrude Stein would call "lost."
Just today, in an age when the material more and more prevalent over the spiritual, the theme of this work is very urgent.
The central theme of the novel is a comparison of the corrupting influence of wealth to the purity of a dream. Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, Dan Cody, and Meyer Wolfsheim are examples of people who have been corrupted by their money. They do not value the feelings of others or even human life and are only worried about protecting and entertaining themselves.
The story’s narrator Nick Carraway begins the book by informing us the main words of his father that it is never good to criticize other people in whatever way. Perhaps, such is the reason why Nick stays with the story’s central actor named Gatsby until the latter’s death, regardless of the circulating rumors questioning the wealth of Gatsby. Nick lives on West Egg. He has a second cousin, Daisy Buchanan, who is married to Tom Buchanan, they live on the fashionable East Egg and there he meets Jordan Baker, who quickly becomes a romantic interest for our narrator (probably because she’s the only girl around who isn’t his cousin). Later on we meet the Great Gatsby, a wealthy and mysterious man who owns a huge mansion next door to Nick and spends a good chunk of his evenings standing on his lawn and looking at an equally mysterious green light across the bay, and become totally fascinated by him. Tom has a mistress, a woman named Myrtle Wilson who is, of course, married to George (passive, working class man) and Daisy knows about it. Moving along, Gatsby reveals to Nick (via Jordan, in the middle school phone-tag kind of way) that he and Daisy had a love thing before he went away to the war and she married Tom (after a serious episode of cold feet that involved whisky and a bath tub). Gatsby wants Daisy back. The plan is for Nick to invite her over to tea and have her casually bump into Gatsby. Nick executes the plan; Gatsby and Daisy are reunited and start an affair. Tom meets Gatsby and begins investigating into his affairs. The decrease goes down in the city, when Tom has it out with Gatsby over who gets to be with Daisy; in short, Gatsby turns out to be a bootlegger and Daisy is unable to leave her husband for her lover. As the party drives home to Long Island, Tom’s mistress, Myrtle, is struck and killed by Gatsby’s car (in which Gatsby and Daisy are riding, but Daisy was driving). In climax Tom tells George where to find the man that killed his wife, Myrtle. George Wilson shoots and kills Gatsby before taking his own life. Daisy and Tom take off, leaving their mess behind. The denouement is where Nick, who by now is fed up with all of these people, breaks things off with Jordan in a rather brusque way. He is the only one left to take care of Gatsby’s affairs and arrange for his funeral.
Description of the nature of the book are scattered in small fragments, in which the atmosphere of the mood of the characters was transferred. Fitzgerald sometimes in one sentence, it would seem insignificant, is able to convey the feeling that his character feels. So, to say that Daisy is no longer understand much of what she used to be able to understand” feeling the loss of a loved particles, once reconciling them, Gatsby is “walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favors and crushed flowers”. Elsewhere we find this statement: "A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell”.
Language of the narrative is lyrical and poetic. The author skillfully uses artistic means to create vibrant colorful scenes. Here's Nick Carraway looks at all the lights shining from the cellar to tower of the Gatsby’s house " the lights go off and on again as if the house had winked into the darkness " The green light on the dock of Daisy's house, one of the characters for Gatsby, “It had seemed as close as a star to the moon”. And there are a lot of comparisons in the book. They give poetic and enthusiastic attitude of the author. Figurative language of the narrative helps to clearly present the picture described. Long identical white houses on a street in New York, standing close to each other, create the impression of a long white cake, and each apartment building resembles a slice of it. In the novel there are so many stylistic devices, here some examples of it:
«…a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just awhile since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour» - this metaphor describe us some features of unusual character of Daisy.
“an extraordinary gift for hope”, “a romantic readiness” – metaphors, which defines emotional condition of Gatsby.
«the young breath-giving air» - an epithet, which describe the character of the heros.
«Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects diminished by one» - such a periphrasis shows Gatsby’s addition to his lost dream.
«It was the hour of a profound human change and excitement was generating on the air» - here we can see the metaphors which shows the undefined exciting condition of time.
«an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself» - the oxymoron which also describes the emotional condition of the characters.
“the soft twilight”, “wild strident argument”, ‘’the inexhaustible variety of life”, “an unfamiliar sky”, «…he had vanished and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness…», «her low thrilling voice…», “that mysterious excitement”, (‘’blue garden,’’ ‘’blue lawn’’, ’’golden girl’’ – original Fizdgerald epithets.
«the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor» - this metaphor shows the confusion of Gatsby.
«…the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye» - the combination of metaphor and epithet.
«…there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low fever», «Не stretched out his hand desperately as it to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him»- metaphors, also comply the excite condition of the novel.
“starlight to casual moths” – a simile, which characterize the society around Gatsby.
“gleaming, dazzling parties — the music and the laughter — faint and incessant — the cars going up and down”- parallelisms and repetitions.
‘’A sudden emptiness seemed to flow from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host who stood on the porch his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell’’ – a combination of epithet and metaphor.
«he could suck on the pap of life»,”«the melody of imagery» - metaphors.
Nick Carraway
We know very little about Nick. The facts he chooses to present are few: he grew up in a respectable Chicago family and went to Yale, he likes literature and considers himself one of those "limited" specialists known as a "well-rounded man," and he works in the bond business (that is to say, in finances) in New York City. He’s connected to wealthy and important people, like his cousin Daisy and Tom, a college acquaintance, but he is by no means one of them. Unlike the people who surround him, Nick Carraway isn't drowning in wealth. He may be polite and easy to get along with on the outside, but he’s not afraid to tell it like it is. Daisy describes him over a similar "I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a – of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?" "An absolute rose?". During the course of the novel, Nick gradually gets sucked into the world he’s observing, both through his friendships (if you can call them that) with Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby, and through his romantic relationship with Jordan, even if these relationships end very fast, because Nick has realized that he’s changed and will never be the same. It seems his character dilemma is never fully resolved. His observation that all the players in this story were “Westerners” is an apt one – it sums up one of the novel’s main themes, the idea that we might be defined by where we’re from, or the kinds of worlds we grow up in. He is actually the one who understands and supports Gatsby during the whole story.
Jay Gatsby
Long before Gatsby was “great,” he was a small town kid Jimmy Gatz, with big dreams. We learn Gatsby’s real back story fairly late in the story. It turns out that the pre-West Egg Gatsby wasn’t in fact the “young rajah” he pretended to be; instead, he was just a boy from North Dakota without connections, money, or education. Jimmy Gatz died the moment he rowed up to Cody’s boat, and a new man was born – Jay Gatsby, a man with a lot of money, who owns a great mansion on the West Egg, the rumors that circulate around him make him out to be some kind of a mysterious man, who throws up some parties daily. He is in love with Daisy, who has become his the only one dream, passion and hope for future life. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out arms farther …And one fine morning…» - this is a periphrasis, Gatsby compares his happiness with green light, as a “light in the end of the tunnel”. It is a mad, desperately faith in the simple happiness with Daisy. But they are not meant to be together, and Gatsby doesn’t want to believe it his entire fortune, and his entire life, really, are built upon the hope that someday he might rekindle his old love with Daisy, he thinks that “we can repeat the past, of course we can…” Gatsby's love for Daisy is what drives him to reinvent himself, rather than greed or true ambition, and at the end of the day, this unsullied, heartfelt goal puts Gatsby ahead of the rest of the madding crowd. Despite the fact that he attempted to fulfill his “incorruptible dream” through distasteful, sometimes dishonest means, we still emerge from this story profoundly sympathetic to him; he may have been a fool at times, but he’s a fool for love. Even though he’s a self-created image built out of nothing, Gatsby’s emotional honesty, eternal optimism, and simplicity of heart ironically single him out as the only real person in a crowd of fakes – as Nick says, Gatsby is “better than the whole damn bunch put together.”
Daisy Buchanan
Daisy’s not quite like any other girl in the world. When describing Daisy the author uses some epithets like beautiful, fun-loving and something of a flirt; her conversation is charmingly sassy and delightfully frivolous, mysterious, flirtatious, intriguing, delightful, thrilling, sensuous. She is a rich woman from a high class and she prefers to get married with the same class man Tom Buchanan. Even Gatsby says Tom about her: “her voice is full of money” (metaphor).
Daisy’s voice is irresistibly seductive, and all the other characters are drawn to her because of it. Before her marriage with Tom, Daisy had a love affair with Gatsby, who comes from a lower class. Some years from her wedding he meets Gatsby, but they are not to be together, because Daisy has come to realize that more often than not, dreams don’t come true. Daisy returns to Tom because he’s what she knows; the prospect of giving up her whole life to run off with Gatsby is just too overwhelming, no matter how unhappy she is. At her core, Daisy is also incredibly selfish, just like everyone else (Tom, Jordan, perhaps even Nick) – everyone except Gatsby, that is. The real Daisy is not the magical thing she’s made out to be: in the end, she’s simply too human to meet Gatsby’s expectations.
Tom Buchanan
Tom Buchanan is Daisy’s husband, an extremely wealthy man, a brute, and an athlete. He’s selfish and does what he needs to get what he wants. Most of all, he seeks control of his life and control of others. When Tom figures out that Daisy loves Gatsby, he forces a confrontation. He is then able to use Daisy’s momentary hesitation to regain control of his wife. Master of the situation once more, Tom dismisses Gatsby – and his wife – giving him permission to drive his wife home. "He won’t annoy you," he tells her. "I think he realizes that his presumptuous little flirtation is over." With that note of condescension, it is clear to all that Tom has the upper hand. Although Gatsby maintains hope beyond this scene, we all know it’s over.But the quality of Tom that’s most likely to stick with you is the fact that he’s abusive. While we never see him get violent with his wife, there are hints of his unbridled physicality when Daisy reveals a bruise on her finger that, although accidental, was caused by Tom (or the "brute," as she calls him). Although he might not be physically abusive to his wife, Tom certainly causes her some emotional damage. There is, of course, his series of affairs, but he hurts Daisy in other ways, too. When Daisy tells us about her daughter being born, she casually adds that "Tom was God knows where." He is neither attentive nor sensitive towards his wife – especially in contrast to Gatsby. But, of course, Tom’s violent streak really comes across when we see him break Myrtle’s nose with the "short, deft movement" of his open hand. The curt language Fitzgerald uses here makes it clear that such violence means little to Tom.
Myrtle Wilson
She is married to George Wilson, but cheats him with Tom Buchanan. She thinks that he can’t leave his wife for her, because she is a Catholic and not believing in divorce is, as Nick points out, not remotely true., when in reality she is not. Myrtle adds to the novel’s themes of class and wealth. She insists that she married below her caste, that she believed certain things about George until they got married and it was too late (he borrowed a suit for the wedding, for example). Since Myrtle is quite obviously below the Buchanan’s class (yet another reason she goes for Tom), Fitzgerald ridicules her for insisting that she is above her husband.