Blog Entry the 5th: Personal Review

Few of the College Board List's reading material has affected me so deeply as The Great Gatsby, which, before I read in class, I chose to read on the recommendation of my older sister. It was the first book of his I read, and subsequently I became interested in Fiztgerald's earlier works, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and the Damned. Fitzgerald is a writer to which many characteristics could be ascribed: he is a hopeless romantic, but not a bumbling or stupid one; he is a creative fictionist with all the stark pragmatism of a textbook writer; he is an alcoholic in a failed marriage, writing for and representing the "Lost Generation," of which he is a prominent member. All these attributes are visible in The Great Gatsby, which is Fitzgerald's fifth and most celebrated novel–celebrated, may I add, wih good reason. The author's wordplay and imagery take the reader far beyond the mere storyline, of a young entrepreneur in the 20s meeting his eccentric next door neighbor and the ensuing affairs. In all honesty, this is not a striking plot. It is Fitzgerald's diction and syntax that make this novel one of such high regard, emphasis, and longevity. Few authors capture the disillusionment of youth and decadence as well as Fitzgerald, who cares not about appeasing his audience with the story of the underdog triumphing the bully, or the hero overcoming the villain. Gatsby is a focus on realism, in comparison with human emotions and expectations. This is an important book, and one that should be encouraged to be read by audiences of all backgrounds and experiences: anyone who has loved, hoped, dreamed, and then fallen short.

Blog Entry the 4th: Text-to-Text Connection

Chapter seven begins as a short time lapse, telling of Gatsby's refusal to throw any more parties: "...the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night – and, as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over" (113). The equally obscure reference to a character in the Roman novel, The Satyricon, had long been a point of interest to Fitzgerald, as revealed through his working titles for The Great Gatsby being both Trimalchio and Trimalchio in West Egg. After being persuaded by his editor and wife that the reference would not be appreciated or pronounced correctly, it was changed to its current title, which Fitzgerald regards as "'only fair, rather bad than good" (Wikipedia article on The Great Gatsby). The allusion to Trimalchio is an equitable comparison to Jay Gatsby, if not a little exaggerated. Trimalchio was a freedman who attained great wealth and power through determination and honest work and used his gains to throw ostentatious, lavish parties. Perhaps Trimalchio's feasts surpass those of Gatsby's, but the intent was the same: to impress and entertain, for no reason other than to prove oneself to their nouveau riche guests, respectively. That Fitzgerald remained unhappy with the title even after its publishing shows that this is a relevant and important text connection, which often goes unnoticed due to its brevity and, in the novel, seeming offhandedness.

Blog Entry the 3rd: Syntax

Although Fitzgerald does not rely heavily on syntax to convey his ideas, the reader can note that the author was deeply affected by his own words as he wrote them by the way they are arranged and ordered. When Nick Carraway first enters Gatsby's house, the narrator takes the reader through the details of the scene he sees in sequential order: "The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside.... a breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling–and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow in it as the wind does on the sea" (12). The cumulative order, even in Fitzgerald's remarkably lengthy sentences, allows the reader to better understand the author's airy, relaxed tone. The author also uses syntax in an antonymous manner: when Nick narrates, "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since... [paragraph break] 'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had'" (2). The employment of interrupted order and the line break place the rhetor's most important detail at the end and builds interest in the reader. Oftentimes Fitzgerald will give a terse, normally commonplace action a line of its own on the page, which draws attention to it and encourages the reader to envision the action more vividly than if it had just been words mixed among more words, such as when "Myrtle considered" (22) or "Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand" (24). The author's syntax subtly directs the reader's observation from the beginning of one significant event to the next, and is used for a motley of tones, from ebullient to wistful to romantic to dramatic.

Blog Entry the 2nd: Diction

Fitzgerald's diction, filtered through his characters, implies an underlying social commentary on the characters' humanity. When Daisy cries, "'It makes me sad because I've never seen such–such beautiful shirts before'" (92), the author is playing off both the character's frailty and her codependence for happiness on wealth and materialism. Further, when Gatsby is trying to impress Nick by showing him around the house, he remarks, "'I see you're looking at my cuff buttons,'" to which Nick narrates that he "hadn't been looking at them, but [he] did now" (72). The backwards way that Jay gets the narrator to see what he wants him to see suggests, again, that a high value is placed on possessions in their society, and creates a superficial and almost hypocritical tone.
In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald occasionally goes off on a seemingly unnecessary tangent to emphasize a point about a character, or the narrator's opinion thereof. When Gatsby claims that he was given a decoration by "little Montenegro" (66), Nick narrates that "[Jay] lifted up the words and nodded at them with his smile. The smile comprehended Montenegro's troubled history and sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people. It appreciate fully the chain of national circumstances which had elicited this tribute from Montenegro's warm little heart" (66). This digression from the story line reveals Nick's simultaneous admiration of, jealousy of, and contempt for Gatsby. The ambiguity of his impression is further proven by his saying that his "incredulity was submerged in fascination now" (66). The inclusion of such diction lends comprehensiveness to the characters and develops them as dynamic (or static, depending), whilst incorporating the author's underlying dramatic tone, themes and motifs.