LITB1 - ASPECTS OF NARRATIVE - 'THE GREAT GATSBY'

Following on from the examination requirements, I would like to look in more detail at how the AOs need to be used in reference to The Great Gatsby.  

AO4 - Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the conetxts in which literary texts are written and received.

You need to be aware of what effect the Great War (in which both Gatsby and Nick served) had on the American economy and the American psyche, not least through a sense of libertion, particularly for veterans.  People turned against politics preferring hedonism; and of course women, who had been required to work during the war, had no wish to lose the social and economic freedom that they had achieved and were enjoying during the boom. Remember TGG was set only four years after the war had ended.  Be clear about the symbolism intrinsically involved in the East and West of America.  It might also be worth remembering the two dominant literary influences on Fitzgerald, which were John Keats and the writer of  Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad.
Attitudes of men towards women were quite different at this time and of course the issue of race in the 1920s is seen in the anti-semitism prevalent in the portrayal of Wolfsheim, in Nick's attitude to his Finnish housekeeper (it was felt that immigrants were taking jobs away from American citizens and Fitzgerald reflects the fear of those who were not white Anglo Saxon Protestants) and of course to Black Americans. So look at the contextual references, actions and speech of the era.
    
AO3 -  'Explore connections . . .informed by interpretations of other readers'  This means looking at other commentators and their views as well as writing what you think.  And if you think that Nick is an unreliable narrator then you have ample opportunity to look at different interpretations of the events: for example was it certain that it was Wilson who killed Gatsby, could Wolfsheim have been involved, he certainly had all his people working at the house, and the chauffeur 'one of Wolfsheim's proteges' heard the shots but did nothing.  Did Nick romanticise Gatsby instead of understanding that he was deeeply involved in a criminal underworld at war?

Critics that you could refer to include H. L. Mencken, who called the novel a  'glorified anecdote' , 'a simple story'  and that 'only Gatsby himself genuinely lives and breathes'.  Whilst Gertrude Stein praised Fitzgerald for 'creating the contemporary world' suggesting that he was doing far more then merely reflecting the era but rather responsible for actually constructing it; he certainly created the term 'Jazz Age'. William Troy considered that Nick Carraway was 'the ordinary but quite sensible narrator' and that Gatsby 'becomes ... a symbol of America itself, dedicated to "the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty".' He believed that Fitzgerald had created a sympathetic narrator in the tradition of Joseph Conrad, establishing 'some of the most priceless values in fiction,- economy, suspense, intensity. 

 Arthur Mizener in: F Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays, Twentieth Century Views, Spectrum, (1963), focuses on the novel as a 'tragic pastoral'  seeing the East as sophisticated but corrupt, whilst the West represented idealised homely, honest virtues.   R. W. Stallman a commentator in the 1950s,  argued that Fitzgerald showed that  the division between the corrupt urban East and the morally virtuous  rural West was the product of Nick Carraway's imagination.








 





 Judith Fetterley in her book - The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction.  Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1978 -  read more by following this link:   http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=84332635
claims that the novel is the classic male drama of poor boy achieving wealth and challenging the rich boy, with the narrative being concerned with this struggle for power and supremacy, with the ultimate prize being ownership of the girl.  It is interesting that when the poor boy loses everything: his fortune, the girl and even his life, it is not the rich boy Tom who is punished but Daisy, because she failed Gatsby.  At the end we see Nick shake hands with Tom, but he seeks no reconciliation with Daisy - according to Fetterley, she is perceived as the one who must shoulder all  the blame.  What do you think?