LITB1 - ASPECTS OF NARRATIVE - THE GREAT GATSBY

I am taking as a given that you have read the first chapter, not just watched the film!  Therefore watch this excellent analysis of the first chapter vlog, and navigate through others that you can find on the page -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehjTS6AhMJ8

  

Remembering that AO2 - SRUCTURE FORM and LANGUAGE is what you will be marked on for question 1a (check out an earlier blog in the archive on the right hand side for more information), then I also need you to study the following:

Structure: Fitzgerald uses Nick as a framing device to bring the novel together.  The first pages introduce him and the last chapter is concerned with what happened to him after Gatsby was killed.  It is Nick who chooses what to include in his book and tells us what he remembers of what the other people involved told him as events unfolded.

Jordan Baker tells what information she has about Gatsby and Daisy's former relationship, apparently in her own words.   Fitzgerald, in parenthesis, says that she was 'sitting up very straight on a straight chair' which conveys the impression that her words will be factual and truthful, not gilded by her imagination.  This technique makes Jordan Baker seem a believable witness but not Daisy, we are unclear what she thinks and feels.  Fitzgerald wrote in a letter that:  'The worst fault in [TGG] I think is a BIG FAULT: I gave no account (and had no feeling about or knowledge of) the emotional relations between Gatsby and Daisy from the time of their reunion to the catastrophe.'

However, when Gatsby gives his version of events, Nick takes over and puts all that is said in his own words.  Gatsby's language is child-like, revealing his lack of education and immaturity.  Anne Crow argues that if Fitzgerald had allowed Gatsby to be the narrator, his style would have made for a very dull and commonplace novel, rendering the title wildly inappropriate.

Also look at how Fitzgerald condenses information, the story covers only 4 months, but seems over a much longer period because of Fitzgerald's narratorial technique of having Nick informed of past events by the other characters who were involved.  It is a non-linear narrative structure and by looking at the 60 Second re-cap video clips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF7rykLUIU0&list=PLBNXmyDnoU4R8Q6VBhemloC8c_5LYLv_c

 Navigate through further videos once you've reached the link.

                                                                   

  

THE GREAT GATSBY: HISTORICAL CONTEXT

It is esential that you study an understand the historical context that surrounds Fitzgerald's novel as assessment objective four - AO4, demands that students can discuss context when constructing a critical argument. Below are several links to resources that will help develop an understanding of America in the 1920s. The decade is a complex one. At the beginning of the decade with many returning veterans of the First World War, there was a period of economic hardship, in 1925, when the novel was published, rich urban Americans were experiencing an economic boom, and then in 1929 the Wall Street Crash occurred.

'The Roaring Twenties' is a YouTube documentary in three parts that, if you can cope with the excruciating narrator/voiceover, will give you an insight in to the issues and themes which form the backgruonmd to the novel: the jazz age, prohibition, the position of women, advertising, the haves and the have nots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVOflzLGKCc&feature=relmfu 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MExfjbSmR0k&feature=relmfu 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHZckXwIa5E&feature=relmfu


A further documentary, again in 3 parts, The Century, America's Time: Boom To Bust which contains interviews with people who lived through that period of time, is also required viewing:

One:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foooDFF9Dgs
Two:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJuEi-U6pmo
Three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJuEi-U6pmo