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- Life, like The great Gatsby
- Imagine that you live in the nineteen twenties, and that you are a very wealthy man
- that lives by himself in a manchine, on a lake and who throws parties every weekend. This
- is just the beginning of how to explain the way Jay Gatsby lived his life. This novel, by F.
- Scott, Fitzgerald is one that is very deep in thought. Fitzgerald releases little clues along
- the way of the novel that will be crusual to understand the ending. For instance, he
- makes the blue coupe a very important clue, as well as the Dr. T. J. Eckleburg eyes on the
- billboard that Mr. Wilson (the gas station attendant ) refers to as the eyes of god. There
- are also other little things that relate to the reason of gatsby’s death. The main
- character’s of this novel each have their part to do with the ending, Nick Caraway is
- probably the main character of this novel, as he comes down from New Jersey to new
- York to visit his cousin Daisy, who is married to Tom Buchannan. These are some of the
- incidents that are included in the novel as you will read further I will relate some issues of
- the novel, as well as other critics have included their views on The Great Gatsby.
- F. Scott, Fitsgerald was an American short story writer and novelist famous for
- his depictions of the Jazz Age(the 1920’s), his most brilliant novel work being The Great
- Gatsby(1925). He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on sept. 24, 1896 and died in
- Hollywood, California on December 21, 1940. His private life, with his wife, Zelda, in
- both America and France, became almost as celebrated as his novels. Fitsgerald was the
- only son of an aristocrat father, who was the author of the star spangle banner. Fitzgerald
- spent most of time with his wife, latter in their relationship they moved to france where he
- began to write his most brilliant novel, The Great Gatsby. All of his divided nature is in
- this novel, the native midwestener afir with the possibilities of every Americans dream in
- OLSON 2
- it’s hero, Jay Gatsby, and the compassionate princeton gentlemen in it’s narrator, Nick
- Carraway. The Great Gatsby is the most profoundly American novel of it’s time
- (Houghton). Fitzgerald had an intensely romantic imagination, what he once called “a
- heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,” and he rushed into experience determined to
- realize those promises. Latter on in Fitzgeralds life, he started to drink very heavily and
- became very unhappy. In 1930 his wife had a mental breakdown and in 1932 another,
- from which she never recovered. With it’s failure and his despair over Zelda, Fitzgerald
- was close to becoming an incurable alcoholic. He surpassed becoming an alcoholic
- though, and moved out west to become a Hollywood screenwriter were he met his new
- wife Sheilah Graham, but he never forgot about Zelda and his daughter Scotti.
- (Johnson, 384).
- The Great Gatsby is an excellent review on how fitzgerald preceived his life to be,
- in the same sense that he also was very wealthy. Gatsby, in this novel is the mistiries
- wealthy man that lives in the big house across the lake from Tom and Daisy Buchanann.
- There would always be some type of party going on at his house, but for some reason he
- never attended to them, he would always watch from his window. Nick Caraway is
- Daisy’s cousin who comes to visit, Nick needs a place to stay, so he finds an ad for a
- guest cottage that Mr. Jay Gatsby owns. After Nick has moved in Jay and Nick become
- pretty close friends. Jordan has always wondered who The Great Gatsby was, so she
- uses Nick to find out more about him. As the story goes on, there are some odd things
- that Fitsgerald relates to the story as important things. These important things make you
- really think about what it means to the story. The Automobile in The Great Gatsby is a
- very big topic for the conclution of the story. What we have in The Great Gatsby is a
- creative manipulation of the automobile as symbol and image to accomplish a variety of
- ends (O’Meara, 74). O’Meara goes on to say that when Fitzgerald accentuates
- mechanism and minimizes aesthetics, he depersonalizes vehicles and underscores the
- OLSON 3
- behavior of their drivers. The existing criticism on automobiles in The Great Gatsby
- usually centers on one or the other of these two functions.(O’Meara, 75). The result of
- the car is that it ends up killing Myrtle. Kenneth and Irving Saposnik discuss the
- automobile imagery from a technological standpoint. Knodt asserts that all of the novel
- symbol’s of technology - automobiles, trains, and telephones are connected with
- destruction and evil (Saposnik, 131). I believe in this theory, that vehicles are a result evil
- in almost every movie. In this case the evil is the Blue Coupe sedan that ends up killing
- Myrtle. The other thing that sticks out to me is the billboard that has the two eyes on it
- with glasses. This board is referred to Mr. Wilson as the eyes of god, he believes that they
- can see everything and when the car ends up killing his wife Myrtle, he tells people that
- god saw what happened. A footnote for the line in Andrew Turnnbull’s edition of The
- Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald(1963)describes the dust jacket as showing “two huge eyes,
- intended to be those of Daisy Fay, brooding over New York City, and this had been
- Fitsgerald ‘s inspiration for the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg”(Turnbull, 166).
- The brief exegesis examines the imagery of cats and dogs in Scott Fitzgerald’s jazz
- age novel, The Great Gatsby. Toward the end of the novel, Nick Caraway refers to the
- hot summer days on Long Island as “dog-days”(Kehul, 118). John Kehul goes on to
- mention that many of the characters in the novel are portrayed in canine terms. They
- cynically, in the sense of the Greek root kynikos, meaning “dog-like.” Their ‘bites,”
- particularly in relationship to the main character, Gatsby, become worse then their
- “barks.” In contrast to this canine element, Gatsby has a “heightened sensitivity”(120). In
- The Great Gatsby I did notice a lot of the characters mentioning dogs or phrasing one
- another as “you old dog you,”. Myrtle mentions to Tom (the man she is having an affair
- with) that she would like a dog. I believe that Fitzgerald resembles these dogs as a symbol
- of affection. Canine imagery first appears in chapter one, when Nick casually tells the
- reader that he once owned a dog. He lists his possessions: an old dodge, a finish woman
- OLSON 4
- who cooks and cleans for him, and his dog. “I had a dog--at least I had him a few days
- until he ran away(124). Almost forty years after the book was written, Ernest
- dust jacket and I remember being embarrassed by the violence, bad taste and slippery look
- of it. It looked like the book jacket for a book of bad science fiction. Scott told me not to
- be put of by it, that it had to with a billboard along the highway in Long Island that was
- important in the story. He said that he liked the jacket, but now how didn’t like it. I took
- it offto read the book (feast 176). According to Hemmingway, the cover of the book
- only “had to do with” the billboard and had already fallen out of favor with the
- author(179). I believe that the cover of The Great Gatsby is a unique one, in a way that
- people really would believe things like that if they never had any type of religion
- background or were just messed up in the head.
- As I was explaining earlier in the paper about all the characters, I was mentioning
- things about Nick Carraway. Nick Carraway is also the narrator of the novel, he is
- probably they most sufficient character in the novel, meaning that he is always relaying
- information to others rather than getting involved in the mischief. What I mean is, that,
- the affairs between Tom and Myrtle, and Daisy and Gatsby. Nick knows just about
- everything about everyone and he is the newest person in town. I think that Fitzgerald put
- like this because, Nick had no other meaning to the story if he didn’t get involved with
- the secrets that were going on. Near the end though, Nick is clueless as to what is going
- on with Myrtle and Tom until the night of the accident when Myrtle runs out in front of
- the speeding yellow cadilac. Myrtle had thought that Tom was driving the car, and so she
- dashed in front of it because she wanted to leave with Tom and get away from her
- husband that was not to rich or smart like Tom was. In The Great Gatsby, the fact that
- the billboard is only mentioned once or twice in the film, but it so crucial to how the result
- of the ending is. Fitzgerald is trying to point out that this billboard is the point were
- OLSON 5
- everything takes place, like, the eyes looking down on the two cars going to party and that
- they are always looking at Mr. Wilson. When Mr. Wilson’s wife (Myrtle) dies he is shock
- and is looking for answers to what happened. As O’Meara points out earlier, cars are a
- means of destruction and evil. In two cases this is true. One, being that big yellow cadilac
- killed Myrtle and two, the fact Tom is using his car as a medium of exchange for Mr.
- Wilson’s wife and free gas. Mr. Wilson does not relize the fact that his wife is cheating
- on him with Tom, the man he wants the car from.
- In all conclusion to The Great Gatsby, many little things in the novel were
- substantial to how the ending was to be. Fitzgerald had really related the billboard of Dr.
- T. J. Eckleburg that looked like owl eyes and referred to a the eyes of god by Mr. Wilson
- when he talking to Tom. The other thing that sets the tone of this novel is the car. this
- was the murder weapon that killed Myrtle and was recognized by Mr. Wilson as the car
- that Jay Gatsby was driving that night, which was result of the death of Mr. Jay Gatsby by
- no other than the man that looked at the “owl eyes “ all day outside his gas station. Well
- the fact of living in the nineteen twenties and being a millionaire and throwing parties
- every weekend doesn’t sound that bad, I just wouldn’t want to be The Great Gatsby.
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- Words: 1810
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