EPTHope you enjoy it.
The Great Gatsby - Let's Slow Read It! - Page 4
| Forum Index > General Forum |
|
Spidinko
Slovakia1174 Posts
Hope you enjoy it. | ||
|
oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On March 09 2013 07:42 cz wrote: He's already wrong. The poem is written as an argument to someone else (or to any reader). It's not "I'll do anything," it's "if you have wealth and connections, show it if that's what it takes to get her." This also necessitates the question of why someone would need to be told this - if you're wealthy and connected, why would someone need to tell you to show it? That implies that this is written for someone who is hiding his wealth and connections but unable to get the girl without revealing what he has. If you can't infer that much from the poem you SHOULD stick to math and science. It's pretty obvious assuming the meaning of "bounce" and "gold hat" is what I think it is. jesus christ it's just a first person expression of the same principle. if poems are written like cryptographs that you need the rest of the text to decode, then it's not much of a poetic experience. | ||
|
MoltkeWarding
5195 Posts
On March 09 2013 04:06 KurtistheTurtle wrote: here's mine: Gold hat = gold : wealth hat: highly visible status you choose to put on that everybody can see So together, gold hat = prominent display of financial status The most prominent trait of golden hats is not their value, but their superficiality, wherein the gold is only sheeted over the surface. At its core Gatsby isn't really about materialism or money, but vanity. The 20s (when the great gatsby takes place) are often known as the "gilded age" as they looked good on the surface, but there were stirring problems in society that would eventually lead to the Great Depression. I think the "gold hat" is this golden gilding hiding the underlying problems. The "bouncing higher" is living the high life of the "roaring 20s" that will eventually come crashing down at the end of the decade. Gatsby was written in the mid-twenties, far before Fitzgerald knew anything about the stock market bubble. And Fitzgerald was surely too much of a novelist to talk about anything as vague and tl.net-ish as "stirring problems in society that would eventually lead to the great depression." The death of Gatsby was more a moral disaster than a sociological one. It wasn't talking about how immoderate consumerism was unsustainable. Its insight was that the American dream was fundamentally incompatible with human nature (or, at least, with the nature of a good and innocent man like Gatsby.) | ||
|
MoltkeWarding
5195 Posts
On March 09 2013 21:46 Emon_ wrote: Chapter 1 - part 3 And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction--Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men. The sentence about conduct – does he mean through discipline (“on the hard rock”) and over time (“wet marshes”)? We learn he traveled East and wanted a soceity to be one way, devoid of freedom of expression. But he likes Gatsby – who has a unique personality. I think he means that Gatsby sees some part of life that has eluded him. Though Gatsby represented “everything for which I have an unaffected scorn” – yet he still saw something else in him. Last sentence sounds like contempt for men that preyed on Gatsby – maybe something that will be revealed later on. Narrator seems frustrated and confused so far Also, A great post about part 2. Just thought I'd quote it in case someone missed it Writing about Mid-Western innocence broken by Eastern corruption is an idee fixe in Fitzgerald, you see it too in his protagonist, Amory Blaine in This Side of Paradise. In Gatsby, both Gatsby and Nick were originally from the Mid-West, hence their emotional and gothic sensitivities. "Fundamental decencies" in this context means more or less the Western American type. It stems from Progressive-era memes about how eastern society was becoming too much like Europe: sophisticated, inbred and artificial, whereas it was in the West that the original American virtues may be reborn. Gatsby was a Western man trying to move East, hence the narrator's ambiguity about him. The America of the 1920s hadn't yet experienced the rise of the Harry Truman-types to the top. The sentence about conduct – does he mean through discipline (“on the hard rock”) and over time (“wet marshes”)? I think he means that in the short-term, experience forms character, but in the long-term, he doesn't care what your excuse is. You are responsible for who you are. | ||
|
oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
here narrator loses patience with an entire culture, an entire marsh. | ||
|
xwoGworwaTsx
United States984 Posts
| ||
micronesia
United States24615 Posts
I drive the same road every day as they did in the latter part of the book haha. | ||
|
the_business_og
United States167 Posts
| ||
|
cz
United States3249 Posts
On March 09 2013 23:33 oneofthem wrote: jesus christ it's just a first person expression of the same principle. if poems are written like cryptographs that you need the rest of the text to decode, then it's not much of a poetic experience. You weren't even close brah. Back to the computer lab! | ||
|
oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
| ||
|
Emon_
3925 Posts
Chapter 1 - part 4 My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today. I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him--with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe--so I decided to go east and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said, "Why--ye-es" with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two. His Grandfather's brother got out of going to the Civil War and this was a pride in his family. Otherwise a straight-forward chapter - narrator moves east to study after fighting in World War I. Teutonic here I think means "having qualities related to modern Germans". The Teutons were a Germanic tribe that resided in southern Scandinavia that migrated south and fought the Roman armies in 2nd century BC. As long as they stayed together they beat the Romans, but once divided the Romans won (wikipedia). Ties in well with what MoltkeWarding said: "Writing about Mid-Western innocence broken by Eastern corruption is an idee fixe in Fitzgerald". In this a historic example of the Northern innocence broken by Southern corruption. | ||
|
cz
United States3249 Posts
On March 11 2013 04:47 oneofthem wrote: in the 20 seconds you took to read the first poem of the book i'd be very surprised if you got more out of it than the first part of my post. I had to think about it. And I did. And I found more than you did. | ||
|
Brobe
United States75 Posts
Part 4 - I'm interested to see if his postwar restlessness plays a significant part in the story of if it's just backstory to provide a motivation for his eastern move. Clearly his choice is a decided odditiy amongst his relatives.Lastly, I wonder if the history of his great uncle is going to be a foil along the lines of: His uncle dodged war and secured reputable employment whereas the narrator ended up in war and now his career path might not be so respectable. | ||
|
oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
re: cz. i didn't comment on your analysis because it's totally built on air. maybe the poem will have some more impact after we finish reading the book, a kind of circle becoming whole. but that's left for after the reader looks back on it, not at the start. | ||
|
Knackerdad
United Kingdom6 Posts
The ''foul dust'' that floated in the wake of his dreams is a connection to 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust'. From here you can link it to the valley of ashes at the start of chapter two and dust and ash keep recurring throughout the novel. In all these cases it is a sign of corruption, for Gatsby the corrupt nature of his dream, in the valley of ashes the corruptness of captitalism and is prolepsis of Gatsby's demise | ||
|
Knackerdad
United Kingdom6 Posts
I also feel the point about the delayed Teutonic migration and calling it a counter-raid is that it is facetious , implying Nick feels light hearted about it. However in reality it is unlikely this is actually the case given the nature of such a war and Nick is more likely suppressing his true feelings by describing it like a children's game. | ||
| ||
