The Great Gatsby

[Keysersoze]

Chapter 1

Plot summary -
Nick Carraway, a young trainee bondsman moves to New York renting a house in the wealthy but unfashionable neighborhood of West Egg where the new rich engage in meretricuous displays of wealth. His Neighbour, the mystreious figure of Jay Gatsby throws throws large parties every saturday night at his "imitation of Hôtel de ville Normandy" mansion. Unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg Nick is Yale educated and has family established in the fashionable East egg. One evening Nick attends dinner with his cousin Daisy Buchannan and her husband Tom, where it becomes apparent Nick shows a disdain towards Tom. Fitzgerald includes allusions to Tom's aggressive and domineering nature and the "rosy space, fragiley bound" that is their home. after then evening we have are first sighting of the thus far elusive Gatsby, streching out his arms towards the green light in the distant across the sound.

Quotes -

Nick -

• I'm inclined to reserve all judgement
  
• After boasting this way of my tolerance I come to the admission it has it's limits
  
• 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
  
• Gatsby turned out alright in the end, it was what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams"
  

Tom -

• would dirft on forever seeking, a little wistfully, some irrecoverable football game
  
• shining arrogant eyes
  
• a cruel body
  
• shut the rear windows and caught the wind died out about the room... the two women ballooned slowly to the floor
  
• Daisy says - that's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great hulking...
  
• the rise of the coloured empires... It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved
  
• it seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out the house, shild in arms
  
• infintesimal hesitation he included Daisy
  
• my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police
  

Daisy -

• her low, thrilling voice
  
• "why candles?" objected Daisy, frowning. she snapped them
  
• I hope she'll be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool
  

Tom and Daisy's house -

• ran
  
• jumping
  
• bright rosy space, fragiley bound
  
• front was broken by a line of french windows
  
• wine coloured rug
  
• groan of a picture
  

West Egg/ East Egg -

• a pair of eggs identical in contour...yetmore intersting is their dissimilarity in every particular
  
• I live in West Egg, the less fashionable of the two
  
• fashiobnable East Egg glittered along the sound
  

Gatsby -

• Imitation of Hôtel de ville Normandy
  
• he stretched out his arms towards the darm water... distinguished nothing except a single green light
  

[Keysersoze]

Chapter 2

Plot summary -
we are introduced to the valley of ashes, "a desolate area of land" between New york and West Egg, home to the dumpings of New YOrks waste, the only landmark a billboard of Doctor TJ Eckleburgs "blue and gigantic" eyes staring down on the inhabitants. one day as Tom and Nick ride through on the train Tom forces Nick to get off and meet his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, the wife of the lifeless George Wilson. The three set off to the apartment he keeps his affair in, which leads to a impromptu Party where Nick gets Drunk for the second time in his life. The meretricuous behavior of the other present characters repulses yet fascinates Nick, Myrtle begins to grow louder and more obnoxious and begins to taunt Tom about Daisy. Tom resonds by reaking her nose bringing the party to a violent end. Nick leaves, drunkenly with Mr. Kee where we experince a cut to Nick sitting at the end of his bed before Nick leaves for the 4am train.

Quotes -

The valley of ashes -

• desolate area of land
  
• spasms of bleak dust dirft endlessly over it
  
• bound on one side by a small foul river
  
• Dust-covered wreck of a ford
  

George Wilson -

• blond, spiritless man, aneamic and faitly handsome
  
• a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes
  

Myrtle -

• walking through her husband as if he were a ghost
  
• town tattle, moving picture magazine and a small flask of perfume... a dog
  
• crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it
  
• an over enlarged photograp, apparently a hen on a blurred rock... a stout old lady beamed down into the room
  

TJ Eckleburg -

• blue and gigantic (eyes)
  
• they looked out faceless, instead from a pair of enourmous yellow spectacles
  
• into eternal blindness
  

Nick -

• everything that hapened has a dim, hazy cast over it
  
• simon called peter - either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things
  

Gatsby -

• they say he's a nephew of Kaiser Wilheim's
  

[sparkogre]

sparknotes.com

[Keysersoze]

Chapter 3

Plot summary -
As nick conjures images of Gatsby's lavish Parties for us we find out he has been invited, once there and on his way to getting "roaring drunk from sheer embarassment" of being alone he meets Jordan Baker again, a friend of Daisy's that we are introduced briefly to in the first chapter. as the guest mill over rumours about Gatsby yet no-one seems to know the truth, the two set out to find the elusive host but instead run into "Owl-eyes" in a library marvelling over "the spectacle". after returning to their table Nick engages in a conversation about the war with a young handsome man who recognises him, the man introduces himself as Gatsby. Nick grows increasingly fascinated with him, noticing how Gatsby does not drink and seperates himself from the party, watching over his guest "approvingly". Later Gatsby's Butler calls Jordan to see him in private, later emerging she tells how she heard something extraordinary. Nick waits to say goodbye to his host and returns home, witnessing Owl-eyes and another man climb out of a wrecked car. nick tells how his summer wasn't all parties, describing his everyday life working in New York and developing a relationship with Jordan.

Quotes -

Transcience -

• the groups change swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath
  
• floating in the sound
  
• gliding
  
• swirls and eddies of people I don't know
  

Conspicuous consumption -

• Rolls-Royce
  
• two motor boats
  
• conductewd themselves to rules accosiated with an amusement park
  
• aguaplanes
  
• pitfulls of oboes
  
• laughter easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality
  
• oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves
  

West Egg/ East Egg -

• East egg condescended to west Egg... carefully on guard against it's spectroscopic gaiety
  

Foreshadowing -

• the sharp jut of a wall accounted for the detatched wheel
  

Gatsby -

• Chicago on the wire
  
• somebody told me he killed a man
  
• a german spy during the war
  
• the romantic speculatino he inspired
  
• Absolutely real, have pages and everything... they're absolutely real
  
• a regular Belasco
  
• no french bob touched Gatsby
  
• one of those rare smiles with a quality of reassurance... irresistable predujice in your favour
  
• understood you as far as you wanted to be understood
  

Nick -

• I was on my way to get roaring drunk fromsheer embarassment
  
• laughter from unheard jokes
  
• intelligible circles
  
• I amone of the few honest people I have ever known
  

Jordan -

• incurably dishonest
  
• dishonesty in a women is a thing you never blame deeply
  

[Keysersoze]

chapter 4

Plot Summary -
Nick lists all who attended Gatsby's parties before a trip to see Meyer Wolfstein in New York, on the drive through the valley of ashes Gatsby tells Nick about his background to dispell any doubts from "all these stories you hear". Upon meeting the dubious Wolfsheim, the man who claims to of fixed the world series in 1919, alluding to the attainment of Gatsby's wealth. Gatsby tells Nick about his desire to see Daisy and about their past, Nick agrees to a meet up between them. Jordan comes around to see him and they kiss.

Quotes -

Names of guests -

• Leeches
  
• Beaver
  
• Klingspringer
  
• Whitebait
  
• Hammerhead
  
• Beluga
  
• Henry L. Palmetto, who killed himself by jumping infront of a train in times square.
  

Gatsby -

• Orderi di Danilo... Montenegro
  
• A souvenir of OXford days. It was taken in trinity Quad
  
• he killed a man who found out he was nephew to Von Hindenburg and second Cousin to the Devil
  
• He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendour
  

Nick -

• I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up the girl beside me
  
• flat nosed jew
  

Foreshadowing -

• A dead man passed in a hearse heaped with blooms, foillowed by two carriages with drawn blinds... the tragic eyes and short lips of south-eastern Europe
  
• a limosine passed us, driven by a white chaufeur, in which sat three modish negroes
  

[Keysersoze]

chapter 5

Plot summary -
"The day agreed upon was pouring rain" and Gatsby is nervous, very nervous. leaving Daisy and Gatsby to talk Nick wonders outside under a tree recalling the house was built by a brewer who aspired to be a feudal Lord. upon returning Nick Finds both Daisy crying with joy and Gatsby elated. Gatsby reveal it took just three years to save the money for his mansion and proceeds to give Daisy and Nick a guided tour. wondering whether Daisy can possibly live up to Gatsby's Idealised view of Daisy before slipping away leaving the two alone.

Quotes -

Weather -

• the day agreed upon was pouring rain
  
• the rain was falling but the darkness had parted in the west, and there was a pink golden billow of foamy clouds above the sea
  

Daisy and Gatsby -

• Fay
  
• caught it with trembling fingers, and set it back in place
  
• rising and swelling a little niow and then with gusts of emotion
  

Wealth and class -

• one things sure and nothings surer,
  the rich get richer and the poor get - children.
  

Old world -

• Americans have always been obstinate about being peasantry
  
• feudal silohettes
  
• as we wondered through Marie Antoinette music rooms and restoration salons, I felt there was guests behind every couch and table, under orders to be breathlessly silent
  
• as we walked through the Merton Library I could of sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into ghostly laughter
  
• Piles of Englsih shirts... such beautiful shirts
  

[Keysersoze]

Chapter 6

Plot summary -
Nick reveals more about Gatsby's origins and his time with Dan Cody. later on the Buchannan's attend one of Gatsby's parties at which the tension Between the host and Tom is evident

Quotes -

Rebirth -

• Sprang for his platonic conception of himself. He was son of God - a phrase which, if means anything means just that - and he was about his fathers business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricuous beauty
  
• suck on the pap of life, gulped down the incomparable milk of wonder
  

Gatsby -

• to his conception he was faithfull to the end
  
• dismayed at it's ferocious indifference to the drums of destiny, to destiny itself
  
• the vague contours of Jay Gatsby had filled out the substantiality of a man
  

Dan Cody -

• a grey, florid man with a hard, empty face
  
• pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of american life brought to the eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloons
  

Daisy -

• the rest offended her - and inarguably, because it wasn't a gesture but an emotion
  
• appalled by it's vigour that chafed under the old euphamisms and by the obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing
  
  

[Keysersoze]

Chapter 7

Plot summary
Gatsby organises a change of staf to ensure discretion of Daisy's visits and on the hottest day of the year Nick visits Daisy. Daisy, Gatsby, Nick, Jordan and Tom decide to head to town. Tom drives Nick and Jordan in Gatsby's car passing by Wilson's garage for fuel. Wilson reveals he is taking Myrtle away and Tom wakes up to the fact his wife and mistress are about to dissapear from his life. Nick notices Myrtle looking down at Jordan in jealousy mistaking her for his wife. Upon takign a room at the Plaza hotel, Tom and Gatsby argue over who Daisy loves before tom reveals Gatsby's shady business dealings, Daisy si clearly lsot to Gatsby now and Nick remembers it's his thirtieth birthday. The narrative then shift's to the recollection of Michealis witnessing Mytle Wilson's death, in Jealousy Myrtle runs into the road and is hit by Gatsby's car. then we cut to the Buchannan's hosue where Tom and Daisy share an "air of intimacy", with Gatsby watching over the green light, "watching over nothing".

Quotes -

Foreshadowing -

• Beating against it molding it's senselessness into form
  
• over the giant ashheaps the giant eyes of TJ Eckleburg kept their vigil
  
• so we drove on towards death through the cooling twilight
  

Daisy -

• white neck
  
• white dress
  
• her voice is full of money
  
• white palace
  

Weather -

• deep heat
  
• stagnant in the heat
  
• oppressive heat
  

Wealth and class -

• I'll be damned if I see how you get within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back door
  
• the first amn who ever made a stable out of a garage
  

Nick -

• Thirty - the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief case of enthusiasm, thinning hair
  

Myrtle -

• her left breast was swinging like a flap, and there was no need to listen for her heart beneath
  

[Keysersoze]

Chapter 8

plot summary -
Ncik has a sleepness night tossing "between grotesque reality and savafe, frightening dreams", so Ncik goes to visit Gatsby where he tells him abotu his past, Daisy and his love for her. Nick shifts the narrration to Geroge Wilson's dispair and determination to hunt down the man she ran into the road for, Tom turns Wilson to Gatsby, even though it was Daisy who hit her where upon he hunts down and shooots Gatsby in his pool.

Quotes -

Daisy -

• riep mystery
  
• more beautiful and cool
  
• fesh breathing and redolent of this years motor car
  
• the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves
  
• gleaming like sliver
  
• shining hair
  
• golden and silver slippers
  

Foreshadowing -

• vanishing cities... desperate as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him
  

Transcience -

• fantastic figures gliding towards him
  
• drain
  [breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about
  
• ripple
  
• shadows of waves
  
• gusts of wind
  

Wealth and class -

• hot struggles of the poor
  
• cool rich
  
• he believed Mrs Wilson had been running away from her husband, rather than trying to stop a particular car
  

TJ Eckleburg -

• god sees everything
  
• Michealis saw with shock that he was looking at the eyes of TJ Eckleburg
  

Gatsby -

• commited himself to the following of a grail
  
• concealing his incorruptable dream
  
• he must of looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world
  

[Grape]

Haha nice. This for a school project?

[Keysersoze]

Chapter 9

Plot summary -
Nick reflects on Gatsby's death, organising a funeral and following up a number of gatsby's aquaintances yet in stark contrast to his parties only three people show up, Owl-eyes, Gatsby's Father and him. sick of the EAst Nick heads west, seeing Tom picking up jewllerry for we suspect another affair and breaks off the relationship with Jordan. Musing on how in all this has been a story of the west Nick spends his last day in West egg on Gatsby's beach, watching the sun rise and msuign over how america looked to teh original settlers who set off in search of a new land free from Social status.

Quotes -

Gatsby -

• Catherine swore that her sister never saw Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband... she cried into her hankerchief as fi the very suggestion was more than she could endure
  
• be better to parents
  
• no one's there
  
• cannot get mixed up in this thing
  
• If he'd lived, he'd of been a great manlike James J Hill... nick nodded uncomfortably
  

Nick -

• this has been a stopry of the west... we possesed some defficieny in common which made us subtely unadaptable to Eastern life
  
• long green tickets clasped in her gloved hands
  
• where dwellings are still called through dceades by a family's name
  

Tom -

• frowning into the window of a jewlerry store
  
• my share of of suffering
  
• I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it was awful
  

Old world -

• I became aware of the old islnad here that flowere once for dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh green beast of the new world...I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock.
  
• Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.
  

[Keysersoze]

May 17, 2009 8:21:21 GMT -5 Grape said:

Haha nice. This for a school project?

yea dude, exam on wednesday... just thought typing em out might help me remember them... oh and of course it saves anyone from having to actually read the book too...

[Keysersoze]

Nick Carraway: an unreliable narrator

All the characters are not depicted with the same clarity. Those described with most lucidity are those for whom Nick feels indifferent: Catherine, Myrtle Wilson and Mc Kee. In contrast, the closer the characters get to Nick and the more blurred they prove to be: Gatsby and Daisy, as if Nick was afraid to jump to conclusions concerning Gatsby. Because Nick participates vicariously in Gatsby’s adventures, he finds it difficult to come to a clear cut picture of the man.

A. Nick’s subjective account
Nick is unreliable: he has a romantic turn of mind pushing him to idealize certain characters. He is bewitched by Daisy’s voice, which he compared to a nightingale. He is in love with Daisy himself but remains aware of her selfishness and is not shocked by her carelessness. Nick is influenced by his upbringing in the MidWest and stands for certain moral principles: ‘I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known’ (p66). He is a prig, smug and self-righteous Midwesterner. He is spineless and easily influenced. He is lured to the glittering false world of appearances. Nick is like all men looking for glory and high hopes provided they find out how it is possible. We cannot expect Nick to be totally objective -he is taken in by all those fake appearances.

B. Nick’s distorted vision
Fitzgerald’s novel emphasizes the difficulties of getting a clear picture of reality and it also underscores the impossibility of adjusting one’s eyes to obtain a faithful reflection of the ‘outside world’. From Dr Eckleburg’s gigantic spectacles on the advertisement to the Owl-Eyed man’s thick glasses, the eyesight is a recurrent motif, a metonymic allusion to the possibility of getting a distorted representation of reality. It is often suggested that Nick is unable to get a clear picture of whatever goes on. Myrtle’s party in Chapter 3 offers a good example of the narrator’s distorted vision. There are several instances of misperceptions. First Nick does not see properly an over-enlarged photograph because he is standing too close to it: he sees ‘a hen sitting on a blurred rock’ but then taking a few steps backwards the sight changes into ‘a bonnet, and the countenance of a stout old lady’. The lesson could not be clearer; namely it is indispensable for the narrator to bring the ‘outside reality’ into focus. Indeed Nick’s vision is too often distorted either because he is drunk: ‘everything that happened had a dim, hazy cast over it…the whisky distorted things.’(chap2, p35) or because lie is in a dream-like state: half awake, half asleep as if sedated: ‘I think I walked into a deep sleep as I entered my front door’ (90). Nick is also haunted by nightmarish visions. After the scene of the accident, in chapter nine he tells a fantastic dream reminiscent of a painting by El Greco (p183), which duplicates through its odd, baroque and surreal aspect the scene in chapter 3 at the end of Gatsby’s party when a car loses a wheel. (p61)

C. Nick’s own process of initiation
Even if Gatsby is the novel’s main protagonist, the novel bears witness to the process of initiation undergone by Nick. Gatsby, after all, does not change in the course of the story, he is and remains a static figure until the very end before being murdered when it finally dawns upon him that the Daisy he worshipped was no more than an illusory creation. On the opposite Nick goes through different stages as he tells the story. Nick’s viewpoint evolves and his changing outlook bestows a further dimension on the novel. First Nick overcomes his moral prejudices and strikes up a personal relationship with Gatsby (chap. 4). Then he is given access to Gatsby’s past and Gatsby’s love quest; he is thus made alive to the power of illusion: ‘the unreality of reality’ (p106) to give life a sense of purpose. Nick, it should not be forgotten, had up until the novel’s beginning, led an aimless existence, he was unmotivated by his work as a bondman and used to let himself be carried along by events. In this respect his encounter with Gatsby proves a decisive step forward. With Gatsby’s death, Nick is made aware of the barrenness and sterility of the East, of a world that is ‘material without being real’. As Gatsby’s former acquaintances each in their turn finds an excuse for not attending his funeral, Nick realizes that the spree bas ended once and for all. The show is over and the actors have made their exits. Nick’s process of initiation ends with his sudden realization that his fascination for a gleaming, dazzling East was unfounded. After Gatsby’s death there remains nothing in the East but void and emptiness: the only music and laughter that Nick can hear are imaginary, hallucinatory: ‘I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter’ (p187).


Disclaimer - I copied this from some website I googled, I don not claim in any way this is my own work... The chapter summaries and quotes are... but this is not...

[Keysersoze]

Themes and Context
way to much to talk about here, a brief outline of the major themes and Contextual Background of The Great Gatsby.
Themes -

• Vision
  
• Religion
  
• American Dream
  
• American Ideals
  
• Geography
  
• Weather
  

Context -

• The Jazz Age
  
• Prohabition
  
• post Great war
  
• Cinema
  
• birth of the Consumerist
  
• Racism
  
• Sexism
  
• the death of the American Dream
  

[Keysersoze]

Techniques
The techniques employed by Fitzgerald add rich meaning to The Great Gatsby, with intricate patterning and the use of a limited Narrator help form the story to one with mystery, allusion and unreliability. Here is a list of the other Techniques he uses:

Form -

• Rythm
  
• use of Media
  
• Narrator
  

Structure -

• Discourse of chronos
  
• foreshadowing
  
• pathetic fallacy
  
• Intertextuality
  

Imagery -

• Romance
  
• Magic
  
• Mystery
  
• Jesus
  
• Rebirth
  
• Sea/Air
  

Laguage -

• Irony - title, character names, eggs
  
• Light and shade
  
• Listings
  
• Motifs - cars, colours, eyes, extended metaphor
  
• anectodes
  
• cinematic techniques
  
• characterisation
  
• extended metaphor