The Great Gatsby

2.5 The craft of The Great Gatsby

As I mentioned at the outset of this unit, Tony Tanner has famously praised The Great Gatsby for being ‘perfectly crafted’. He commends it for being ‘deceptively simple, with something of the lean yet pregnant economy of a parable’, for being ‘word-perfect and inexhaustible’ (Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Introduction, p.lv).

The purpose of this activity is to look in detail at Fitzgerald’s ‘craft’, at some of the literary techniques and devices he has employed, first in the creation of his characters and second in the exploration of his themes. Fitzgerald is renowned for his ear for dialogue and for his incisive descriptions of people. The Great Gatsby is also notable for its ubiquitous symbolism, that is to say for the way that many objects in the text convey a broad, thematic meaning. You can consult Abrams and Harpham, Glossary of Literary Terms (Florence, KY, 2011) if you are unsure about any of the terms we are using, either here or throughout the course as a whole.

Individual activity: Close reading

There are two elements to this exercise, and they require you to engage with the particular words or passages in the book in close detail. Click on the ‘Example’ button to see a sample answer to these tasks. You should write your answers in your personal notes.

  1. Choose any three characters (other than the narrator, Nick) that interest you. For each of your chosen characters locate a sentence describing him or her which you believe to be particularly effective and think about the reasons for its effectiveness. Next, locate a line or two of dialogue – words that that character speaks out loud – that you believe convey a sense of that character particularly well. Again, try to identify what makes this dialogue powerful.
  1. Identify any three objects or features of the landscape in the novel which operate as symbols, or which symbolise one or more of the novel’s themes (such as the relationship between wealth, social class and power; romantic love; the superficiality of glamour, the transience of youth and beauty; the rapid pace of modernisation, the futility of modern existence and so on). Write a sentence explaining what each object symbolises.

  1. My chosen character is Daisy Buchanan.

    I was particularly struck by Nick’s description of her voice: ‘It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again’ (p. 14). The comparison of Daisy’s voice to music brilliantly conveys both its allure and its contrived nature. This is especially true of the word, ‘arrangement’. I like the little rhyme, ‘each speech’, as well; it sounds wistful and angry at the same time.

    My favourite lines that Daisy speaks are when she says, ‘Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it’ (p. 17). Here Fitzgerald perfectly captures charm that is at once beguiling and vapid. Daisy says something witty but completely inconsequential, and you can hear the child-like, flirtatious nature of her voice in the way she repeats herself. She reminds me of the glamorous but completely superficial and morally empty people I have encountered in real life. At the same time, through these lines Fitzgerald expresses his theme of unfulfilled promise or disappointed hope.

  2. My chosen object is the advertisement for the erstwhile optician, the giant pair of spectacles and eyes which Nick describes as ‘the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg’ (p. 26). The advertisement is mounted on the road that goes through the ‘valley of ashes’ between West Egg and New York (p. 26).

    I think the fact that the advertisement is for a business that no longer exists suggests the impermanence and ultimate futility of consumer culture. More importantly, the fact that the advertisement consists of eyes and glasses symbolises characters’ lack of clear-sightedness in the novel. It suggests Gatsby’s blindness to the hopelessness of his quest for Daisy; Mr Wilson’s blindness to his wife’s infidelity and society’s blindness about the true nature of Gatsby and about the emptiness at the heart of their lifestyles. The symbol of the glasses and eyes reminds me of the theme of clear-sightedness in other classic texts, such as Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the King or Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear.