2. Themes
Love is sometimes the result of self-
deception and denial.
The American Dream is futile and corrupt.
The desire of wealth and power can
sometimes replace morality.
No man can step in the same river twice.
Appearances are often deceiving.
3. Critical Lens Quotes
All extremes of feeling are allied
with madness – Virginia Woolf
Moving on is simple, it’s what you
leave behind that makes it so
difficult. – Anonymous
“To thine own self, be true.” -
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Humbert Humbert is a middle -aged man
who is enamored by a 12 year old girl that
he nicknames Lolita. He will not accept the
fact that Lolita will never return his deep
passion for her and that he is nothing more
than a pedophile.
“ T h e n s h e c r e pt i n t o m y w a i t i n g a r m s ,
r a di a n t , r e l a x e d, c a r e s s i n g m e w i t h h e r
t e n de r , m y s t e r i o u s , i m pu r e , i n di f f e r e n t ,
t w i l i g h t e y e s - - f o r a l l t h e w o r l d, l i ke t h e
c h e a pe s t o f c h e a p c u t i e s . F o r t h a t i s
w h a t n y m ph e t s i m i t a t e - - w h i l e w e m o a n
a n d di e . ”
5. Setting:
Summer of 1922
Long Island & New York City
Social class is irrevocable. Gatsby and
Myrtle try to escape their social classes and
are killed in the process.
Even in a world of wealth and power, there
is a social caste system. The people of West
Egg are described as new money. East Egg is
home to people born into a long legacy of
wealth and power. Despite their differences,
the two groups are exactly the same: corrupt
and immoral.
6. The Valley of Ashes is the
wasteland left behind by the rich.
The people who call it home live
in extreme poverty. The Valley
symbolizes the delusion and
futility of the American Dream.
Poor people like the Wilsons must
scrape for a living in a place
destroyed and abandoned by the
rich.
7. Point of View
The Great Gatsby is narrated in the 1st person
point of view by Nick Carraway. He is a from the
Midwest. He is totally detached from the lavish
and corrupt society of the East Coast. He is
likable, moral, and highly reliable. Yet, his most
important trait, mentioned very early in the novel,
is his refrainment of judgment upon others.
Nick is essentially an outsider looking in. Nick’s
refrainment from judgment gives him the
opportunity to become invisible, This POV
supports the themes because Nick tells the story
as is, uncut and without much side comments or
opinions.
8. Characterization
Protagonist: Jay Gatsby
Jay Gatsby is a wealthy man who resides in
West Egg. He is madly in love with Daisy
Buchanan, a lost love from his past. He is a
static character because he is introduced as
ambitious and lovesick over his beloved Daisy
and dies the same way. In addition, he is a
tragic hero because Gatsby is powerful,
successful, and incredibly wealthy. He
embodies the so-called American Dream. He has
it all, but that isn’t enough, he has to have
Daisy.
9. Antagonist: Gatsby’s Dream
This very dream built him up and
ultimately tore him down. It drove
his actions and made him
successful. Yet, it clouds his
judgments and prevents Gatsby
from coming to grips with reality.
This dreams digs an early grave
for Gatsby.
10. Daisy Buchanan: the object of Gatsby’s
obsession and the driving force to his life of
crime. Daisy is cavalier and is in love with
money, ease, and material luxury. Her love for
Tom is not true love. She is in love with the
lifestyle that Tom provides for her. She is the
epitome of the decadence and immoral values
of high society in the 1920s.
George Wilson: the lifeless and exhausted owner
of a run-down garage in The Valley of Ashes.
Like Gatsby, he is a dreamer. He represents
the futility and deceit of the American Dream,
a dream that is nothing more than an
unfeasible nightmare.
11. Characterization drives a story forward by
giving motives and reasons for what characters
say or do. There is frequently establishment of
background information about characters,
which tells a reader more about them so
readers can identify with them and/or further
understand what the characters do. Fitzgerald
purposefully makes the characters overly
histrionic and exaggerated
because this helps stress and draw
attention to his overall message.
12. Conflict
The major conflict in The Great Gatsby
is the internal battle that Jay Gatsby is
fighting. He is obsessed with winning
back the affections of Daisy Buchanan.
The conflict is his inability to let go of
the past and the realization that Daisy
has moved on with life without him. He
cannot and will not accept this and his
stubbornness and hopeless obsession is
what leads to his death.
13. Plot
Exposition: Nick moving into the cottage next to Gatsby’s
mansion and meeting the mysterious Jay Gatsby.
Rising Action: Gatsby’s lavish parties and his
arrangement of meeting Daisy at Nick’s.
Climax: Gatsby’s long awaited reunion with Daisy and the
confrontation between Gatsby and Tom at the Plaza
Hotel.
Falling Action: Daisy’s rejection of Gatsby, Myrtle’s death,
and Gatsby’s murder.
Resolution: Gatsby’s funeral, Nick’s last meeting with
Tom and Jordan Baker, and Nick moving back into the
honesty and morality of the Midwest
14. Myrtle Wilson’s affair with Tom Buchanan represents the
desire of the have-nots to escape the confines of their
social classes. In actuality, Myrtle does not love Tom. She
loves what he can do for her socially. With Tom, she is
capable of embodying a woman of high society rather
than her second-class self in reality. Myrtle’s desire for
the glamorous life of aristocracy causes her morality to
take a backseat.
After the Plaza Hotel debacle, Nick finds Gatsby standing
alone in the darkness outside of the Buchanan house. He
is waiting to save Daisy from a belligerent Tom. However,
that doesn’t come to pass and the next day Gatsby
decides to take a swim, ordering his butler to wait for
Daisy’s call. Gatsby never gets that call and he has a life-
changing epiphany. Daisy has moved on and the world is
no longer idyllic and therefore he must die.
15. Tone
Fitzgerald is critical of the Jazz Age and the
American Dream. the American dream was
originally about discovery, individualism, and
the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted
in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed
social values have corrupted this dream,
especially on the East Coast.
America became a place where the corrupt
finish first, pockets lined with gold, while
the dreamers, holding fast to the American
Dream, aren’t even in the race to true
success and happiness.
16. Fitzgerald met and fell in love with Zelda Sayre when,
during the Great War, was assigned to a camp near
Montgomery, Alabama. Like Daisy, Zelda was a southern
belle, rich, and beautiful. After the war, Fitzgerald moved
to New York to seek his fortune so that he can marry
Zelda. However, Zelda was unwilling live off his small
salary. She broke their engagement. Fitzgerald went on to
write The Side of Paradise, which made him an instant
celebrity. A week later, Zelda became Mrs. F. Scott
Fitzgerald.
While reading, we take Nick’s retelling of the
story as the truth because of Fitzgerald’s pristine
description of him. Yet, Nick’s account of the
story is laced with cynicism, the attitude that
Fitzgerald possessed about the 1920s.
17. Mood
“
The day that it was pouring rain was the day that
Gatsby planned to meet daisy. The rain creates a
melancholic and anxious mood. When the
weather clears up, this represents the change in
the character’s feelings. Jay and Daisy are now
comfortable and enjoying their memories and
being together.
As tension begins to rise, the weather becomes
very hot. The climatic confrontation between
Tom and Gatsby happens on the hottest day of
the summer.
18. Literary Techniques
Symbolism: Dr. TJ Eckleburg is an old billboard that overlooks The
Valley of Ashes. The billboard is almost a Godlike figure in The Great
Gatsby as it symbolizes the morality (commonly associated with
religion) that is absent in a period in which evil and corruptions runs
rampant.
Foreshadowing: throughout the novel, foreshadowing is prevalent.
One example is the constant mentioning of Gatsby’s pool. This
foreshadows a big event that is going to be associated with that same
pool. George Wilson ultimately kills Gatsby in his pool.
Flashback: in some points of the novel, Nick deviates from the
present to talk about Gatsby as a penniless young man. Prior to
Gatsby’s funeral, Mr. Gatz, Gatsby’s father, tells Nick of his
determined son, evidenced in a strict schedule and specific to-do list
he wrote as a young kid. Gatsby was always striving for that
American Dream and it only intensified after he meets Daisy and
loses her because of the war. Daisy, like the American Dream, is
unattainable and impossible.
19. Yesterday – The Beatles
Paul McCartney talks of longing for yesterday,
where he and his love were together and he was
at complete ease. However, today, she is gone,
leaving without giving him a reason and his
world erupts in problems. The shadow of the
past is hanging over him. He considers himself to
be less than what he was yesterday and he
believes in “yesterday”.
This relates to The Great Gatsby because Gatsby was
living in the past, where he and Daisy were together and
madly in love. Like McCartney, Gatsby’s world is
shrouded in the shadows of the past and he desperately
longs for yesterday. He is not the man he used to be. He
is now lovesick and forlorn.
20. Black Swan
In Black Swan, Nina Sayers is a young ballerina a part
of a prestigious New York City dance company. Like
Gatsby, she is obsessive and fixated on an
unattainable dream. Her obsession is complete
perfection and flawlessness. She makes a
perfectionist look like an underachiever.
Her obsession with striving for perfection is much
more profound because of her schizophrenic
condition. She ultimately meets her demise trying to
attain that perfection she so longed for. Unlike
Gatsby, she attains her dream. Her last words were:
“Perfect. It was perfect.”
