'The Great Gatsby' By Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald : Brief Discussion.

Introduction : This blog is written as response to the Thinking Activity assigned by my professor Dr Dilip Barad sir. In this blog I will be discussing few questions related to the tragic novel 'The Great Gatsby' written by American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925 and the movie based on the novel directed by Australian director Baz Luhrmann. The movie was released in India on 17th May, 2013. We had movie-screening of the film in our classroom from 6th March, 2022 to 7th March, 2022.

Here is the discussion :

(1) How did the film capture the Jazz Age - the Roaring Twenties of the America in 1920s?

Answer : To illucidate, the very first example of Jazz Age or Roaring Twenties we can come through in the movie is the lavish and gala parties thrown on each Saturday by the newly rich person in the West Egg, namely, Jay Gatsby.

In the film, next scene of a man playing trumpet and the way camera has captuted the revolution of day to night is interesting and suggestive as well to the drenching of the twentieth century people into the newly popularized music genre - Jazz.

Another reference comes of 'The Roaring Twenties' when flappers were in vague, and rich were at the pinnacle of happiness as represented in Tom Buchanan's character.

I have found an article from Jstor website which denotes the significance of The Jazz Age in 'The Great Gatsby' novel, here is an excerpt from the article :

'The presence of jazz in his other works, perhaps most iconically in his grand novel The Great Gatsby, linked the term even more tightly to his name.  Today, the moniker “Jazz Age” has come to signify, as a kind of evocative shorthand, the 1920s in both academic and pop culture. Because jazz’s lineage—difficult as it is to pin down—was tightly bound up with African-American performance, the music often came to signify black American cultural production, and so, whenever Fitzgerald invoked jazz, he was often, simultaneously, invoking blackness. Yet The Great Gatsby’s usage of jazz is complicated, as Fitzgerald was simultaneously a proponent of the then-new, race-crossing music and a writer prone to resorting to racial stereotypes when black characters appeared—a combination that, unfortunately, was far from uncommon in Fitzgerald’s day.'

(2) How did the film help in understanding the characters of the novel?

Answer : It is a natural tendency of our brain that whatever is watched is retained more in our memory than what is read; it is also a proven fact that by picturization of any textual informations, we can get things clearer than just by reading the text, although it has a deficit that it can curtail the imaginative regime of one's mind which can be well-availed while reading the text.

So, the film we have had a movie-screening of is more faithful version than any other film made in past on the novel, thus film helped us lot to know and understand the thin strands of all charactors' self, especially the unreliability of narrator who is Nick Carraway.

Another plus point of movies are that it saves time (although curtails imaginative power of reader or spectator) by showing the character as described in the novel, so reader has not to read and remember the appearance of characters but he/she can know it by the depiction of characters put forth in front of reader's and spectator's eyes.

(3) How did the film help in understanding the symbolic significance of 'The Valley of Ashes', 'The Eyes of Dr T. J. Eckleburg' and 'The Green Light'? 

Answer : We got ludicrous amount of symbolic understanding of the following symbols of the novel from the movie; the recurrent frame of ' The Eyes of Dr T. J. Eckleburg' in the movie provided us with importance of the symbol which relresents the belief of lower-class people in existence of God who is watching them and evaluating their actions on the moral criterion and will accordingly punish and reward when right time comes as reflected in George Wilson's words : 'God sees everything!'

» (1) The Green Light :

The symbol of 'The Green Light' symbolizes hope of Jay Gatsby to achieve Daisy Buchanan as well as it represents the aggressive prevalence of 'The Great American Dream' where equality of wealth and opportunity were at the axial point of the age.

» (2) The Valley of Ashes :

As it is suggested by its name, the place is the abode of the lower-class and working-class people who have no opportunity to have dazzling mansions and zippy cars. The placement of the valley between lands of two rich classes, i.e., East Egg and West Egg adds to its symbolic significance by denoting the dichotomical fact that if one is rich than another is poor, or if one has to be rich then another has to be poor. The exploitation of the valley as well as the people who live in there are suggestive to the dark corner of 'The Great American Dream.' Both the places were living out of the exploitation of the resources that are acquired from the valley as well as by the service of the valley-dwellers.

» (3) The Eyes of Dr T. J. Eckleburg :

The symbolical significance of 'The Eyes of Dr T. J. Eckleburg' serves the purpose for the symbolic representation of the existence of God and the pertinence of moral evil and good in the world of lower-class, for the people who were poor were having fear of God which was lacking in rich people's mind. That is why the billboard is set in the valley instead of any bustling road of West Egg or East Egg. We shall find the same thing in India as well that people who are poor and have lesser means for livelihood are more tilted to God of any form and worship them to take away plight they are having, so God has become the means to beat away people's plight instead of a way to explore spiritual possibilties for human beings, and it not only make people fragile but also causes the bigotry and the battle between two laymen who identify themselves with something or the other God forgetting the unity of spirit.

(4) How did the film capture the theme of Racism and Sexism?

Answer : 'Racism' is correlative to 'Eugenics,' for both the ideologies spin around the same thought that is the hereditari characteristics of people and thus describing someone 'mud-blood' and someone 'blue-blood.' This is seen in the scene of Tom and Nick's dialogue sequence that he follows a book and claims it scientific authenticity.

I have found a good character study of Tom Buchanan, here is an excerpt :

'Tom is a racist: he supports the ideas put forward in a book called 'The Rise of the Coloured Empires,' describing it as scientific stuff.

He is a male chauvinist, complaining of Jordan and Daisy that they run around too much.'

The theme of 'Sexism' is captured in the same character of Tom Buchanan, as he treats his lover Myrtle Wilson as a thing to be enjoyed with than a human. He in the hotel slaps her with his fully patriarchal authority which shows the sexist approach and gender bias of upper-class high-handed men of the 20th century America.

'Tom is a compulsive womaniser, with a preference for lower class women whom he treats with contempt and violence. He breaks Myrtle's nose, Daisy complains he has hurt her little finger, and, in the past, he caused a chambermaid he was having an affair with to break her arm after crashing his car, while he himself, typically, was unscathed.

He does, however, seem to love Daisy in his own, possessive fashion, recalling moments of tenderness during the confrontation at the Plaza Hotel:

"the day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry."'

(5) Watch the video on Nick Carraway and discuss him as a narrator. 

Answer :

Nick Carraway stands as an unreliable narrator throughout the course of the novel, he feels pity for Jay Gatsby as he thinks of him as a great and self-made man til he realizes his engagement in illegal smugglings of alcohol and bootlegging along with Meyer Wofsheim who is Gatsby's friend and a prominent figure in organized crime.

Nick does not reveal this even to Daisy unless he sees it fit to reveal the dark facts of Gatsby's wealthy persona. That is why nick sometimes falls short in the eyes of critics as a trustworthy narrator. His sympathetic point of view ruins the authenticity of narration.

I have come across an interesting article regarding Nick Carraway's Narratorship.

(6) Watch the video on psychoanalytical study of Jay Gatsby and write about his character.

Answer :

Well, the protagonist of the novel who is Jay Gatsby sans doubt, is the embodiment of 'The Great American Dream' which is conspicuous characteristic of his very character. His ambition was to become wealthy and thus to marry Daisy and live a happy life. Daisy was a kind of propitious achievement which could satisfy his poverty-stricken past and his broken ego which was caused by the deprivation of social status and means to live happily.

He was indeed a true lover of Daisy but the trail he took to reach to his love was fraught with evil deeds which ultimately -  if fate is taken to be blamed - led him towards his decadence. 

Conclusion : The way novel provides the minutest insight in the character study, it has been thus regarded as one of the finest psychological novel ever written in history of English Literature. The sheer sheds of charactorial behaviours are one of the key features of the novel.

Thank you!

• Webliography :

- https://wifflegif.com/tags/11190-the-great-gatsby-gifs?page=0

- https://daily.jstor.org/what-the-great-gatsby-reveals-about-the-jazz-age/

- https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zm4bd6f/revision/4#:~:text=Racist%20and%20sexist,they%20run%20around%20too%20much.