Jun 05 2009
The Great Gatsby Journal 4
| American Dream | The first several pages of this chapter list prominent and important figures that populate Gatsby’s party. These figures play into what part of Gatsby’s perception of the American Dream is – social standing. People may not know who you truly are, but if they are willing to come and flit about your place, and revere your name with sort of a quiet mysteriousness and interest, you have obtained something desirable. People know of you and that, according to Gatsby, is partially achieving his American Dream. |
| Character Development | “I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came back, and I thought I’d never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a minute she’d look around uneasily, and say: “Where’s Tom gone?” and wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the door. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the hour, rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with unfathomable delight. It was touching to see them together-it made you laugh in a hushed, fascinated way. That was in August. A week after I left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night, and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the papers, too, because her arm was broken-she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel.” (81-82)
Fitzgerald paints what happens to Daisy, young and in love, heartbroken, then meets Tom and thinks she’s found her happily ever after. But the happiness doesn’t last long as she realizes that her husband is unfaitful. It allows the reader to sympathize with Daisy and she that she is more complex than a flighty trophy wife. She’s coping and surviving the best she knows how.
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| Color | When traveling to New York, white is used to describe quite a few details. The card that waves Gatsby’s speeding ticket; the river, and in skin color terms, the chauffer of a vehicle is white to three African Americans. White can symbolize purity and innocence, but it can also mark change and power, as it does in this chapter. |
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