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Student Led Seminar Presentation and Summary
Leaders: Lauren Locke, Melissa Dexheimer, Mosang Miles

Summary Conclusion Questions Bibliography

Introduction

The years from 1918-1928 were known as many things:

The "New" Era
The "Jazz" Age
"The Roaring 20s"

These were names for a rapidly changing nation, a modern nation. After World War I there were a lot of new ideas forming, a new type of lifestyle. Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection challenged religious beliefs and resulted with changes in education and religion. The economy was in a phase of rapid growth, with industrialism and the growth of the movie industry and theater. Industrial revolution brought factories, which provided mass production. Mass production led to a higher productivity and better wages, in turn leading to a higher purchasing rate. The movie industry and theater also influenced the development of an identity for a new nation; theater was the number one up-and-coming entertainment of the era that provided a strong base for symbolism.
This brings us into our framework of modernism. Modernism as described in The New Merriam-Webster Dictionary is: "self-consciousness that we live in modern time, something new, different, non-traditional."
These "modern times" are displayed in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby as well as many of his other writings. Fitzgerald is known as a social historian, and likes to incorporate ‘real time and places’ into his works so that his readers more easily grasp it. Making it just a reach away, as in the perception of the "American Dream"…if you reach for it you can get, as shown in The Great Gatsby.

Movies and The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby takes place in the first half of the 1920s. During this time period and in the years prior to it, there were innovations being made that allowed people to live life at faster speeds than ever before. They included such transportation devices as the automobile and the airplane; but they also include devices such as the orange juice extractor described in the novel (39). These innovations minimized work and travel time and left people with more time to do … whatever. Anyway, as a result of these things, people had a more rapid pace of life, and one of the biggest factors in pushing people to live a speedier lifestyle is the movie industry.
At the time period in which the novel is set, movies had been in existence about 25 years. They were tremendously influential on people’s mindsets. Movies were "the dominant leisure activity of America, especially among the young and the poor" (Jarvie 1). They reflected the urban lifestyle that was becoming more and more prevalent at the time, like in the New York City of The Great Gatsby.
In 1903, German sociologist Georg Simmel described the modern city as the "the rapid crowding of changing images, the sharp discontinuity in the grasp of a single glance, and the unexpectedness of onrushing impressions." These words could double as a description of the cinema (Charney 3). Fitzgerald also addresses the city’s changing images as he mentions the "satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye" (57). With the increasing popularity of movies and the similarity of the big city to the movies, people were looking at their lives and at the world around them as a giant movie.
This is exactly what takes place in The Great Gatsby. The fast-living wealthy (Tom, Daisy, Jordan) are acting in a movie, and the regular people (the Wilsons, Nick and even Gatsby) are just watching it.
The rich are aware that they are living in a movie. They are always acting, not living, and because of this, their actions are all perfunctory and unnecessary. Fitzgerald makes this obvious. After Daisy speaks to her own sophistication, Nick feels "the basic insincerity of what she had said" (18). The original owner of Gatsby’s house had "a plan to Found a Family," with the capitalization of Found and Family suggesting that the sentiment is already thought of as cliched and not as a heartfelt action (89). Finally, when Gatsby receives guests and greets them politely and enthusiastically, Fitzgerald interjects with, "As though they cared!" (102). This shows how all the formalities of greeting are not performed with feeling; the people are simply acting out their appropriate parts.
Since nothing is real, nothing matters to the rich. Evenings are "casually put away" (13), and "casual innuendo and introductions" are "forgotten on the spot" (40). They even dislike what is real, as Jordan Baker changes the subject from real matters "with an urban distaste for the concrete" (49). When something is real, it is very shocking, such as in the case of Gatsby’s library (45).
While the rich are acting out their superficial lives, the poor are watching it all. Nick Carraway, in particular, serves as the audience for the entire novel. He makes references to thinking of life in terms of movies. Two examples of this are "just as things grow in fast movies" (4), and "the scene had changed before my eyes" (47). Nick also refers to the East as having a "quality of distortion," as being unreal to him (177). The poor living in the valley of ashes (the Wilsons, Michaelis) also watch the rich; but they watch them go speeding by in their cars and trains.
Myrtle tries to live that fast, fake lifestyle, and it is very obvious that she is out of her class and acting the part. She does everything unnecessarily, such as raising her eyebrows "in despair" and laughing "pointlessly" (32). Her acquaintance Mrs. McKee does the same thing, as she says that she nearly married a man who was, everybody said, "‘ way below you’" (35). The reason that ‘way below you’ is in quotes is because it is what everybody else thinks, not what she thinks, and she is just acting along with it.
In the end, only the rich can live their speedy, superficial lifestyle, as the poor characters that try to get involved in it end up being killed. Myrtle is struck down in the highway by the same lifestyle she tried to embrace, a literal and metaphorical tragedy of the fast life. Jay Gatsby is also murdered for trying to join high society. Even Wilson ends up being a casualty of the rich’s carelessness.
Fitzgerald’s message follows along the lines of a well-known proverb, that being "haste makes waste." In the haste of their lifestyle, the rich make waste; that waste is the poor. As Nick says of Tom and Daisy, "they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made …. (180-181).

Symbolism in The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald uses symbolism and imagery to convey the messages in his work. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses transportation (cars), communication (phones), and water to convey his message. Read at surface level, The Great Gatsby is a story of unrequitted love and wrongful death. With a more in depth interpretation of the utalized writing tools, The Great Gatsby reveals itself to be a commentary on the shortcomings of the "American Dream". The characters that made the dream reality are not all they appear to be and the characters attempting to do so go about it in an unethical way.

Transportation

Transportation imagery is used throughout the book. The cars, in the book, serve to show the speed with which the characters live. They also represent industrialized America. Like other symbols in the novel, the car changes its symbolic meaning and becomes a symbol of death. Characters identify through their cars, as they do their jobs. Superficial relationships serving as a means of identification. "His use of cars contributes to an impression of externalization, of lives without internal direction, of casual accidents and wrecks representing the norm" (Miller pg. 145).
* Gatsby’s car
It is an extravagant cream colored car, and it is indicative of an adolescent’s ideals - never fully developed. He decided what his dream was and he never questioned it, or allowed any maturation of his fantasy. Cream color blends white; the purity of his dream and yellow; the corruption of money. After Myrtle’s death the car is recounted as just a yellow car, stripped of innocents, completely corrupted. (Seiters pg. 58).
* Jordan Baker
Her name is lent from two different cars. She is shown to be "careless." She represents her class, unconcerned and dismissive. She drives around with no concern for what she smashes or destroys. (Seiters pg. 58).
* Tom Buchanan
Tom’s first extramarital affair is exposed because of an automobile accident. He also uses his car as leverage over Wilson: the ultimate weapon for his exploitation.
* Myrtle Wilson
A car appropriately strikes down Wilson myrtle. Symbolic of her attempts to break through into a society that didn’t want her. She was destroyed by her corrupt attempts to chase the "American Dream."

Communication

Telephones and newspapers serve to confuse and distort throughout the book. Due to miscommunication characters motivation becomes jaded and misdirected. These faults in communication can be held accountable for the poorly interpreted pursuit of the "American dream" that takes place. The poor communication also exemplifies the "modern era" as faster, but not better. The communicable technologies are represented as flawed superficial advancements.
* Newspaper
For years, the only thing Gatsby knows of Daisy is what he extracts from the paper. Society columns glamorize and bolster Daisy, and only aid in deepening Gatsby’s infatuation. Much like the settling pioneers of the West, the newspaper propagates how fabulous things actually are. They attach a myth and mystic to Daisy, much like the optimism attached to the expansion of the West; "but these ideals were in contradiction to the actual brutal values of the West". "To the pioneer, in short, private and public interest were identical and the worship of success was a social cult" (Long 167).
* Telephone
The telephone is a constant source of confusion throughout the book. Nick learns of Tom’s infidelity when a phone call disturbs lunch. Gatsby is pulled away from conversation by "business" calls regularly. Nick, for sure, learns of Gatsby’s illegal activities through a phone call, when he is confused for Gatsby. When Daisy, Gatsby and Tom are attempting to communicate in the hotel room, the phone book falls to the floor and disrupts them. Daisy also attempts to distract Tom by asking him to use the telephone to call for ice, further inhibiting communication.

Light and Dark

The descriptions of light and dark in the book are ironic, because they do not convey their usual associations. Light is fake and superficial. Everything seen in the light of day is for show. It is only in the Dark of night that characters are truly revealed.
* Gatsby’s parties
They are compared to a carnival, and they have a well-lit, fake atmosphere.
* Gatsby’s house
The day before Daisy is to come over; Nick comes home and believes his house is on fire because Gatsby’s house is lit from "cellar to tower." The house is lit with artificial light ? the light does not allow Gatsby to view reality.
* Gatsby in the dark
The first time Nick sees him, Gatsby is standing in the dark; he is looking at the stars, Nick presumes. Actually, Gatsby is regarding the artificial green light at the end of Daisy’s dock.
Gatsby only opens up to Nick in the dark. After Myrtle’s death, Gatsby and Nick fumble around in the dark looking for cigarettes; Gatsby tells Nick of his true past. Light confuses the truth, because all that is displayed is superficial.
* Sunlight vs. Fake Light
Sunlight exposes reality, which is often a harsh one. Nick notes that when Daisy fails to call, Gatsby sees "how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass" (Fitzgerald 163). The artificial light is kinder in the book, because it illuminates the optimism of the dream.
* Gatsby dies
Nick goes to Gatsby’s house after his death and finds an obscene word scrawled on the steps, illuminated by moonlight. This is the perversion of the American dream brought to light. Gatsby the developing child and America the developing nation created ideas about what they hoped to achieve and never allowed them to mature.
* The green light
It symbolizes money and misdirected desire.

Religious Overtones

Religious symbolism has a hand in The Great Gatsby. Manifest destiny was the religious argument for moving west.
* Dr. Eckleburg’s eyes
They symbolize the eyes of God, all-knowing and all-seeing.
* Valley of Ashes
It is the Valley of Death. It symbolizes the hardships of attempting the American Dream. Myrtle’s dying place; someone tried (in a perverse attempt) to achieve the American Dream.
The Valley of Ashes also serve as a symbolic contrast to Gatsby’s ideas about a man being able to clean himself up and start anew, a baptism of sorts.

Transparencies

* Water
Water in the novel becomes a symbol of impenetrable borders. Like the end of the Westward expansion. There was no more West, and Gatsby had nothing left to pursue but a dream, a dream on the other side of the bay. In the beginning, water is rebirth and a new beginning ? James Gatz becomes Jay Gatsby on Lake Superior.
* Windows
Windows can be equated to a thwarted perception of the American Dream. The people looking through them always misinterpret what is happening on the other side.
Myrtle sees Jordan and Tom, and presumes that Jordan is Daisy. Gatsby watches for Daisy’s light through her window to go off. He presumes all is well; he has no ideas she has abandoned him.
"Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window." The windows are one track thoughts with no room to develop or extract true information.
The East Egg Crowd
The East Egg Crowd is the modern-day established settlers. Propagating their position to preserve the dream.

Conclusion
The Great Gatsby was a modern novel when it was written, and the themes are still applicable today. The story still resonates today in its ideas about technological advancement and mass society.
With The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story of America and how he sees it in the 1920s, where it has come from and where it is going. Jay Gatsby personifies the American Dream in modern terms, a perverse interpretation of what it was at inception. The dream is different because America is different. Fitzgerald alludes to this with his representation of improved communication and a faster society in general.
The American Dream is that anybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Fitzgerald is saying that this is not necessarily true. He implies that socio-economical circumstances heavily influence a person’s ability to achieve the American Dream.
America is an illusion, just an image that is presented. People in and outside America accept the American ideals which are presented through the media, especially through visual mediums such as movies and television. This serves to create an ideal image of America which people hold falsely. When they try to achieve the American Dream, which is presented to them constantly, they realize the brutal reality which hides behind the illusion.

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Questions Raised
* Did movies in the early part of the century serve as big advertisements? In other words, did they serve simply to create dissatisfaction? Do movies now do that?
* Does the American Dream still exist?
* Was Gatsby’s dream doomed from conception? Or did it unravel along the way?
* Does society control us, or do we control our own actions?
* Why is Nick an unclear character? That is, why does he continuously straddle the line between the rich and the poor without belonging to either group?

Charney, Leo and Vanessa R. Schwartz. Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life.Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. First Scribner Classic/Collier Edition. New York:Collier Books, 1986.
Jarvie, I.C. Movies as Social Criticism. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1978.
Long, Robert Emmet. The Achieving of the The Great Gatsby; F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920-1925.Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1979.
Miller, James E. Jr. The Fictional Technique of Scott Fitzgerald. Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Press, 1970.
Seiters, Dan. Image Patterns in the Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986.