ENGL1001 – American Literature F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby (1925) Dr. John Masterson 5 th Lecture July 2012

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The American Frontiersman

Whose American Dream?

Description of Dan Cody in The Great Gatsby, Chapter 6 “[He was] a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since seventy-five.”

Images of American Silver Mining, approx. 1890

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 6 “I remember the portrait of [Dan Cody] up in Gatsby's bedroom, a grey, florid man with a hard, empty face – the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon.”

The All-American Cowboy?

Image of a Native American Reservation

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 9 “there was nothing – only the picture of Dan Cody, a token of forgotten violence, staring down from the wall.”

The Great Gatsby and Its Portrayal of Violence, Chapter 2 “making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.”

Whose All-American Hero?

The Hollywood Gangster

Exchange between Nick and Jordan, The Great Gatsby, Chapter 3 Nick - “Either you ought to be more careful, or you oughtn't to drive at all.' Jordan - 'I am careful.' 'No, you're not.' 'Well, other people are,' she said lightly. 'What's that got to do with it?' 'They'll keep out of my way,' she insisted. 'It takes two to make an accident.' 'Suppose you meet somebody just as careless as yourself.' 'I hope I never will,' she answered. 'I hate careless people. That's why I like you.'

Jordan talking to Nick, The Great Gatsby, Chapter 9 “ 'You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess.’”

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 7 “[Myrtle's] left breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped a little at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long.”

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 7 Daisy – ‘Why – how could I love [Tom] – possibly?’ Gatsby - ‘You never loved him.’

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 7 ‘Oh, you want too much,’ she cried to Gatsby. ‘I love you now – isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.’ She began to sob helplessly. ‘I did love him once – but I loved you too.’ Gatsby’s eyes opened and closed. ‘You loved me too?’ he repeated. ‘Even that’s a lie,’ said Tom savagely. ‘She didn’t know you were alive. Why – there’s things between Daisy and me that you’ll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget.’ The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 7 ‘Oh, you want too much,’ she cried to Gatsby. ‘I love you now – isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.’ She began to sob helplessly. ‘I did love him once – but I loved you too.’ Gatsby’s eyes opened and closed. ‘You loved me too?’ he repeated. ‘Even that’s a lie,’ said Tom savagely. ‘She didn’t know you were alive. Why – there’s things between Daisy and me that you’ll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget.’ The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 6 “I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” [Gatsby] said, nodding determinedly. “She’ll see.”’

Daisy, The Great Gatsby, Chapter 7 ‘Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom,’ she admitted in a pitiful voice. ‘It wouldn’t be true.’

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 6 “They were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing.”

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 8 “I couldn’t sleep all night; a fog-horn was groaning incessantly on the Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage, frightening dreams.”

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 3 “I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others – poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner – young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.”

New York City