Rita's Journal

The first book read by the Babysitter's Club (I'm still working on the name) will be... ::drum roll:: "Cry, the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton

Book Description from Amazon.com

"Cry, the Beloved Country is a beautifully told and profoundly compassionate story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set in the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s.

The book is written with such keen empathy and understanding that to read it is to share fully in the gravity of the characters' situations. It both touches your heart deeply and inspires a renewed faith in the dignity of mankind. Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic tale, passionately African, timeless and universal, and beyond all, selfless."

I thought this would be a good first selection because I don't think that many people have read it. I think we're a pretty isolated society and it's an opportunity to learn about a different part of the world. I guess that's pretty much the goal of having a book club - To improve yourself and engage others in constructive activity. So I'm going to try to foster a diverse reading selection. I'm always open to suggestions.

Soooo anyway, I hope you enjoy the book. I'll be posting some links and other things too. I'll try to see if it's available over the internet so you don't have to buy it. Oh, and by the way, you can disregard everything prior to this post. You're welcome to check it out but it's not that interesting.

Rita

From Classic Notes

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England on February 7th, 1812, the second of eight children. His father was a clerk working for the Navy Pay office and was imprisoned for debt when Charles was very young. Due to the lack of funds, Dickens went to work at a blacking warehouse when he was twelve. His brush with hard times and poverty affected him deeply, and he would later recount his experiences in the semi-autobiographical David Copperfield. Furthermore, a concern for social justice and reform which surfaced later on in his writings, grew out of the neglect and harsh conditions he experienced in the warehouse. Although he had little formal schooling, he was able to teach himself shorthand, leading him to a job as a parliamentary reporter at a newspaper. While he published several sketches in magazines, it was not until he wrote The Pickwick Papers from 1836-7 that he experienced true success. A publishing phenomenon, The Pickwick Papers was published in monthly installments and sold over forty thousand copies for each issue. The year 1836 also saw his marriage to a Catherine Hogarth, who was the daughter of a fellow co-worker at the newspaper. Their marriage was not a happy one, but the two would have ten children together before their separation in 1858.

Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby subsequently followed; both were published in monthly installments and reflected simultaneously Dickens' understanding of the underclass and his comedic genius. In 1843, Dickens published one of his most famous works, A Christmas Carol. In this story especially, it was evident how Dickens was becoming disenchanted with the economic philosophy of the world; he blamed much of society's ills on people's obsession with earning money and acquiring a status based on money.

His travels abroad, first to America and then all over Europe, in the 1840s began a different stage in his life. His writings became more serious and involved more planning on his part. David Copperfield (1849-50) clearly paralleled his own. Within the story, readers found the same flawed world that Dickens had discovered as a young boy. Other novels were to follow. In the weekly periodicals he started, "Household Words" (1850) and "All the Year Round" (1859), he published such well-known novels as Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.

Dickens first thought of setting a novel in the time of the French Revolution when he read Thomas Carlyle's book The French Revolution, which was first published in 1839. He read this book faithfully every year, but used it sparingly in researching his novels. Dickens finally came up with a way to use it in 1857, when he acted in Wilkie Collins' play, The Frozen Deep. Dickens played a self-sacrificing lover in the play; this role inspired him so much that he wanted to use it in his own novels. He eventually decided to place his own sacrificing lover in the revolutionary period, a period of great social upheaval. A year later, Dickens went through his own form of social change as he wrote the novel; he separated from his wife, and revitalized his career by making plans for a new weekly literary journal called All the Year Round. In 1859, A Tale of Two Cities premiered in parts in this journal. It was popular, not only from the fame of its author, but also for its short length and radical (for Dickens) subject matter.

Dickens' health started deteriorating in the 1860s. The fact that he had started doing public readings of his works in 1858 exacted even greater a physical toll on him. On June 9, 1870, Charles Dickens died and was buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. Though The Mystery of Edwin Drood was unfinished at the time of his death, he had written fifteen substantial novels and countless shorter pieces by then. His legacy is clear. While he pointed out problems within societyÐa blinding and mercenary greed for money, neglect of all sectors in society, and a wrong inequality, he offered us, at the same time, a solution. Through his books, we come to understand the virtues of a loving heart and the pleasures of home in a flawed, cruelly indifferent world. In the end, the lesson to take away from his stories is a positive one. Alternately insightful and whimsical, Dickens' writings have shown readers over generations the reward of being truly human.

***Rita***

The University of South Carolina has a great site with interesting stories about Fitzgerald and his relationships with H.L Menken and Ernest Hemingway and other people.

I also found this really cool site First Lines, that gives you the first line of a book or movie and you guess what book or movie it is.

Well, g'night.
***Rita***

THEMES from Study World

1. THE CORRUPTION OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

The American Dream--as it arose in the Colonial period and developed in the nineteent h century--was based on the assumption that each person, no matter what his origins, could succeed in life on the sole basis of his or her own skill and effort. The dream was embodied in the ideal of the self-made man, just as it was embodied in Fitzgerald's own family by his grandfather, P. F. McQuillan.

The Great Gatsby is a novel about what happened to the American dream in the 1920s, a period when the old values that gave substance to the dream had been corrupted by the vulgar pursuit of wealth. The ch aracters are Midwesterners who have come East in pursuit of this new dream of money, fame, success, glamour, and excitement. Tom and Daisy must have a huge house, a stable of polo ponies, and friends in Europe. Gatsby must have his enormous mansion before he can feel confident enough to try to win Daisy.

What Fitzgerald seems to be criticizing in The Great Gatsby is not the American Dream itself but the corruption of the American Dream. What was once--for Ben Franklin, for example, or Thomas Jefferson--a b elief in self-reliance and hard work has become what Nick Carraway calls "...the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty." The energy that might have gone into the pursuit of noble goals has been channeled into the pursuit of power and pleasure , and a very showy, but fundamentally empty form of success.

How is this developed? I have tried to indicate in the chapter-by-chapter analysis, especially in the Notes, that Fitzgerald's critique of the dream of success is developed primarily through the five central characters and through certain dominant images and symbols. The characters might be divided into three groups: 1. Nick, the observer and commentator, who sees what has gone wrong; 2. Gatsby, who lives the dream purely; and 3. Tom, Daisy, and Jordan, the "foul dust" who are the prime examples of the corruption of the dream.

The primary images and symbols that Fitzgerald employs in developing the theme are: 1. the green light; 2. the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg; 3. the image of the East and Midw est; 4. Owl Eyes; 5. Dan Cody's yacht; and 6. religious terms such as grail and incarnation.

2. SIGHT AND INSIGHT

Both the character groupings and the images and symbols suggest a second major theme that we can call "sight and insight." As you read the n ovel, you will come across many images of blindness; is this because hardly anyone seems to see what is really going on? The characters have little self-knowledge and even less knowledge of each other. Even Gatsby--we might say, especially Gatsby--lacks t h e insight to understand what is happening. He never truly sees either Daisy or himself, so blinded is he by his dream. The only characters who see, in the sense of "understand," are Nick and Owl Eyes. The ever present eyes of Dr. Eckleburg seem to reinfor ce the theme that there is no all-seeing presence in the modern world.

3. THE MEANING OF THE PAST

The past is of central importance in the novel, whether it is Gatsby's personal past (his affair with Daisy in 1917) or the larger historical past to which N ick refers in the closing sentence of the novel: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." The past holds something that both Gatsby and Nick seem to long for: a simpler, better, nobler time, perhaps, a time when pe o ple believed in the importance of the family and the church. Tom, Daisy and Jordan are creatures of the present--Fitzgerald tells us little or nothing about their pasts--and it is this allegiance to the moment that makes them so attractive, and also so ro otless and spiritually empty.

4. THE EDUCATION OF A YOUNG MAN

In Chapter VII, Nick remembers that it is his thirtieth birthday. He, like Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy, came East to get away from his past; now that his youth is officially over, he realizes that h e may have made a mistake to come East, and begins a period of reevaluation that leads to his eventual decision to return to the Middle West.

The Great Gatsby is the story of Nick's initiation into life. His trip East gives him the education he needs to g row up. The novel can, therefore, be called a bildungsroman--the German word for a story about a young man. (Other examples of a bildungsroman are The Red Badge of Courage, David Copperfield, and The Catcher in the Rye.) Nick, in a sense, writes The Great Gatsby to show us what he has learned.

THE GREAT GATSBY: STYLE

Style refers to the way a writer puts words together: the length and rhythm of his sentences; his use of figurative language and symbolism; his use of dialogue and description.

Fit zgerald called The Great Gatsby a "novel of selected incident," modelled after Flaubert's Madame Bovary. "What I cut out of it both physically and emotionally would make another novel," he said. Fitzgerald's stylistic method is to let a part stand for the whole. In Chapters I to III, for example, he lets three parties stand for the whole summer and for the contrasting values of three different worlds. He also lets small snatches of dialogue represent what is happening at each party. The technique is cinema t ic. The camera zooms in, gives us a snatch of conversation, and then cuts to another group of people. Nick serves almost as a recording device, jotting down what he hears. Fitzgerald's ear for dialogue, especially for the colloquial phrases of the period, is excellent.

Fitzgerald's style might also be called imagistic. His language is full of images--concrete verbal pictures appealing to the senses. There is water imagery in descriptions of the rain, Long Island Sound, and the swimming pool. There is relig ious imagery in the Godlike eyes of Dr. Eckleburg and in words such as incarnation, and grail. There is color imagery: pink for Gatsby, yellow and white for Daisy.

Some images might more properly be called symbols for the way they point beyond themselves to historic or mythic truths: the green light at the end of Daisy's dock, for instance, or Dr. Eckleburg's eyes, or Dan Cody's yacht. Through the symbolic use of images, Fitzgerald transforms what is on the surface a realistic social novel of the 1920s in to a myth about America.

Finally, we might call Fitzgerald's style reflective. There are several important passages at which Nick stops and reflects on the meaning of the action, almost interpreting the events. The style in such passages is dense, intellec tual, almost deliberately difficult as Nick tries to wrestle with the meanings behind the events he has witnessed.

THE GREAT GATSBY: POINT OF VIEW

Style and point of view are very hard to separate in a novel that is told in the first person by a narrator who is also one of the characters. The voice is always Nick's. Fitzgerald's choice of Nick as the character through whom to tell his story has a stroke of genius. He had been reading Joseph Conrad and had been particularly struck by the way in which Conrad uses the character of Marlow to tell both the story of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness and the story of Jim in Lord Jim. In those novels, Fitzgerald learned, we never see the characters of Kurtz or Jim directly, but only through the eyes of other p eople. And when we come to think of it, isn't that how we get to know people in real life? We never get to know them all at once, as we get to know characters described by an omniscient novelist; we learn about them in bits and pieces over a period of tim e . And so, Fitzgerald reasoned, someone like Gatsby would be much more understandable and sympathetic if presented through the eyes of a character like ourselves. Rather than imposing himself between us and the action, Nick brings us closer to the action b y forcing us to experience events as though we were Nick. The I of the novel becomes ourselves, and we find ourselves, like Nick, wondering who Gatsby is, why he gives these huge parties, and what his past and background may be. By writing from Nick's poin t of view, Fitzgerald is able to make Gatsby more realistic than he could have by presenting Gatsby through the eyes of an omniscient narrator. He is also able to make Gatsby a more sympathetic character because of Nick's decision to become Gatsby's friend . We want to find out more about Gatsby because Nick does. We care about Gatsby because Nick does. We are angry that no one comes to Gatsby's funeral because Nick is.

The use of the limited first person point of view gives not only the character of Gatsby but the whole novel a greater air of realism. We believe these parties really happened because a real person named Nick Carraway is reporting what he saw. When Nick writes down the names of the people who came to Gatsby's parties on a Long Island Railroad timetable, we believe that these people actually came to Gatsby's parties.

Nick is careful throughout the novel never to tell us things that he could not have known. If he was not present at a particular occasion, he gets the information from someone who was--from Jordan Baker, for example, who tells him about Gatsby's courtship of Daisy in Louisville; or from the Greek, Michaelis, who tells him about the death of Myrtle Wilson. Sometimes Nick summarizes what others tell him, and sometimes he uses their w ords. But he never tells us something he could never know. This is one of the reasons the novel is so convincing.

THE GREAT GATSBY: FORM AND STRUCTURE

Form and structure are closely related to point of view. Before writing a novel, an author has to ask himself: who is to tell the story? And in what order will events be told? The primary problem in answering the second question is how to handle time. Do I tell the story straight through from beginning to end? Do I start in the middle and use flas hbacks?

As many critics have pointed out, the method Fitzgerald adopts in The Great Gatsby is a brilliant one. He starts the novel in the present, giving us, in the first three chapters, a glimpse of the four main locales of the novel: Daisy's house in Eas t Egg (Chapter I); the valley of ashes and New York (Chapter II); and Gatsby's house in West Egg (Chapter III). Having established the characters and setting in the first three chapters, he then narrates the main events of the story in Chapters IV to IX, using Chapters IV, VI, and VII to gradually reveal the story of Gatsby's past. The past and present come together at the end of the novel in Chapter IX.

The critic James E. Miller, Jr., diagrams the sequence of events in The Great Gatsby like this: "Allowi ng X to stand for the straight chronological account of the summer of 1922, and A, B, C, D, and F to represent the significant events of Gatsby's past, the nine chapters of The Great Gatsby may be charted: X, X, X, XCX, X, XBXCX, X, XCXDXD, XEXAX."

Miller 's diagram shows clearly how Fitzgerald designed the novel. He gives us the information as Nick gets it, just as we might find out information about a friend or acquaintance in real life, in bits and pieces over a period of time. Since we don't want or ca n 't absorb much information about a character until we truly become interested in him, Fitzgerald waits to take us into the past until close to the middle of the novel. As the story moves toward its climax, we find out more and more about the central figur e from Nick until we, too, are in a privileged position and can understand why Gatsby behaves as he does.

Thus the key to the structure of the novel is the combination of the first person narrative and the gradual revelation of the past as the narrator fin ds out more and more. The two devices work extremely effectively together, but neither would work very well alone.

Note that the material included in the novel is highly selective. Fitzgerald creates a series of scenes--most of them parties--but does not tell us much about what happens between these scenes. Think of how much happened in the summer of 1922 that Fitzgerald doesn't tell us! He doesn't tell us about Gatsby and Daisy's relationship after they meet at Nick's house in Chapter V, because Nick wou l d have no access to this information. What the technique of extreme selectivity demands from the reader is close attention. We have to piece together everything we know about Gatsby from the few details that Nick gives us. Part of the pleasure this form g ives us is that of drawing conclusions not only from what is included but from what is left out.

THERE! Now I'm going to bed. ::yawns::

***Rita***

The first vocabulary list is from Classic Notes and is given in context, which I really liked. The second list is from The Great Gatsby Website and is in aphabetical order.

List 1 from Classic Notes

Chapter 1
"His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts." -Pg. 7
fractious (adj) - unruly, quarrelsome, irritable.

"Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart." - Pg. 20-21
peremptory (adj) - admitting of no contradiction, often characterized by arrogant self-assurance

Chapter 2
"The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do."
supercilious (adj) - arrogant, contemptous

"I wanted to get out and walk southward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. " - Pg. 36
strident (adj) - commanding attention by a loud or obtrusive quality

Chapter 3
"Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word." - Pg. 40
prodigality (n) - reckless extravagance, lavishness, luxuriance

"A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian, and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz, and between the numbers people were doing "stunts" all over the garden, while happy, vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky." -Pg. 47
vacuous (adj) - marked by lack of ideas or intelligence; devoid of serious occupation

"I had expected that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid and corpulent person in his middle years." -Pg. 49
corpulent (adj) - having a large bulky body

"But young men didn't - at least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn't - drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound." -Pg. 49
provincial (adj) - limited in outlook, narrow; unsophisticated

Chapter 4
"This quality was continually breaking through his punctilious manner in the shape of restlessness. -Pg. 64
punctilious (adj) - concerned about precise exact accordance with details of codes or conventions

"He's quite a character around New York - a denizen of Broadway." -Pg. 74
denizen (n) - inhabitant; one that frequents a place

Chapter 6
"He was a son of God - a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that - and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty."
meretricious (adj) - tawdrily and falsely attractive, pretentioius, gaudy

"The none too savory ramifications by which Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and sent him to sea in a yacht, were common knowledge to the turgid sub-journalism of 1902." - Pg. 102
turgid (adj) - swollen; excessively embellished in style or language,bombastic, pompous

Chapter 7
""Is Mr. Gatsby sick?." "Nope.." After a pause he added "sir." in a dilatory, grudging way." -Pg. 113
dilatory (adj) - intending to cause delay; procrastinating

"Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade." - Pg. 136
portentous (adj) - eliciting amazement or wonder, prodigious; self-consciously weighty, pompous.

"Only the negro and I were near enough to hear what he said, but the policeman caught something in the tone and looked over with truculent eyes." -Pg. 141
truculent (adj) - cruel, savage; deadly, destructive; vitriolic; belligerent

Chapter 8
"For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes." -Pg. 148
redolent (adj) - exuding fragrance, aromatic; scented; evocative, suggestive

"I suppose there'd be a curious crowd around there all day with little boys searching for dark spots in the dust, and some garrulous man telling over and over what had happened, until it became less and less real even to him and he could tell it no longer, and Myrtle Wilson's tragic achievement was forgotten." -Pg. 156
garrulous (adj) - pointlessly or annoyingly talkative

"A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . . like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees." -Pg. 162
fortuitously (adv) - occuring by change; fortunate, lucky

List 2 from The Great Gatsby Website

asunder- adv. 1. into parts or pieces. 2. in different directions; apart. adj. separated; not close; apart.

benediction- n. 1. a blessing. 2. an invocation of divine blessing. 3. a giving of thanks; grace. 4. blessedless 5. in the Roman Catholic Church, a special ritual of blessing.

complacency- n. 1. quiet satisfaction; contentment. 2. self-satisfaction; smugness.

elude- v. 1. to avoid or escape from by quickness. cunning, etc. 2. to escape detection by; evade; baffle: as, the point that you're trying to make eludes me.

ether- n. 1. an imaginary substance regarded by the ancients as filling all space beyond the sphere of the moon, and making up the stars and planets. 2. the upper regions of spaces; clear sky. 3. [Rare] the air.

extemporizing- v. to speak, perform, or compose extempore; improvise.

feigned- adj. 1. fictitious; imagined. 2. pretended; simulated; sham.

florid- adj. 1. rosy; ruddy; highly colored; said of the complexion. 2. highly decorated; gaudy; showy; ornate: as, a florid passage on music, etc. 3. [Rare], decorated with flowers; flowery.

implore- v. 1. to ask or beg earnestly for; beseech. 2. to ask or beg (a person) to do something; entreat.

infinitesimal- adj. too small to be measured; infinitely small.

jaunty- adj. 1. stylish; chic. 2. easy and careless; gay and swaggering; sprightly; perky.

languidly- adv. 1. without vigor or vitality; drooping; weak. 2. without interest or spirit; listless; indifferent. 3. sluggish; dull; slow.

laudable- adj. worthy of being lauded; praiseworthy; commendable.

levity- n. lightness or gaiety of disposition, conduct or speech; lack of seriousness; frivolity. 2. fickleness; instabilty.

reproach- v. 1. to accuse of and blame for a fault; rebuke; reprove; censure; upbraid. 2. to bring shame and disgrace upon; be a cause of discredit to.

wan- adj. 1. sickly pale; pallid; colorless. 2. idicative or suggestive of a sickly condition or great wariness, grief. 3. dark; gloomy; sad. v. to make or become sickly pale.

I'm am so glad that I got all of this down in a fairly short amount of time. Now I'm just going to enter my thoughts on the book and then I have to choose another book.

***Rita***

Character List from Classic Notes

Jay Gatsby (James Gatz): Gatsby is, of course, both the novel's title character and its protagonist. When first we meet him, Gatsby is a mysterious, fantastically wealthy young man. Every Saturday, his garish Gothic mansion in West Egg serves as the site of extravagant parties. Later in the novel, we learn that his real name is James Gatz; he was born in North Dakota, to an impoverished farming family. While serving in the Army in World War I, Gatsby met Daisy Fay (now Daisy Buchanan) and fell passionately in love with her. He worked briefly for a millionaire, and there became acquainted with the people and customs of high society. This, coupled with his love of Daisy, inspired Gatsby to devote his life to the acquisition of wealth. His fortune has been made through illegal activities: he has sacrificed all claims to propriety in the hopes of growing wealthy and thereby winning Daisy's love.

Nick Carraway: The novel's narrator, Nick Carraway comes from a well-to-do Minnesota family. He travels to New York to learn the bond business; there, he becomes involved with both Gatsby and the Buchanans. Though he is honest, responsible, and fair-minded, Nick nevertheless shares some of the flaws of the East Egg milieu. He, too, frequently neglects to take the emotions of others into account. Of all the novel's characters, he is the only one to truly recognize Gatsby's "greatness" thereby revealing himself as a young man of unusual sensitivity.

Tom Buchanan: A brutal, hulking man, Tom Buchanan is a former Yale football player who, like Daisy, comes from an immensely wealthy Midwestern family. His racism and sexism are symptomatic of his deep insecurity about his own elevated social position. Tom is a vicious bully, physically menacing both his wife and his mistress. He is a thoroughgoing hypocrite as well: though he condemns his wife and Gatsby for their infidelity, he has no qualms about carrying on his own affair.

Daisy Fay Buchanan: Born Daisy Fay, she is Nick's cousin, Tom's wife, and the woman Gatsby loves. In her youth, she fell in love with Jay Gatsby and promised to wait for him until the end of the war. During their separation, however, Tom Buchanan proposed to her; comparing Tom's wealth to Gatsby's poverty, Daisy decided not to wait for Gatsby after all. Daisy is insubstantial and vapid, a careless woman who uses her frail demeanor as an excuse for her extreme immaturity. She, in her wealth and beauty, is the symbol of all that Gatsby desires. She kills Myrtle Wilson while driving Gatsby's car. Gatsby selflessly assumes responsibility for Myrtle's death.

Jordan Baker: Daisy's longtime friend, Jordan Baker is a professional golfer who cheated in order to win her first tournament. Jordan is extremely cynical, with a masculine, icy demeanor that Nick initially finds compelling. The two become briefly involved, but Jordan rejects him on the grounds that he is as corrupt and decadent as she is.

Myrtle Wilson: An earthy, vital and voluptuous woman, Myrtle is desperate to improve her life. She shares a loveless marriage with George Wilson, a man who runs a shabby garage in the valley of ashes. She has been having a long-term affair with Tom Buchanan, and is incredibly jealous of Daisy. After a fight with her husband, she runs out into the street and is hit and killed by Gatsby's car.

George B. Wilson: George is a listless, impoverished man whose only passion is his love for his wife, Myrtle. He is devastated by Myrtle's affair with Tom. After her death, the magnitude of his grief drives Wilson to murder Jay Gatsby before committing suicide himself.

Meyer Wolfsheim: A notorious underworld figure, Wolfsheim is a business associate of Gatsby. He is deeply involved in organized crime, and even claims credit for fixing the 1919 World Series. His character like Fitzgerald's view of the Roaring Twenties as a whole is a curious mix of barbarism and refinement (his cufflinks are made from human molars). After Gatsby's murder, however, Wolfsheim is one of the only people to express his grief or condolences; by contrast, the socially superior Buchanans fail to attend Gatsby's funeral.

Henry Gatz: Gatsby's father; his son's help is the only thing that saves him from poverty. Gatz tells Nick about his son's extravagant plans and dreams of self-improvement.
Dan Cody: A somewhat coarse man who became immensely wealthy during the Gold Rush. He mentored Gatsby was he was a young man and gave him a taste of elite society. Though he left Gatsby a sum of money after his death, it was later seized by Cody's ex-wife.

Michaelis: Wilson's neighbor; he attempts to console Wilson after Myrtle's death.

Catherine: Myrtle Wilson's sister. Tom, Myrtle and Nick visit with her and her neighbors, the McKees, in New York City.

The McKees: Catherine's neighbors. Mr. McKee is an artist; both McKees are shallow gossips who concern themselves only with status and fashion.

Ewing Klipspringer: A shiftless freeloader who almost lives at Gatsby's mansion. Though he takes advantage of Gatsby's wealth and generosity, Klipspringer fails to attend his funeral.

Owl Eyes: An eccentric, bespectacled man whom Nick meets at one of Gatsby's parties. He is one of the few people to attend Gatsby's funeral.

Classic Notes>

***Rita***

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<a [...] $25,000,>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

I find that brief summaries are rarely brief or summaries. This is the entire plot but I liked it the most. It's from Studyworld.com. They also have a link to cliffnotes and a good vocabulary list. If you haven't read the book yet, I suggest that you only read the first 6 paragraphs.

Summary from Studyworld.com

Nick Carraway, the narrator, is a young Midwesterner who, having graduated from Yale in 1915 and fought in World War I ("The Great War"), has returned home to begin a career. Like others in his generation, he is restle ss and has decided to move East to New York and learn the bond business. The novel opens early in the summer of 1922 in West Egg, Long Island, where Nick has rented a house. Next to his place is a huge mansion complete with Gothic tower and marble swimmin g pool, which belongs to a Mr. Gatsby, whom Nick has not met.

Directly across the bay from West Egg is the more fashionable community of East Egg, where Tom and Daisy Buchanan live. Daisy is Nick's cousin and Tom, a well-known football player at Yale, had been in the same senior society as Nick in New Haven. Like Nick, they are Midwesterners who have come East to be a part of the glamour and mystery of the New York City area. They invite Nick to dinner at their mansion, and here he meets a young woman golf er named Jordan Baker, a friend of Daisy's from Louisville, whom Daisy wants Nick to become interested in.

During dinner the phone rings, and when Tom and Daisy leave the room, Jordan informs Nick that the caller is a "woman of Tom's from New York."

The woman's name is Myrtle Wilson, and she lives in a strange, fantastic place half way between West Egg and New York City that Fitzgerald calls the "valley of ashes." The valley of ashes consists of huge ash heaps and a faded yellow brick building containing an all-night restaurant and George Wilson's garage. Painted on a large billboard nearby is a fading advertisement for an optician: the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, gazing out over this wasteland through a pair of enormous yellow spectacles.

One day Tom takes Nick to meet the Wilsons. Myrtle joins them on the next train to Manhattan, and the threesome ends up, along with a dog Myrtle buys at Pennsylvania Station, at the apartment Tom has rented for his meetings with Myrtle. Myrtle's sister Catherine and an u nattractive couple from downstairs named McKee join them, and the six proceed to get quite drunk. The party breaks up violently when Myrtle starts using Daisy's name in a familiar fashion and Tom, in response, breaks her nose with a blow of his open hand.

Some weeks later Nick finally gets the opportunity to meet his mysterious neighbor Mr. Gatsby. Gatsby gives huge parties, complete with catered food, open bars, and orchestras. People come from everywhere to attend these parties, but no one seems to know much about the host. Legends about Jay Gatsby abound. Some say he was a German spy during the war, others, that he once killed a man. Nick becomes fascinated by Gatsby. He begins watching his host and notices that Gatsby does not drink or join in the reve lry of his own parties.

***One day Gatsby and Nick drive to New York together. Gatsby tells Nick that he's from a wealthy family in the Midwest, that he was educated at Oxford, and that he won war medals from many European countries. Nick isn't sure what to b elieve. At lunch Gatsby introduces Nick to his business associate, Meyer Wolfsheim, "the man who fixed the World Series in 1919."

At tea that afternoon Nick finds out from Jordan Baker why Gatsby has taken such an interest in him: Gatsby is in love with D aisy Buchanan and wants Nick to arrange a meeting between them. It seems that Gatsby, as a young officer at Camp Taylor in 1917, had fallen in love with Daisy, then Daisy Fay. He had been sent overseas, and she had eventually given him up, married Tom Buc h anan, and had a daughter. When Gatsby finally returned from Europe he decided to win Daisy back. His first step was to buy a house in West Egg. From here he could look across the bay to the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He expected her to turn u p at one of his parties, and when she didn't, he asked Jordan to ask Nick to ask Daisy. And so Nick does.

A few days later, in the rain, Gatsby and Daisy meet for the first time in five years. Gatsby is at first terrified, then tremendously excited. He tak es Nick and Daisy on a tour of his house and grounds and shows them all his possessions, even his beautiful shirts from England. He shows Daisy the green light that he has been watching, and he insists that Klipspringer, "the boarder," play the piano for them. Klipspringer plays "Ain't We Got Fun," and Nick leaves.

Now, halfway through the book, Nick gives us some information about who Gatsby really is. He was originally James Gatz, the son of farm people from North Dakota. He had gone to St. Olaf College in Minnesota, dropped out because the college failed to promote his romantic dreams about himself, and ended up on the south shore of Lake Superior earning room and board by digging clams and fishing for salmon. One day he saw the beautiful yacht of the m i llionaire Dan Cody and borrowed a rowboat to warn Cody of an impending storm. Cody took the seventeen-year-old boy on as steward, mate, and secretary. When Cody died, he left the boy, now Jay Gatsby, a legacy of $25,000, which the boy never got because of the jealousy of Cody's mistress.

The story of Gatsby's past breaks off, and Nick resumes his narration of Gatsby's renewed courtship of Daisy during the summer of 1929. Daisy and Tom come to one of Gatsby's parties, but Tom is put off by the vulgarity of Gatsby's world, and Daisy does not have a good time. Though Gatsby has been seeing Daisy, he's increasingly frustrated by his inability to recreate the magic of their time together in Louisville five years before.

The affair between Daisy and Gatsby now comes out into the open. Tom, Daisy, Gatsby, Nick, and Jordan--the five major characters--all meet for lunch at the Buchanans and then decide to drive to New York. Daisy and Gatsby end up going together in the Buchanans' blue coupe, Tom, Nick, and Jordan d rive in Gatsby's yellow Rolls Royce. The couple stop for gas at Wilson's garage, and Myrtle Wilson, watching from her window over the garage, thinks the car belongs to Tom.

The five arrive in the city and engage the parlor of a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom, drunk and agitated by now, starts ragging Gatsby about his past and attacking him for his phony English habit of calling people "old sport." Gatsby retaliates by telling Tom that Daisy is going to leave him. Tom calls Gatsby a cheap bootlegger. Like co w boys in the Old West, they duel back and forth for Daisy until Tom wins. Daisy will not go away with Gatsby, and the five-year dream is over. Tom sends Daisy and Gatsby home together in the yellow Rolls Royce, knowing that he has nothing more to fear. A c o uple of hours later Tom follows with Nick and Jordan. When they reach the valley of ashes, they see crowds of people in police cars. Someone was struck by a car coming from New York. That someone, they discover, was Myrtle Wilson, and the car had to be Ga t sby's yellow Rolls Royce. When Nick gets back to East Egg, he finds Gatsby hiding in the shrubbery outside the Buchanans' house, unwilling to leave for fear that Tom might hurt Daisy. Gatsby tells Nick that Daisy was driving, but that--of course--he will take the blame. Nick leaves Gatsby "watching over nothing."

Nick goes to work the next morning, but is too worried about Gatsby to stay in New York. He takes an early train back to West Egg but arrives at Gatsby's too late. His friend's body is floating on an inflated mattress in the swimming pool, and George Wilson's dead body, revolver in hand, lies nearby on the grass. The crazed husband had spent the entire morning tracking down the driver of the yellow Rolls Royce. He found Gatsby before Nick did.

Nick tries to phone Daisy and Tom, but is told they've left town with no forwarding address. Calls to Meyer Wolfsheim produce similar results. Nick, it seems, is Gatsby's only friend.

News of Gatsby's murder is printed in a Chicago newspaper, where it is rea d by his father, Mr. Henry C. Gatz, now of Minnesota. Mr. Gatz arrives for the funeral, which is attended only by Nick, Owl Eyes (who loved Gatsby's books), and a smattering of servants. Meyer Wolfsheim, of course, has refused to get involved. Even Mr. Kl ipspringer, "the boarder," has sent his excuses.

Mr. Gatz, who loves his son very much, shows Nick a book which Jimmy owned as a boy. In the flyleaf Gatsby had written a schedule for self improvement: exercise, study, sport, and work. How far Gatsby had come from that dream, to this meaningless death!

Disgusted and disillusioned by what he has experienced, Nick decides to leave New York and return to the Midwest. He ends his relationship with Jordan Baker and learns from Tom Buchanan that it was he, Tom, w ho told Wilson where Gatsby lived. Before Nick leaves the East, he stands one more time on the beach near Gatsby's house looking out at the green light that his friend had worshipped. Here he pays his final tribute to Gatsby and to the dream for which he lived--and died.

<html><A HREF= THE GREAT GATSBY: THE PLOT

Nick Carraway, the narrator, is a young Midwesterner who, having graduated from Yale in 1915 and fought in World War I ("The Great War"), has returned home to begin a career. Like others in his generation, he is restle ss and has decided to move East to New York and learn the bond business. The novel opens early in the summer of 1922 in West Egg, Long Island, where Nick has rented a house. Next to his place is a huge mansion complete with Gothic tower and marble swimmin g pool, which belongs to a Mr. Gatsby, whom Nick has not met.

Directly across the bay from West Egg is the more fashionable community of East Egg, where Tom and Daisy Buchanan live. Daisy is Nick's cousin and Tom, a well-known football player at Yale, had been in the same senior society as Nick in New Haven. Like Nick, they are Midwesterners who have come East to be a part of the glamour and mystery of the New York City area. They invite Nick to dinner at their mansion, and here he meets a young woman golf er named Jordan Baker, a friend of Daisy's from Louisville, whom Daisy wants Nick to become interested in.

During dinner the phone rings, and when Tom and Daisy leave the room, Jordan informs Nick that the caller is a "woman of Tom's from New York."

The w oman's name is Myrtle Wilson, and she lives in a strange, fantastic place half way between West Egg and New York City that Fitzgerald calls the "valley of ashes." The valley of ashes consists of huge ash heaps and a faded yellow brick building containing an all-night restaurant and George Wilson's garage. Painted on a large billboard nearby is a fading advertisement for an optician: the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, gazing out over this wasteland through a pair of enormous yellow spectacles.

One day Tom tak es Nick to meet the Wilsons. Myrtle joins them on the next train to Manhattan, and the threesome ends up, along with a dog Myrtle buys at Pennsylvania Station, at the apartment Tom has rented for his meetings with Myrtle. Myrtle's sister Catherine and an u nattractive couple from downstairs named McKee join them, and the six proceed to get quite drunk. The party breaks up violently when Myrtle starts using Daisy's name in a familiar fashion and Tom, in response, breaks her nose with a blow of his open hand.

Some weeks later Nick finally gets the opportunity to meet his mysterious neighbor Mr. Gatsby. Gatsby gives huge parties, complete with catered food, open bars, and orchestras. People come from everywhere to attend these parties, but no one seems to know much about the host. Legends about Jay Gatsby abound. Some say he was a German spy during the war, others, that he once killed a man. Nick becomes fascinated by Gatsby. He begins watching his host and notices that Gatsby does not drink or join in the reve lry of his own parties.

One day Gatsby and Nick drive to New York together. Gatsby tells Nick that he's from a wealthy family in the Midwest, that he was educated at Oxford, and that he won war medals from many European countries. Nick isn't sure what to b elieve. At lunch Gatsby introduces Nick to his business associate, Meyer Wolfsheim, "the man who fixed the World Series in 1919."

At tea that afternoon Nick finds out from Jordan Baker why Gatsby has taken such an interest in him: Gatsby is in love with D aisy Buchanan and wants Nick to arrange a meeting between them. It seems that Gatsby, as a young officer at Camp Taylor in 1917, had fallen in love with Daisy, then Daisy Fay. He had been sent overseas, and she had eventually given him up, married Tom Buc h anan, and had a daughter. When Gatsby finally returned from Europe he decided to win Daisy back. His first step was to buy a house in West Egg. From here he could look across the bay to the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He expected her to turn u p at one of his parties, and when she didn't, he asked Jordan to ask Nick to ask Daisy. And so Nick does.

A few days later, in the rain, Gatsby and Daisy meet for the first time in five years. Gatsby is at first terrified, then tremendously excited. He tak es Nick and Daisy on a tour of his house and grounds and shows them all his possessions, even his beautiful shirts from England. He shows Daisy the green light that he has been watching, and he insists that Klipspringer, "the boarder," play the piano for them. Klipspringer plays "Ain't We Got Fun," and Nick leaves.

Now, halfway through the book, Nick gives us some information about who Gatsby really is. He was originally James Gatz, the son of farm people from North Dakota. He had gone to St. Olaf College in Minnesota, dropped out because the college failed to promote his romantic dreams about himself, and ended up on the south shore of Lake Superior earning room and board by digging clams and fishing for salmon. One day he saw the beautiful yacht of the m i llionaire Dan Cody and borrowed a rowboat to warn Cody of an impending storm. Cody took the seventeen-year-old boy on as steward, mate, and secretary. When Cody died, he left the boy, now Jay Gatsby, a legacy of $25,000, which the boy never got because of the jealousy of Cody's mistress.

The story of Gatsby's past breaks off, and Nick resumes his narration of Gatsby's renewed courtship of Daisy during the summer of 1929. Daisy and Tom come to one of Gatsby's parties, but Tom is put off by the vulgarity of Gatsby's world, and Daisy does not have a good time. Though Gatsby has been seeing Daisy, he's increasingly frustrated by his inability to recreate the magic of their time together in Louisville five years before.

The affair between Daisy and Gatsby now c omes out into the open. Tom, Daisy, Gatsby, Nick, and Jordan--the five major characters--all meet for lunch at the Buchanans and then decide to drive to New York. Daisy and Gatsby end up going together in the Buchanans' blue coupe, Tom, Nick, and Jordan d rive in Gatsby's yellow Rolls Royce. The couple stop for gas at Wilson's garage, and Myrtle Wilson, watching from her window over the garage, thinks the car belongs to Tom.

The five arrive in the city and engage the parlor of a suite at the Plaza Hotel. To m, drunk and agitated by now, starts ragging Gatsby about his past and attacking him for his phony English habit of calling people "old sport." Gatsby retaliates by telling Tom that Daisy is going to leave him. Tom calls Gatsby a cheap bootlegger. Like co w boys in the Old West, they duel back and forth for Daisy until Tom wins. Daisy will not go away with Gatsby, and the five-year dream is over. Tom sends Daisy and Gatsby home together in the yellow Rolls Royce, knowing that he has nothing more to fear. A c o uple of hours later Tom follows with Nick and Jordan. When they reach the valley of ashes, they see crowds of people in police cars. Someone was struck by a car coming from New York. That someone, they discover, was Myrtle Wilson, and the car had to be Ga t sby's yellow Rolls Royce. When Nick gets back to East Egg, he finds Gatsby hiding in the shrubbery outside the Buchanans' house, unwilling to leave for fear that Tom might hurt Daisy. Gatsby tells Nick that Daisy was driving, but that--of course--he will take the blame. Nick leaves Gatsby "watching over nothing."

Nick goes to work the next morning, but is too worried about Gatsby to stay in New York. He takes an early train back to West Egg but arrives at Gatsby's too late. His friend's body is floating on an inflated mattress in the swimming pool, and George Wilson's dead body, revolver in hand, lies nearby on the grass. The crazed husband had spent the entire morning tracking down the driver of the yellow Rolls Royce. He found Gatsby before Nick did.

Nick tries to phone Daisy and Tom, but is told they've left town with no forwarding address. Calls to Meyer Wolfsheim produce similar results. Nick, it seems, is Gatsby's only friend.

News of Gatsby's murder is printed in a Chicago newspaper, where it is rea d by his father, Mr. Henry C. Gatz, now of Minnesota. Mr. Gatz arrives for the funeral, which is attended only by Nick, Owl Eyes (who loved Gatsby's books), and a smattering of servants. Meyer Wolfsheim, of course, has refused to get involved. Even Mr. Kl ipspringer, "the boarder," has sent his excuses.

Mr. Gatz, who loves his son very much, shows Nick a book which Jimmy owned as a boy. In the flyleaf Gatsby had written a schedule for self improvement: exercise, study, sport, and work. How far Gatsby had come from that dream, to this meaningless death!

Disgusted and disillusioned by what he has experienced, Nick decides to leave New York and return to the Midwest. He ends his relationship with Jordan Baker and learns from Tom Buchanan that it was he, Tom, w ho told Wilson where Gatsby lived. Before Nick leaves the East, he stands one more time on the beach near Gatsby's house looking out at the green light that his friend had worshipped. Here he pays his final tribute to Gatsby and to the dream for which he lived--and died.

THE GREAT GATSBY: THE PLOT

Nick Carraway, the narrator, is a young Midwesterner who, having graduated from Yale in 1915 and fought in World War I ("The Great War"), has returned home to begin a career. Like others in his generation, he is restle ss and has decided to move East to New York and learn the bond business. The novel opens early in the summer of 1922 in West Egg, Long Island, where Nick has rented a house. Next to his place is a huge mansion complete with Gothic tower and marble swimmin g pool, which belongs to a Mr. Gatsby, whom Nick has not met.

Directly across the bay from West Egg is the more fashionable community of East Egg, where Tom and Daisy Buchanan live. Daisy is Nick's cousin and Tom, a well-known football player at Yale, had been in the same senior society as Nick in New Haven. Like Nick, they are Midwesterners who have come East to be a part of the glamour and mystery of the New York City area. They invite Nick to dinner at their mansion, and here he meets a young woman golf er named Jordan Baker, a friend of Daisy's from Louisville, whom Daisy wants Nick to become interested in.

During dinner the phone rings, and when Tom and Daisy leave the room, Jordan informs Nick that the caller is a "woman of Tom's from New York."

The w oman's name is Myrtle Wilson, and she lives in a strange, fantastic place half way between West Egg and New York City that Fitzgerald calls the "valley of ashes." The valley of ashes consists of huge ash heaps and a faded yellow brick building containing an all-night restaurant and George Wilson's garage. Painted on a large billboard nearby is a fading advertisement for an optician: the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, gazing out over this wasteland through a pair of enormous yellow spectacles.

One day Tom tak es Nick to meet the Wilsons. Myrtle joins them on the next train to Manhattan, and the threesome ends up, along with a dog Myrtle buys at Pennsylvania Station, at the apartment Tom has rented for his meetings with Myrtle. Myrtle's sister Catherine and an u nattractive couple from downstairs named McKee join them, and the six proceed to get quite drunk. The party breaks up violently when Myrtle starts using Daisy's name in a familiar fashion and Tom, in response, breaks her nose with a blow of his open hand.

Some weeks later Nick finally gets the opportunity to meet his mysterious neighbor Mr. Gatsby. Gatsby gives huge parties, complete with catered food, open bars, and orchestras. People come from everywhere to attend these parties, but no one seems to know much about the host. Legends about Jay Gatsby abound. Some say he was a German spy during the war, others, that he once killed a man. Nick becomes fascinated by Gatsby. He begins watching his host and notices that Gatsby does not drink or join in the reve lry of his own parties.

One day Gatsby and Nick drive to New York together. Gatsby tells Nick that he's from a wealthy family in the Midwest, that he was educated at Oxford, and that he won war medals from many European countries. Nick isn't sure what to b elieve. At lunch Gatsby introduces Nick to his business associate, Meyer Wolfsheim, "the man who fixed the World Series in 1919."

At tea that afternoon Nick finds out from Jordan Baker why Gatsby has taken such an interest in him: Gatsby is in love with D aisy Buchanan and wants Nick to arrange a meeting between them. It seems that Gatsby, as a young officer at Camp Taylor in 1917, had fallen in love with Daisy, then Daisy Fay. He had been sent overseas, and she had eventually given him up, married Tom Buc h anan, and had a daughter. When Gatsby finally returned from Europe he decided to win Daisy back. His first step was to buy a house in West Egg. From here he could look across the bay to the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He expected her to turn u p at one of his parties, and when she didn't, he asked Jordan to ask Nick to ask Daisy. And so Nick does.

A few days later, in the rain, Gatsby and Daisy meet for the first time in five years. Gatsby is at first terrified, then tremendously excited. He tak es Nick and Daisy on a tour of his house and grounds and shows them all his possessions, even his beautiful shirts from England. He shows Daisy the green light that he has been watching, and he insists that Klipspringer, "the boarder," play the piano for them. Klipspringer plays "Ain't We Got Fun," and Nick leaves.

Now, halfway through the book, Nick gives us some information about who Gatsby really is. He was originally James Gatz, the son of farm people from North Dakota. He had gone to St. Olaf College in Minnesota, dropped out because the college failed to promote his romantic dreams about himself, and ended up on the south shore of Lake Superior earning room and board by digging clams and fishing for salmon. One day he saw the beautiful yacht of the m i llionaire Dan Cody and borrowed a rowboat to warn Cody of an impending storm. Cody took the seventeen-year-old boy on as steward, mate, and secretary. When Cody died, he left the boy, now Jay Gatsby, a legacy of $25,000, which the boy never got because of the jealousy of Cody's mistress.

The story of Gatsby's past breaks off, and Nick resumes his narration of Gatsby's renewed courtship of Daisy during the summer of 1929. Daisy and Tom come to one of Gatsby's parties, but Tom is put off by the vulgarity of Gatsby's world, and Daisy does not have a good time. Though Gatsby has been seeing Daisy, he's increasingly frustrated by his inability to recreate the magic of their time together in Louisville five years before.

The affair between Daisy and Gatsby now c omes out into the open. Tom, Daisy, Gatsby, Nick, and Jordan--the five major characters--all meet for lunch at the Buchanans and then decide to drive to New York. Daisy and Gatsby end up going together in the Buchanans' blue coupe, Tom, Nick, and Jordan d rive in Gatsby's yellow Rolls Royce. The couple stop for gas at Wilson's garage, and Myrtle Wilson, watching from her window over the garage, thinks the car belongs to Tom.

The five arrive in the city and engage the parlor of a suite at the Plaza Hotel. To m, drunk and agitated by now, starts ragging Gatsby about his past and attacking him for his phony English habit of calling people "old sport." Gatsby retaliates by telling Tom that Daisy is going to leave him. Tom calls Gatsby a cheap bootlegger. Like co w boys in the Old West, they duel back and forth for Daisy until Tom wins. Daisy will not go away with Gatsby, and the five-year dream is over. Tom sends Daisy and Gatsby home together in the yellow Rolls Royce, knowing that he has nothing more to fear. A c o uple of hours later Tom follows with Nick and Jordan. When they reach the valley of ashes, they see crowds of people in police cars. Someone was struck by a car coming from New York. That someone, they discover, was Myrtle Wilson, and the car had to be Ga t sby's yellow Rolls Royce. When Nick gets back to East Egg, he finds Gatsby hiding in the shrubbery outside the Buchanans' house, unwilling to leave for fear that Tom might hurt Daisy. Gatsby tells Nick that Daisy was driving, but that--of course--he will take the blame. Nick leaves Gatsby "watching over nothing."

Nick goes to work the next morning, but is too worried about Gatsby to stay in New York. He takes an early train back to West Egg but arrives at Gatsby's too late. His friend's body is floating on an inflated mattress in the swimming pool, and George Wilson's dead body, revolver in hand, lies nearby on the grass. The crazed husband had spent the entire morning tracking down the driver of the yellow Rolls Royce. He found Gatsby before Nick did.

Nick tries to phone Daisy and Tom, but is told they've left town with no forwarding address. Calls to Meyer Wolfsheim produce similar results. Nick, it seems, is Gatsby's only friend.

News of Gatsby's murder is printed in a Chicago newspaper, where it is rea d by his father, Mr. Henry C. Gatz, now of Minnesota. Mr. Gatz arrives for the funeral, which is attended only by Nick, Owl Eyes (who loved Gatsby's books), and a smattering of servants. Meyer Wolfsheim, of course, has refused to get involved. Even Mr. Kl ipspringer, "the boarder," has sent his excuses.

Mr. Gatz, who loves his son very much, shows Nick a book which Jimmy owned as a boy. In the flyleaf Gatsby had written a schedule for self improvement: exercise, study, sport, and work. How far Gatsby had come from that dream, to this meaningless death!

Disgusted and disillusioned by what he has experienced, Nick decides to leave New York and return to the Midwest. He ends his relationship with Jordan Baker and learns from Tom Buchanan that it was he, Tom, w ho told Wilson where Gatsby lived. Before Nick leaves the East, he stands one more time on the beach near Gatsby's house looking out at the green light that his friend had worshipped. Here he pays his final tribute to Gatsby and to the dream for which he lived--and died.

<html><A HREF= http://www.studyworld.com/studyworld_studynotes/great_gatsby/index.htm>Study World</A><html>

***Rita***

I finished Gatsby yesterday, but I really haven't entered anything because I've been really lazy - really, really lazy. Coincidentally, I saw Last Call this afternoon, and I found a some websites with information about the book. Most of the information that I plan on posting is from gradesaver.com's Classic Notes section. I initially didn't want to use it because it seemed too clinical but... Anyway, I'ved decided on a process for entering book information.

About F. Scott Fitzgerald from Classic Notes

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, the only son of an aristocratic father and a provincial, working-class mother. He was therefore the product of two divergent traditions: while his father's family included the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner" (after whom Fitzgerald was named), his mother's family was, in Fitzgerald's own words, "straight 1850 potato-famine Irish." As a result of this contrast, he was exceedingly ambivalent about the notion of the American dream: for him, it was at once vulgar and dazzlingly promising. It need scarcely be noted that such fascinated ambivalence is itself typically American.
Like the central character of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald had an intensely romantic imagination; he once called it "a heightened sensitivity to the promises of life." The events of Fitzgerald's own life can be seen as a struggle to realize those promises.

He attended both St. Paul Academy (1908-10) and Newman School (1911-13), where his intensity and outsize enthusiasms made him extremely unpopular with the other students. Later, at Princeton University, he came close to the brilliant success of which he dreamed. He became part of the influential Triangle Club, a dramatic organization whose members were taken from the cream of high society. He also became a prominent figure in the literary life of the university and made lifelong friendships with Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop. Despite these social coups, Fitzgerald struggled academically, and eventually flunked out of Princeton.

Though he was able to return to university the following fall, Fitzgerald could not overcome the crushing humiliation he felt at the loss of all of his hard-won positions. In November 1917, he left Princeton in order to join the army.
While stationed near Montgomery, Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge, and the two fell deeply in love. Fitzgerald needed to improve his dismal financial circumstances, however, before he and Zelda could marry. At the first opportunity, he left for New York, determined to make his fortune in the great city. Instead, he was forced to take a menial advertising job at $90 a month. Zelda broke their engagement, and Fitzgerald retreated to St. Paul, Minnesota. There, he rewrote a novel he had begun at Princeton; in the spring of 1920, the novel, entitled This Side of Paradise, was published.

Though today's readers will find its ideas dated and naive, This Side of Paradise came as a revelation to Fitzgerald's contemporaries. It was regarded as a privileged glimpse into the new morality or the new immorality of America's young, and it made its author famous. Suddenly, Fitzgerald could publish in both prestigious literary magazines, such as Scribner's, and high-paying popular ones like The Saturday Evening Post.

Fitzgerald, flush with his new wealth and fame, finally married Zelda; the celebrated columnist Ring Lardner was to christen them "the prince and princess of their generation." Though the Fitzgeralds revelled in their notoriety, they also found it frightening, as the ending of Fitzgerald's second novel shows. This novel, entitled The Beautiful and Damned, was published two years later, and tells the story of a handsome young man and his beautiful wife, who gradually deteriorate into careworn middle age while they wait for the young man to inherit a large fortune. In a predictable ironic twist, the couple only receives their inheritance when there is nothing of them left worth preserving.

To escape this grim fate, the Fitzgeralds (together with their daughter, Frances, who was born in 1921) moved in 1924 to the Riviera, where they became part of a group of wealthy American expatriates whose style was largely determined by Gerald and Sara Murphy. Fitzgerald described this society in his last completed novel, Tender Is the Night, and modeled its hero on Gerald Murphy.

Shortly after their relocation to France, Fitzgerald completed his most famous and respected novel, The Great Gatsby (1925). Fitzgerald's own divided nature can be seen in the contrast between the novel's hero, Jay Gatsby, and its narrator, Nick Carraway. The former represents the naive Midwesterner dazzled by the possibilities of the American dream; the latter represents the compassionate Princeton gentleman who cannot help but regard that dream with suspicion. The Great Gatsby may be described as the most profoundly American novel of its time; Fitzgerald connects Gatsby's dream, his "Platonic conception of himself," with the aspirations of the founders of America.

A year later, Fitzgerald published a collection of short stories entitled All the Sad Young Men. This book marks the end of the most productive period of Fitzgerald's life; the next decade was full of chaos and misery. Fitzgerald himself began to drink excessively, and Zelda began a slow descent into madness. In 1930 she suffered her first mental breakdown; her second breakdown, from which she never fully recovered, came in 1932.

Throughout the 1930s the Fitzgeralds fought an ultimately unsuccessful battle to save their marriage. This struggle was tremendously debilitating for Fitzgerald; he later said that he "left [his] capacity for hoping on the little roads that led to Zelda's sanitarium." He did not finish his next novel, Tender Is the Night, until 1934. It is the story of a psychiatrist who marries one of his patients, who, as she slowly recovers, exhausts his vitality until he is "a man used up." This book, the last one that Fitzgerald ever completed, was considered technically faulty and was commercially unsuccessful; it has since gained a reputation, however, as Fitzgerald's most moving book.

Crushed by the failure of Tender is the Night and his despair over Zelda, Fitzgerald became an incurable alcoholic. In 1937, however, he managed to acquire work as a scriptwriter in Hollywood. There, he met and fell in love with Sheilah Graham, a famous Hollywood gossip columnist. For the rest of his life, though he frequently had drunken spells in which he became bitter and violent, Fitzgerald lived quietly with her. Occasionally he went east to visit Zelda or his daughter Frances, who entered Vassar College in 1938.

In October 1939 Fitzgerald began a novel about Hollywood entitled The Last Tycoon. The career of its hero, Monroe Stahr, is based on that of the renowned Hollywood producer Irving Thalberg. On December 21, 1940, Fitzgerald suffered a fatal heart attack while his novel was still unfinished. Even in its half-completed state, The Last Tycoon is considered the equal of the rest of Fitzgerald's work "in the intensity with which it is imagined and in the brilliance of its expression."

Classic Notes

***Rita***

I've recently read "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway. I thought it was terribly sad and enormously lovely. But I wouldn't trust anything I said about Ernest Hemingway, being an aspiring aficionado and blatantly bias. I've also recently read "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding, "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck, "A Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, and "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck, but I plan to re-read all of them and enter my thoughts to have a lasting account of the content and impact of the literature. I'm currently reading "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald for the first time, and I must admit that although I was not a big fan of Fitzgerald, I am rather enjoying it. I guess I'd like to start this lj by saying that I personally hate reading. I find it dull and painfully tedious, being a true American of my generation, who hates to sit still without being able to veg. But most of all I feel that reading is absolutely necessary. Reading fosters thinking, thinking is the most import skill any person can have, and it is the most neglected skill.

***Rita*

Advertisement