Great Gatsby Chapter 2 notes

CHAPTER TWO

THE GREAT GATSBY

What kind of imagery can be associated with the description at the beginning of CH. 2?

‘ashes’/’desolate’/’grotesque’/’smoke’/’ash-grey men’/’crumbling’/’powdery air’
In contrast to the plush settings of CH 1 this is very depressing. They are starkly contrasted. Fitzgerald does this on purpose. We notice associations with death which will permeate the novel. They foreshadow the 3 deaths which will occur in the novel – but also the death of Gatsby’s dream and in a wider sense the death of the American Dream.

SIGNIFICANCE OF EYES

The eyes of T J Eckleberg watch ominously over the activities of the characters in the novel and over society at large. ‘yellow spectacles’ and ‘fatten his practice’ allude to the corruption of a society obsessed by advertising and consumerism. The oculist who set up the billboard should have been correcting vision instead of seeking commercial advantage through advertising to ‘fatten his practice’ and most probably his bank account. This alludes to selfish materialism, greed and questionable morals of 1920s American society.
Later George Wilson refers to the eyes as the eyes of God – ‘God sees everything!’ – In a society devoid of religious virtues this could allude to God’s dismay at the vulgar conduct of the characters in the novel. The God of advertising has taken over their empty, amoral lives. Also the fact that the oculist himself sank into ‘moral blindness’ is a vivid, memorable image representing the blindness of society living in a moral vacuum. Blindness operates as a motif throughout the novel, denoting the inability or failure to perceive life on moral terms.

MR WILSON

‘Blond’, ‘spiritless’, ‘anaemic’, ‘faintly handsome’ He is morose in appearance as well as personality – boring/dull/more like the ash-grey men described at the beginning
Seems to blend into this dismal setting – he is very much associated with the Valley of Ashes. His wife walks through him ‘as if he were a ghost’ – again we notice the association with death. He is dead inside – foreshadows his own death.
‘white ashen dust veiled his dark suit’ – just like dust covers everything here – seems trapped in his environment. Tom says later, ...

MR WILSON

‘Blond’, ‘spiritless’, ‘anaemic’, ‘faintly handsome’ He is morose in appearance as well as personality – boring/dull/more like the ash-grey men described at the beginning
Seems to blend into this dismal setting – he is very much associated with the Valley of Ashes. His wife walks through him ‘as if he were a ghost’ – again we notice the association with death. He is dead inside – foreshadows his own death.
‘white ashen dust veiled his dark suit’ – just like dust covers everything here – seems trapped in his environment. Tom says later, ‘He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.’ again reiterating the death imagery closely associated with the V of A.

MYRTLE

In contrast, Myrtle is in her ‘middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her flesh sensuously…’ She is attractive, passionate, exudes sensuality. She wants desperately to join the elite society to which Tom and Daisy belong but she can only do this through gaudy, garish material pursuits and a sordid extra-marital affair. We notice the furniture is too large for the apartment – vulgar taste. She lacks etiquette and refinement of the upper classes.

MYRTLE’S PARTY

Mrs McKee was ‘shrill, languid, handsome and horrible’ – her husband has photographed her 127 times since being married. Again Fitzgerald highlights their obsession with appearance and aesthetics, but there is no concern for what lies beneath it. Note Myrtle’s description of her sister before Nick meets her. Myrtle herself ‘changed her costume’ yet again, almost as if she has adopted a new personality with the change. - ‘elaborate afternoon dress’ yet she claims ‘I just slip it on sometimes when I don’t care what I look like.’
In the same description Nick tells us: ‘The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment, and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.’ This is a brilliant, evocative image of Myrtle – she is pretentious, vulgar, loud, flamboyant, extravagant – she feels superior in some way – she is a snob.