Arts | High school » F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby Adapted for the Stage by Lemon Levy

STUDY GUIDE F. Scott Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY Adapted for the stage by Simon Levy Directed by Gavin Mayer The Arvada Center Black Box Theater April 29 – May 25, 2014 Portions of this study guide were originally produced for the Guthrie Theaters world premiere of The Great Gatsby in 2006. Amy Wegener, dramaturg/editor. Reprinted by permission of the Guthrie Theater. wwwguthrietheaterorg THE PLAYWRIGHT Simon Levy (Playwright) is an award-winning theater director and playwright, who has been the Producing Director/Dramaturg with the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles since 1993. He has taught Playwriting at University of California, Los Angeles Writers Extension, served as a site evaluator for the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council and is a member of numerous organizations, including the Dramatists Guild, Society for Directors and Choreographers, and Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. His stage adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s

novel, The Great Gatsby premiered at the Guthrie Theater in 2006. Simon Levy has been the Producing Director/Dramaturg with the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles since 1993 (www.fountaintheatrecom) Prior to moving to Los Angeles, he was directing/writing in San Francisco. He adapted and directed What I Heard About Iraq, based on the controversial essay by Eliot Weinberger, which has been produced world wide, including the Edinburgh Theatre Festival in August 2006, and was made into a film. Other writings include his one-act, Pink Skin, which was produced at thesideproject in Chicago in June 2005, and at the Bloomington Playwrights Project in Indiana in 2004. His play, She-Who-Is-Made-Of-Clay, among its many awards, is in preproduction as a short film His critically-acclaimed production of Terrence McNallys Master Class won the 2004 L.A OVATION Award for Best Production He also directed an acclaimed production of Awake and Sing for International City Theatre in Long Beach, which was

nominated by the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle for Revival of the Year. Hes produced many shows at the Fountain, including the world premiere of Athol Fugards Exits and Entrances 2007. Simon teaches Playwriting at UCLA Extension, and is proud to be a site evaluator for both the National Endowment for the Arts and California Arts Council and a member of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society. For more information, visit wwwsimonlevycom “Theres a cry in his writing that I identified with. [Fitzgerald] writes about the broken parts in men in a way that Ive never encountered in any other writer.” Simon Levy, quoted by Terry Morgan, "A Long-Term Love Affair," Backstage.com, February 10, 2005 When adapting a novel for the stage, playwrights must make heartbreaking decisions. Among those decisions: Which characters/scenes/chunks of narrative are dispensable? And how do I translate prose into drama? "The seduction of [F. Scott] Fitzgerald is the beauty of his prose," says

playwright Simon Levy, who directed his own multiaward-winning adaptations of Tender Is the Night and The Last Tycoon at Los Angeles Fountain Theatre, where he is producing director. He recently finished an adaptation of The Great Gatsby. "But the language of theatre is not about prose," continues Levy. "The language of theatre is dramatic. You have to find a way in dialogue to get to the conflict So the question is: How do you translate from the novelistic form, with its own rules and allowances, to the stage, which also has its own rules and allowances? And the stage is not as forgiving. You cant wax poetic with descriptions; you have to stay with the through-line." Several things remained constant for him through each endeavor: reading and rereading the source novel, highlighting sections that seemed potentially dramatic, looking for symbolism color, sound, images and ways to incorporate the symbols through dialogue or production elements; reading hundreds

of critical essays about Fitzgerald; using the tools of theatre scenic design, lights, sound to substitute for narrative; and finding the visceral life of the characters. "I approach the characters as complex, fully fleshed," he explains. "I look for their needs, their wants, what drives them. Fitzgerald may be writing beautifully [about them], but theyre messy people." He notes that Gatsbys Daisy has been portrayed in film as wispy, shallow. "But Fitzgerald is really writing about Zelda and the other women in his life" substantial flesh-and-blood humans, asserts Levy. Jean Shiffman, "Feature," Backstage.com, December 8, 2005 A magical, exciting theatre experience. Golden is the glamour, bittersweet is the romance, and potent is the magic of F. Scott Fitzgeralds classic Jazz Age novel brought lyrically and luminously and yes, tenderly to the stage in this sensitive dramatization by Simon Levy. Drama-Logue (Critics Choice), on Levys 1995

premiere of his adaptation of Tender is the Night at the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles. Simon Levy has successfully adapted Fitzgeralds compelling story about the fall of Hollywood producer Monroe Stahr for the stage. While he has made substantial changes to Fitzgeralds work, he has kept the spirit alive in a way that makes this adaptation not only a companion piece to the novel but almost a greater story than Fitzgerald had a chance to imagine, and, in a way, a tribute to this literary legends own life. Back Stage West/Drama-Logue, review of the premiere of Levys 1998 production of his adaptation of Fitzgeralds The Last Tycoon at the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles. THE PLAY: THE GREAT GATSBY Characters & Synopsis In this stage adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgeralds Jazz Age tale of a self-made millionaires romantic quest betrayed by the illusions of the American Dream, Simon Levy constructs a dramatic structure faithful to the novels story, transforming the books sharply

observed details and images into a vivid theatrical landscape. Moving the action fluidly from Gatsbys mansion in West Egg to New York City and into the past while the eyes of Dr. T J Eckleburg watch over the Valley of Ashes Levys script paints a Roaring Twenties world that crackles with the vibrancy of Fitzgeralds voice. As in the novel, we meet Nick Carraway, who has come East from the Middle West to make his fortune in bonds. Nick soon finds himself both an observer and participant in the lives of the rich namely, those of his distant cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her wealthy, "hulking" husband Tom, with whom Nick graduated from Yale. A visit to the Buchanans home in East Egg introduces Nick to Daisys friend Jordan Baker, a golfer with whom he soon begins a summer romance. Nick also learns that Tom is having an affair, which he witnesses when he accompanies Tom through the Valley of Ashes and into New York City for an alcohol-soaked party. Nick has rented a cottage in West

Egg, next door to a mysterious mansiondweller, Jay Gatsby, who fell in love with Daisy before her marriage, when she was a Louisville debutante and he was a young soldier. Daisy and the possibility she represents is still frozen in time for Gatsby, who has amassed a fortune and keeps his house constantly filled with party guests in the all-consuming hope of winning her again. After five years apart, now living across the Sound from the object of his colossal romantic illusion, Gatsby wants Nick to facilitate a reunion. But Gatsbys hopeful vision and recent wealth arent enough to transcend insurmountable class barriers and the forward march of time. After Gatsby forces Daisys choice between dream and reality one blisteringly hot summer day at the Plaza Hotel, a violent turn of events sends Tom and Daisy retreating into their old money and "vast carelessness." Nick, the storys central conscience, explains the profound impact of Gatsbys ensuing tragedy: Nick is haunted by

"what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams." F. Scott Fitzgerald on the Great Gatsby I feel old too, this summer I have since the failure of my play [The Vegetable] a year ago. That’s the whole burden of this novel the loss of those illusions that give such color to the world so that you dont care whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the magical glory. Fitzgerald, letter to Ludlow Fowler (a classmate from the Newman School and Princeton), August 1924. From F Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters Ed Matthew J. Bruccoli New York: Scribner, 1994 I think my novel is about the best American novel ever written. It is rough stuff in places, runs only to about 50,000 words, and I hope you wont shy at it. Its been a fair summer. Ive been unhappy but my work hasnt suffered from it I am grown at last. Fitzgerald, letter to Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Scribners, c. August 27, 1924. From F Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters

Ed Matthew J Bruccoli New York: Scribner, 1994. p 80 I have written a story. It is not about the younger generation The hero is twenty nine. Fitzgerald, quoted by John Chapin Mosher, "That Sad Young Man," the New Yorker, 2 (April 17, 1926), pp. 20-21 Reprinted in Conversations with F Scott Fitzgerald. Ed Matthew J Bruccoli and Judith S Baughman Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004. Now that this book is being reissued, the author would like to say that never before did one try to keep his artistic conscience as pure as during the ten months put into doing it. Reading it over one can see how it could have been improved yet without feeling guilty of any discrepancy from the truth, as far as I saw it; truth or rather the equivalent of the truth, the attempt at honesty of imagination.But, my God! it was my material, and it was all I had to deal with. The present writer has always been a "natural" for his profession, in so much that he can think of nothing he

would have done as efficiently as to have lived deeply in the world of imagination. F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Introduction," The Great Gatsby, Modern Library Edition (New York: Random House, Inc., 1934) Reprinted in F Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby. Ed Nicolas Tredell New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, p. 39 An excerpt from the Great Gatsby, Adapted for the stage by Simon Levy NICK: Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this story, represented everything for which I had an unaffected scorn. But if personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something. gorgeous about him some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life. He had an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person. and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. MYRTLE: Well, I married him. And thats the difference between your case & mine MRS. McKEE: Why did you, Myrtle? Nobody forced you to MYRTLE: I married him

because I thought he was a gentleman. I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasnt fit to lick my shoe. MRS. McKEE (to NICK): Do you live down on Long Island too? NICK: I live at West Egg. MRS. McKEE: Really? CHESTER: Would we know your place? NICK: No, no. Its just a small summer rental MRS. McKEE: We were down there at a party about a month ago CHESTER: At a man named Gatsbys. MRS. McKEE: Do you know him? NICK: I live next door to him. CHESTER: Well, they say hes a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelms, or is it von Hindenburg? MRS. McKEE: Im scared of him Id hate to have him get anything on me. CHESTER: Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once. JORDAN: She heard the name Gatsby for the first time in years that day you first visited. Do you remember? (DAISY, TOM and GATSBY disappear.) NICK: What a strange coincidence hes here. JORDAN: But it isnt coincidence at all. Dont you see? Gatsby bought that house to be near Daisy, to be just across the bay from her.

NICK: Really? JORDAN: He wants to know if youll invite her to your house some afternoon and then let him come over. NICK: You mean hes waited five years, even bought a mansion, so he could "come over" some afternoon to a strangers cottage and have a liaison? JORDAN: All this time hes half-expected her to wander into one of his parties some night, but she never has. Thats why he gives them He wants her to see his house To see what hes created for her. And your house is right next door GATSBY: Its not how I imagined it would be. NICK: I wouldnt ask too much of her so soon. You cant repeat the past. GATSBY: Cant repeat the past?! Why of course you can! (He looks out across the bay.) GATSBY (continuing): Im going to fix everything just the way it was before. Shell see. (HAUNTING SAX. GATSBY stares off into the green light as a SPOT isolates NICK) NICK (to audience): Almost five years! There must have been moments even then when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams not through

her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. NICK: Shes got an indiscreet voice. Its full of GATSBY: money. Her voice is full of NICK: Thats money! it! Its full of 1920s Reaction to The Great Gatsby The novel was dead in the market before the end of 1925, even though The Great Gatsby achieved exposure through the 1926 dramatization by Owen Davis that ran for 112 performances on Broadway and the 1926 silent movie based on the play. This publicity did not sell the book. Copies of the August 1925 second printing were still in the warehouse when Fitzgerald died in 1940. There was one more American printing during the authors lifetime, the 1934 Modern Library volume discontinued for lack of sales. The reprint added Fitzgeralds introduction replying to the charges of

triviality brought against his work in the proletarian thirties: "But, my God! It was my material, and it was all I had to deal with." The only other republications of Gatsby during Fitzgeralds lifetime were in two pulp magazines: Famous Story Magazine serialized it in 1926, and the English Argosy ran it in one 1937 issue. Fitzgeralds death triggered a Gatsby revival which triggered the Fitzgerald revival. Unlike the Melville revival, which was the work of academics, the Fitzgerald revival was a popular response resulting from reader demand in the forties. Critical reassessment of the novel was mainly a process of the fifties. Matthew J. Bruccoli, "Introduction," New Essays on The Great Gatsby Ed Matthew J. Bruccoli London: Cambridge University Press, pp 4-5 Dear Scott: I think the novel is a wonder. Im taking it home to read again and shall then write my impressions in full but it has vitality to an extraordinary degree, and glamour, and a great deal of

underlying thought of unusual quality. It has a kind of mystic atmosphere at times that you infused into parts of "Paradise" and have not since used. It is a marvelous fusion, into a unity of presentation, of the extraordinary incongruities of life today. And as for sheer writing, its astonishing Letter to Fitzgerald from Maxwell Perkins, Fitzgeralds editor at Scribners, November 18, 1924. From F Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters Ed Matthew J. Bruccoli New York: Scribner, 1994 pp 86 I have . now read it three times it has excited me more than any new novel I have seen, either English or American, for a number of years. In fact it seems to me to be the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James. T.S Eliot, December 31, 1925 letter to Fitzgerald about The Great Gatsby In The Note-Books. The Crack-Up: With other Uncollected Pieces, Note-Books and Unpublished Letters. Ed Edmund Wilson New York: New Directions, 1956. The presentation of Tom, his place, Daisy

and Jordan, and the unfolding of their characters is unequalled so far as I know. The description of the valley of ashes adjacent to the lovely country, the conversation and the action in Myrtles apartment, the marvelous catalogue of those who came to Gatsbys house these are such things as make a man famous. And all these things, the whole pathetic episode, you have given a place in time and space, for with the help of T. J Eckleburg and by and occasional glance at the sky, or the sea, or the city, you have imparted a sort of sense of eternity. You once told me you were not a natural writer my God! You have plainly mastered the craft, of course; but you needed far more than craftsmanship for this. Letter to Fitzgerald from Maxwell Perkins, Fitzgeralds editor at Scribners, November 20, 1924. From F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters Ed Matthew J Bruccoli New York: Scribner, 1994. pp 88 Fitzgerald has painted with swift, sure strokes the pictures of his bewildering parties, where

crowds of people, many of them unknown to the host, come and go, drinking his champagne, flitting through his gorgeous rooms, velvet lawns, and bright gardens like greedy moths around a cool flame, warranted not to singe their wings. And with a noticeable difference from his attitude toward similar frolics in other books, it is as an observer rather than as a participant that Fitzgerald describes these parties. There is a new awareness of values in his attitude toward the dubious Croesus of West Egg and the careless men and women who cast aspersions on Gatsbys career with a mordant wit stimulated by Gatsbys liquor. Very deftly he suggests that Gatsby, for all his uncertain background and the haziness in which his vague business connections and presumably ill-gotten wealth envelop him, is far more real than the men and women who stoop from the security of their own well-ordered business and social worlds to play with him and to spend his money. His is a vitality which they lack the

inner fire which comes from living with an incorruptible dream, even if extraordinary material corruption has been practiced in its realization. "E.K," Untitled, Literary Digest International Book Review, 3 (May 1925) Quoted in F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby Ed Nicolas Tredell New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. It shows on every page the results of that laborious effort. Writing it, I take it, was painful. The author wrote, tore up, rewrote, tore up again There are pages so artfully contrived that one can no more imagine improvising them than one can imagine improvising a fugue. They are full of little delicacies, charming turns of phrase, penetrating second thoughts. In other words, they are easy and excellent reading which is what always comes out of hard writing. H.L Mencken, "As HLM Sees It," Baltimore Evening Sun (May 2, 1925), He gives you the bright lights in full measure, the affluence, the waste, but also the nakedness of the scaffolding

that scrawls skeletons upon the sky when the gold and blue and red and green have faded, the ugly passion, the spiritual meagerness, the empty shell of luxury, the old irony of fair-weather friends. William Rose Benét, "An Admirable Novel," Saturday Review of Literature, 1 (May 9, 1925), pp. 739-40 it has an intense life, it must be read, the first time, breathlessly; it is vivid and glittering and entertaining. Scenes of incredible difficulty are rendered with what seems an effortless precision and crowds and conversation and action and retrospects everything comes naturally and persuasively. The minor people and events are threads of colour and strength, holding the principal things together. The technical virtuosity is extraordinary. Gilbert Seldes, "Spring Flight," The Dial, 79 (August 1925), pp. 162-64 Gatsby and the American Dream Nobodyll ever know America completely because nobody ever knew Gatsby, I guess. Jack Kerouac, "He went on the road, as

Jack Kerouac says," Life, June 29, 1962, p. 22 Much of the endurance of The Great Gatsby results from its investigation of the American Dream as Fitzgerald enlarged an Horatio Alger story into a meditation on the New World myth. He was profoundly moved by the innocence and generosity he perceived in American history what he would refer to as "a willingness of the heart." Gatsby becomes an archetypal figure who betrays and is betrayed by the promises of America. The reverberations of the fable still sound Matthew J. Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F Scott Fitzgerald. Second Revised Edition Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002. pg 219-220 The long shadow of Jay Gatsby has faded from the lawns of West Egg, but it falls more and more deeply across the hearts and minds of each succeeding generation of American readers and writers. Like Gatsby, even the most hardheaded Americans conceive of themselves (whether correctly is not the point) as

idealists whose dreams can be made true, as eternal youths whose innocence can never really be lost, as magicians who can mesmerize the world into accepting their dreams. Fitzgerald, in tapping that cultural myth, made The Great Gatsby an American indeed, a world classic, a persistent and permanent presence in American culture. Richard Anderson, "Gatsbys Long Shadow: Influence and Endurance," New Essays on The Great Gatsby. Ed Matthew J Bruccoli London: Cambridge University Press p. 37 Gatsby sums us all up. He sums up our American desire to believe in a release from history, to believe that our early past did indeed establish redemption, to believe that in our founding the idea of our superb and hopeful heritage was actualized. He sums up the "vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty" that our wealth has made and in which we dress the romantic sense of self that the idea of American possibilities keeps whispering is at hand. He sums up, too, the fast-movie time

we have made of history, wiping out past, present and future in the whirling certitude that the new, that our wealth and power, will make time do our bidding. Milton R. Stern, The Golden Moment: The Novels of F Scott Fitzgerald Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970. Gatsby and Narrative Technique Gatsby, which was published in 1925, is a historical novel that was written in its own time. Fitzgerald knew exactly what he was creating: an elegy for a present that was already past, as represented by Gatsbys fierce dedication to the Daisy hed known seven or eight years before and had loved ever since. But Gatsby is something more. Coming out of the West into the East, as do all the major characters in the novel, Gatsby, whom Nick Carraway describes as having "romantic readiness" and "an extraordinary gift for life," is the absolute end of the same American Dream that pushed the American frontier as far as the Pacific Ocean. Gatsby, the innocent, the pioneer, is

ultimately destroyed by the failure of his dream, by its shallowness and lack of sense of consequence. Vincent Canby, Review of the 1974 film written by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. The New York Times, March 31, Fitzgeralds primary concern was with the rhythms, the colors, the tones associated with time and place often expressed through synesthesia, as in "yellow cocktail music." Time and place are inseparable in Fitzgerald: not just how it was, but how it felt in "a transitory enchanted moment." He later wrote, "After all, any given moment has its value; it can be questioned in the light of afterevents, but the moment remains." His task was to fix and preserve evanescent experience. Fitzgeralds sense of mood was extraordinary: the summer twilight in New York, the riotous Long Island nights, the Chicago railroad station at holiday time. These passages have become touchstones of American prose Matthew J. Bruccoli,

"Introduction," New Essays on The Great Gatsby Ed Matthew J. Bruccoli London: Cambridge University Press, p 9 Fitzgeralds ambitious goal as he approached the composition of The Great Gatsby was to "write something new something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." And it is indeed largely because of his concern with matters of form aimed at simplicity and intricacy of pattern that the novel succeeds on so many levels: the simplicity, or apparent simplicity, of Nick Carraways firstperson viewpoint, allows the reader, on the one hand, to see how the narrative is being constructed and, on the other, to participate in Nicks sense of discovery as the separate strands of the narrative take on meaning at various levels of abstraction in such a way that they seem, both to Nick and to the reader, to have been inseparably linked from the beginning. Obviously, the creation of a reliable narrator of the Gatsby-Daisy story at the heart of The

Great Gatsby was central in Fitzgeralds achieving verisimilitude. However, the simple love story was merely the foundation for a narrative structure that would accommodate Fitzgeralds ideas about irreconcilable contradictions within the American Dream and ultimately about the ideal quest itself. Young Jay Gatsby, through the discipline of Benjamin Franklin-like charts and schedules, has prepared himself to receive all that America has to offer and believes naively that he can have the embodiment of it, the wealthy Louisville debutante Daisy Fay, the only "nice" girl he has ever known, if he can but find the currency to buy his way into her life. It is Nick, the middle-class everyman without particular allegiance to either the privileged or working class, who has enough objectivity to comprehend the awful irony that Gatsbys dream has been futile from the beginning: he will never be accepted into the world of old money that Daisy could never leave. Bryant Magnum, "The

Great Gatsby," Encyclopedia of the Novel, ed. Paul Schellinger. London and Chicago: Fitzroy-Dearborn, 1998, pp 514-515 By giving Nick logical connections with the people he is observing, by always making his presence or absence at the events probable, not accidental, and by allowing him several natural sources of information which he may use freely, Fitzgerald achieves a realism impossible to an "omniscient" author or even to a limited third-person point of view: through Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald places the reader in direct touch with the action, eliminating himself, the author, entirely. James E. Miller, Jr, The Fictional Technique of F Scott Fitzgerald The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1957. There are many visual descriptions of people and things, but they are counterbalanced by the failure of perception which is so large a theme in the narrative. To see things unclearly is, Fitzgerald implies, about as close as we get to essences. And, the failure of perception in this

story seems to me to correspond with the nature of human relationships. Nick sees things unclearly because almost no relationship holds true. Ronald Berman, "The Great Gatsby and the twenties," in The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ed Ruth Prigozy Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 90 this language prepares us to understand also that how we do everything is theatrical. There is hardly a character in the novel who does not have an ideal self in mind, a self which is constructed or achieved. But the sense of self even dreams of selfhood in this story are the products of ideology or market enterprise. The idea of self is often specifically related to magazines and movies People play at roles and sometimes even seem to have scripts in mind: there is Myrtle, who shows us in her apartment the way she looks after she has become what she thinks she is. We see Tom self-consciously wrapped in the robes of Native Americanism, ready, according to Nick

Carraway, to pose for a painting of Civilization at the Barricades. There is Daisy playing always to an audience and, in one startling moment that links the rhetoric of film to text, viewed in front of the gorgeous, empty actress who is her simulacrum. But theatricality is not only a way of expressing desires but of concealing them. We are accustomed to think of The Great Gatsby as a story of mobility and change, but it is also a story of disguise, that is to say, of appearing to change while remaining the same. Ronald Berman, The Great Gatsby and Modern Times. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994. A note about the title of Gatsby Fitzgerald had several tentative titles, including "Trimalchio," for the novel that was published as The Great Gatsby. Trimalchio is the name of the wealthy and ostentatious party-giver in The Satyricon, Petroniuss satirical portrait of early Rome. Other tentative titles included "Trimalchio in West Egg," "Gold-Hatted

Gatsby," and "The High-Bouncing Lover." The latter two titles were adapted from the novels epigraph, supposedly written by Thomas Parke DInvilliers (the fictional counterpart of poet John Peale Bishop, Fitzgeralds Princeton classmate). The epigraph, which was actually written by Fitzgerald, reads: "Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; / If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, / Till she cry Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, / I must have you!" Michael Cody, "Facts About Fitzgerald." The University of South Carolinas F Scott Fitzgerald Centenary website: www.scedu/fitzgerald Nick Carraway & Jay Gatsby The impression of restless movement and casual wrecks comments on the society in the novel, but that society is revealed most deeply in Fitzgeralds depiction of his characters. His characterizations are an important dimension of the novels art It is through the eyes of Nick Carraway, the narrator, that the other characters are

observed, and as a marginal participant they are also measured by him. He is, in particular, a character double of Gatsby, having in his own life many parallels with Gatsbys experience. Both grew up in the Midwest, where they have their "winter dreams," before coming East to settle on Long Island, and deal in different ways in "bonds." They are neighbors who live in adjoining houses, one vast and overshadowing, the other small and sensible; and they both come into contact with the Buchanans set in East Egg and have an affair with a young woman of that set during the same summer. By the end of the summer Carraways illusions are shattered, along with Gatsbys greater ones. Sane and moderate, Carraway is a continuing reminder of Gatsbys aberrancy, but in his modest stature his inhibitions and lack of boldness he is also a reminder of Gatsbys heroic size. Robert Emmet Long, The Achieving of The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920-1925. London: Associated

University Presses, 1979 p 145 We may note in passing that Nick is not the fixed, static point of view some critics have supposed him; he is not the detached observer but is deeply implicated in the story he is telling and his attitude evolves and changes as the story progresses; in a sense what The Great Gatsby is about is what happens to Nick. W.J Harvey, "Theme and Texture in The Great Gatsby," Critical Essays on F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby, Ed Scott Donaldson Boston: GK Hall & Co., 1984, p 83 This feeling of genuine concern and sympathy for another human being emerges as one of the most important positive values of Gatsbys tragedy. If it does not seem capable of mitigating the pathos of Gatsbys destruction, much less preventing it, Nicks capacity for concern and love nonetheless enables him to see in the tragedy of Gatsbys own idealism a symbol for the tragedy of all human aspiration. Nick is able to give his words such a beautiful, haunting, evocative

quality because he had himself been partially seduced by Gatsbys dream. Not only had he once felt the mysterious attraction in Daisys voice; he had also fallen half in love with someone who suggested its rich ring of promise. But Nick had been able to discern the note of cynicism and emptiness behind the magic suggestiveness of Daisys voice, just as he had also been able to perceive that Jordan Baker, his temporary lover, was basically a liar and a cheat. Giles Gunn, "F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby and the Imagination of Wonder," Critical Essays on F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby, Ed Scott Donaldson. Boston: GK Hall & Co, 1984, p 238 We might be disposed to think that, especially in America, a self-made man would be proud of his achievement. But Gatsby hides his past although it has been interesting enough to have provided the material for a dozen novels. He begins life on a worked-out farm, learns how to read and think with not much help, goes on his

wahnderjahre, becomes irresistible to women, rescues a yacht from disaster, tops it all off by becoming . a gentleman criminal If this reminds us of famous lives and books, it is intended to. Every literary-biographical theme we can imagine has been part of his forgotten life. But this adventurous story remains profoundly uninteresting to Gatsby, although it fascinates Nick. Gatsby does not want to be praised for what he is, but for what he is not. In this, he represents the tensions of the early twenties. Ronald Berman, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and the Twenties. Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 2001. p59 Rather, withholding exactly who Gatsby is or where he comes from is a method of underscoring the rootlessness of postwar American society, its restless alienation, and its consequent reliance on money as a code for expressing emotions and identity. Fitzgerald seems at every point to emphasize the unconnectedness of Gatsby. Gatsby has shifting identities according

to which party guest one listens to, but most of his identities, even the one that turns out to be "true," have something of the unreal or fantastic about them. Fitzgeralds insistence on Gatsby as a man who "sprang from his own Platonic conception of himself" is important. Conceiving ones self would seem to be a final expression of rootlessness. And it has other consequences for love, money, and aspirations as well. When ones sense of self is self-created, when one is present at ones own creation, so to speak, one is in a paradoxical position. One knows everything about oneself that can be known, and yet the significance of such knowledge is unclear, for no outside contexts exist to create meaning. The result is that a self-created man turns to the past, for he can know that. It is an inescapable context. For Gatsby and for the novel, the past is crucial Roger Lewis, "Money, Love and Aspiration in The Great Gatsby," New Essays on The Great Gatsby. Ed

Matthew J Bruccoli London: Cambridge University Press p. 46-47 Gatsby has the capacity for the pursuit of happiness. He believes in his dream an in Daisy as its object. Except for Nick Carraway and poor George Wilson he is the only figure in the novel to have a passion for belief, and to care deeply about someone else. He may be wrong about the kind of happiness that is possible, and about the woman who represents that happiness, but he has committed himself to the dream. Gatsbys pursuit of Daisy against impossible odds is perhaps the final form of the American will to wring a new life from destiny. Ronald Berman, "The Great Gatsby and the twenties," in The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ed Ruth Prigozy Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 86 Myrtle Wilson Especially when Myrtle Wilson is involved in the action, we can see what Fitzgerald has learned from the American marketplace. When Myrtle assembles herself, complete to dress, dog,

apartment, and dialogue ("My Dear"), we see not only her own vast energies but those of the economy and the new consumer culture. Through Myrtle we become aware of the realm of imitation, hence of the human dynamics of the story. The party at Myrtles apartment is one of the great messes in literature. Ronald Berman, The Great Gatsby and Modern Times. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Tom & Daisy Buchanan Daisys corruption her irresponsibility and betrayal of Gatsby may kill Gatsby, but in the judgment of Nick her corruption only proves the superiority of Gatsby and his dream. In a deceptive, fraudulent world, Daisy still retains her value as a symbol. She represents illusion itself, the illusion of everything admirable, authentic, desirable, and unattainable. Rena Sanderson, "Women in Fitzgeralds fiction," The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ed Ruth Prigozy Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. p 156 It is before the five

characters move to New York that Gatsby makes his famous remark to Nick: "Her voice is full of money." This insight which Fitzgerald added when the novel was in galley proof, shows Gatsbys understanding of the link between love and money. Daisys voice has been described as the seductive, thrilling aspect of her. What Gatsby, with surprising consciousness, states is that Daisys charm is allied to the attraction of wealth; money and love hold similar attractions. Roger Lewis, "Money, Love and Asp Roger Lewis, "Money, Love and Aspiration in The Great Gatsby," New Essays on The Great Gatsby. Ed Matthew J. Bruccoli London: Cambridge University Press p 50 Despite his inability to understand Daisy, Nicks keen observations of her behavior demonstrate not that she is unable to feel and express strong emotions, but that she deliberately avoids them, because she recognizes the pain they can entail. Daisy clings unsuccessfully to a gay, superficial, "careless"

world in an effort to protect herself from what are for her the terrifying dangers inherent in caring. Sarah Beebe Fryer, "Beneath the Mask: The Plight of Daisy Buchanan," Critical Essays on F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby, Ed Scott Donaldson. Boston: GK Hall & Co, 1984, p 154 Daisy has her own complex story, her own desires and needs. "Im p-paralyzed with happiness," she says to Nick when he meets her for the first time, and even though there is a certain insincerity in her manner, Daisys words to perfectly express the quality of her present life. In choosing Tom Buchanan over the absent Gatsby, Daisy has allowed her life to be shaped forever by the crude force of Toms money. Leland J. Person, Jr, "Herstory and Daisy Buchanan," American Literature (May 1978), vol. 46, pp 250-57 In F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby Ed Nicolas Tredell New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, p. 118 Against Nicks gradual understanding of the

incorruptibility at the heart of Gatsbys corruption, Fitzgerald sets his gradual penetration of the charm and grace of Tom and Daisys world. What he penetrates to is corruption, grossness, and cowardice. In contrast to the charm and grace of this world, Gatsbys fantastic mansion, his absurd pink suits, "[his] elaborate formality of speech [which] just missed being absurd" appear ludicrous; against the corruption which underlies this grace, Gatsbys essential moral incorruptibility is heroic. To the representation of this double contrast Fitzgerald brings all his now mature powers of observation, of invention, of creating for the scenes and persons the quality and tone the story requires. Because of the formal perfection of The Great Gatsby, this eloquence is given a concentration and intensity Fitzgerald never achieved again. Arthur Mizener, "F. Scott Fitzgerald 1896-1940: The Poet of Borrowed Time," in Willard Thorp, ed., The Lives of Eighteen from Princeton

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946, pp. 333-53 The Eyes of Doctor T.J Eckleberg For the most elaborate expression of the disparity between illusion and reality . we must turn finally to the image of the dump presided over by the yard-high retinas of [T.J] Eckleburg It is here that we get a synthesis of the whole constellation of ironies inherent in the theme of the novel, and it is here that the idea of violated nature and that of distorted vision are brought into the most striking conjunction. Eckleburg may be thought of as a commercial deity staring out upon a waste of his own creation. But the enormous eyes behind yellow spectacles are diseased, "faded," "dimmed by many paintless days." And the quality of dimness is carried over into the rendering of the "ash-grey men" "who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air." Their shade-like forms, along with the "small, foul river," where periodically a draw-bridge

is raised to let barges through, lend the scene overtones of an inferno; but the dump is also described as a "farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens," and what is implied is that a universal myopia has apprehended fertility in a "valley of ashes" and mistaken a hell for a paradise. The dump is introduced early in the novel, and is the scene of those ocular confusions that lead to its major dramatic climaxes. J.S Westbrook, "Nature and Optics in The Great Gatsby" American Literature (March 1960), vol. 32, pp 79-84 Portions of this study guide were originally produced for the Guthrie Theaters world premiere of The Great Gatsby in 2006. Amy Wegener, dramaturg/editor. Reprinted by permission of the Guthrie Theater. wwwguthrietheaterorg