The Great Gatsby reading journal: Chapter 3

Chapter 3; In which Nick attends one of Gatsby's parties and meets and talks to the man himself for the first time.

Reader's thoughts: The image that sticks with me from this chapter is that of the "five crates of oranges and lemons" arriving from New York and leaving as a pyramid of pulpless halves from Gatsby's house. Could this somehow sum up the chapter, with New Yorkers arriving as normal people, but leaving as drunkards/less than normal?

Images that stick in the mind:

• Gatsby's mansion being like a magnet, attracting the crowd at his parties
• The crowd at the party blurred together anyone in the crowd could easily be replaced by anyone else.
• Gatsby's understanding smile. A "rare" smile with a "quality of eternal reassurance in it". You "might come across four or five times in a lifetime".
• The drunkard "Owl eyes" being in the library to sober up being amazed by the books being real and convinced that if they were to be removed, the entire room would collapse. Could this be reflecting Jay Gatsby's character? If one part that made him were to be removed the whole act would collapse!
• The crowd actually being just parts of the scenery, like one of the pieces of machinery that Fitzgerald seems so fascinated by.

Sounds that stick in the mind:

• The background noise of crickets that you apparently get at night in America.
• Forced laughter of the party attenders.
• Jazz music being played by a full Orchestra.
• Silents after the party, possibly with the same "unquiet darkness that there was a the end of the first chapter.

Colours that stick in the mind:

• Gatsby's Chauffeur's uniform is "robin's egg blue". Could this have something to do with blue having the connotation of being trustworthy?
• Two women who talk to Jordan at the party are wearing yellow. Could this be because yellow represents optimism and energy, showing us that the crowd are enjoying themselves?
• The people attending the party have "blue gardens". This is because, like the phrase "blue blood", these people think that they are like royalty. 

Miscellaneous points:

• The crowd are superficial "introductions were instantly forgotten" and three crowd members called "Mr Mumble" being evidence of this.
• The crowd contrast with Gatsby. Gatsby is very intimate with his rare smile and his term of endearment "old sport" whereas the crowd moves around, talking to everybody and, indeed, anybody, forgetting introductions on the spot and getting more and more drunk.
• People at the party are very much characters played by themselves. Nobody seems to have a definite personality.
• Gatsby does not enjoy his own parties
• Nick is trying to create his own world like Gatsby. Gatsby has characters at his parties wile Nick goes to New York to see "attractive women" and imagine entering their lives. He doesn't know himself and he is definitely not the "well-rounded man" he aspires to be. Although he does consider the consequences of his actions before he does anything, unlike the other main characters.

Something to remember:

• The main theme for this chapter, and every other chapter for that matter, is that all of the main characters are outsiders even in their own home. Nick observes people but rarely talks to them and Gatsby invites people to his parties but does not himself participate in them.

The Great Gatsby reading journal: Chapter 2

Chapter two; In which Nick goes to New York with Tom and meets Myrtle Wilson

Reader's thoughts: "Why would Tom Buchanan, a millionare with a wife and a child, have an affair with a poor garage owner's wife?"

References to death:

• Mr Wilson owns a "shaddow of a garage"
• Some of the nerves in Myrtle Wilson's body "were continually smouldering"
• Mrs Wilson walks through her husband as if he were a "ghost"
• Mr Wilson is described by Tom as being "so dumb he doesn't know he's ALIVE"
• The photograph on Tom and Myrtle's apartment wall "hovered like ectoplasm"
• Myrtle lives in "The ash heaps" when people are cremated, they turn into ash.

Other important points:

• Despite insisting in the first chapter that "reserving judgements is a matter of infinate hope", Nick's descriptions of Myrtle reserves nothing. When Nick first sees her, she has a "thickish figure" that "blocked out the light of the office door". In "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck, when Culey's Wife is first seen blocking out the light and at the end of the book, her death gets a man shot. Hmm...
• Nick picks out the superficial things in this chapter as opposed to the dramatic stuff as if to emphasise that dramatic stuff. For example, 31 lines are spent with Myrtle buying a dog that isn't meantioned again after chapter two, whereas 2 lines are spent on Tom breaking Myrtle's nose.
• Despite being "cruel" Tom is never meantioned as being in the war.

Something to remember:

• There is a big contrast between Gatsby and Tom! Gatsby is a self-made man but Tom was born rich ect...

The Great Gatsby reading journal: Chapter 1

Context and Characters; a background

•  The Great Gatsby was Published in 1926 and sent in about 1922, seven years before Black Tuesday and the stock market crash.
• The book is set on Long Island in New York State in two "giant eggs",  West-egg (where Nick and Gatsby live) and East-egg (where Daisy and Tom live). I think that the eggs are villages by the shores of an expance of water that isn't named.
• Just what makes Gatsby so Great? In fact, what is a Gatsby? The Title of the book gives nothing away, so how would readers know that he was, in fact, a man? Surely the question of WHAT Gatsby IS could be linked to the people who attend his party's curiosity about WHO he is! The entire novel is narated by a character who found him "facinating"
• The main character and narrator, Nick Carraway, comes from the twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul in Minnesota, which is a boring mid-western state (and believe me it IS boring, i've been there...). Nick insists that he is not judgmental, fought in the Great War and uses large words. At Yale University, he was known as The Politician because he was nice enough to everyone and he observed people rather than anything else (Hmm... that reminds me of Gatsby, Luke). Also Nick's family owns a Hardware Shop.
• Daisy, Nick's second cousin, once removed, hails from Louisville, Kentucky.
• Jay Gatsby was born on the "shores of lake Michigan" so he could be from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan or Wisconsin. Gatsby stands for everything Nick hates about the East, despite being from the Midwest, just like Nick! He also has an "extraordinary gift for hope".
•  Tom Buchanon is from Windy Chicago. All of the main characters are outsiders. 

Chapter One; In which Nick moves to Long Island and sees Gatsby in the shadows

• Yep, Nick moves to Long Island, West-egg, in the house next door to Gatsby, who lives in a mansion while he lives in a "cardboard bungalow". In this first chapter, no description of the Gatsby is granted to us, as he was standing in the shadows and reaching out for a light at the end of a pier in East-egg.

Comedic and serious elements in Act Five of Much Ado About Nothing

At the begining of the first scene in this, the final act, there is a serious speach spoken by Leonato to his brother Antonio about how very sad he is regarding the "death" of Hero. He and the audience both know, however, that Hero is not really dead, but mearly pretending in order to force Claudio to calm down and regret what he did to her. It follows that Leonato is instead most probably grieveing over the loss of his dignity after Claudio publicly insulted him and his daughter. In the time that has passed in between act four, scene one and this scene, Leonato has changed his mind as regarding Hero's innocence, as evidenced in line 42 where his "soul doth tell" him "Hero is belied". Maybe if he had come to that conclusion during the accusations he could have defended his daughter rather than wishing death upon her, then the whole odd situation where she has to pretend to be dead would never have happened...

From line 46 to line 108, Leonato and Antonio confront and challenge Claudio and Don Pedro about the "slandering" of Hero. What starts off the angry exchange of words is a simple piece of punctuation! An exclamation mark! This happens in line 47, when Leonato exclaims "hear you, my lords!". Without the "!", that sentence would have just been like any other and pressumably the "my lords!" bit at the end wouldn't have been taken as an insult. In line 53, Leonato calls Claudio a "dissembler", showing that he meant to insult him earlier, but Claudio is evidently not taking his (literally) old friend seriously, as he "jests" by pretending to reach for his sword. Naturally, though, this action has the effect of making Leonato angry, angry enough to spend fourteen lines explaining why he is angry, with an exclamation mark at the end, of course! If you thought that Leonato was cross, then he was nothing, NOTHING, compared to his brother Antonio, because Antonio didn't know that Hero wasn't really dead. Instead of Leonato challenging the young lords to a duel over his and his family's honor, Antonio is challenging who he sees to be the murderers of his niece and so is downright furious with them! He's so furious that in line 91 he insults them five times in the same line, "Boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks, milksops!". These insults are probably intended to sound serious in the play, but that line, it has to be said, reminds me of Captain Haddock's long streams of wierd insults in the Tintin books, which are used for comic effect. More appropriately, think, who are the other characters in the play that use insults, why, Beatrice and Benedick and, as we have already established in earlier scenes, they are comedic characters... Could it be that, if acted in the right way, the Antonio we see in this scene could be the same comedic character we saw briefly from lines 100 to 110 in act two, scene one? If Hero were actually dead, then Antonio's insults would definately be taken seriously by everyone, as they are by the lords, but that not being the case, the raging old man with his Haddock-esque reem of insults seems, dare I say it, down right comic!

After this, the old men leave and Benedick enters. He also challenges Claudio to a duel, calling him a "villain" for "killing a sweet lady". Benedick has been told to do this by Beatrice and the lords guess this and joke about it, leading to a small amount of comedy. The main, overriding theme of the confrontation, however, is one of seriousness, because when the joint most witty character in the play is seriously challenging people to duels, you know that's the way that the entire play is heading! After Benedick has exited the stage, more "comic" characters come onto it, Dogberry (the clown/fool), Verges and the watchmen. To be sure, there is a small slice of comedy when Dogberry (the clown/fool) can't remember his numbers and Claudio copies his number forgetting ways, but after that, it's all serious! Borachio admits being payed 1000 ducats by Don John to pretend to "talk to" Hero, when in fact he is "seeing" Margret, his lady-friend, dressed-up like her. After hearing this, Don Pedro is quick to curse his brother and Claudio is quicker still to fall back in love with Hero, the fickle so-and-so. This quick falling back into Claudio's favour of Hero backs up the point that I made in one of the previous act evaluations about her being an object that Claudio wants to own. It is always bad to treat a person as a means as Claudio does with Hero here and so this is serious...or so it should be, if not for the fact that it takes almost no thought of  Claudio's before he desides that he loves her again. If acted in the right way, it could be comedic, but Shakespeare most probably intended it to be sincere.

Claudio insists that Leonato gets his revenge on him for "killing" Hero and insulting Leonato. The revenge, it turns out is to (271) "hang an epitaph upon her tomb" and to marry Antonio's daughter, who, despite these people all knowing eachother for a long time, nobody knew existed. Serious? I THINK so, but it could be comedic because the punishments are so puny for "killing" a woman and insulting the governor!

Act five scene two begins with Benedick asking Margaret to help him write a speach for Beatrice for 24 lines. Benedick is back to his usual comedic self in these few lines and Margaret is surprisingly witty too, leading the audience into a scene of comedy where the two B's find out that challenging Claudio to a duel isn't nesesary after all and that Claudio has admitted that he was wrong in humiliating Hero and Leonato! It also contains Benedick singing, it's that comedic! The comedy in this scene is mainly, however, composed of Benedick and Beatrice's witty conversation, as ever.

The third scene in the act is but 33 lines long and consists of Claudio reading an epitaph (3-11) to  Hero's grave and Balthasar singing a song to and about the same. All of this scene is serious and not a comedic element does it involve. As an interesting note, I would like to point out that this scene is said entirely in verse and as I said in the act four evaluation, verse = seriousness and blank verse = comedy.

And so it comes to this, the last scene in the play! This is it people, hold on to your hats, for this is act five, scene four! At the begining of the scene, Benedick asks Leonato's permission to marry Beatrice, Leonato's niece (30). He does so seriously as they love each other at that point. After that, Claudio gets married to "Antonio's daughter" without ever having so much as seen the girl. Could this be Shakespeare commenting on the bizarre and slightly sinister act of arranged marrage? Or could it just be a continuation of the "masked" theme that runs through the play (masked ball, masked love [Benedick & Beatrice and Maragret & Borachio], masked marrage ect.) After Hero unmasks and tells Claudio that she is "another Hero" there is a bit of comedy with Benedick and Beatrice realising that they were tricked into falling for each other but, by Jove, now each actually does love the other. The final line in the play is the serious one in this scene, Benedick says that he will "devise thee brave punishments for him" about Don John. Meaning torture, probably. What a wierd way for a comedy to end, with one of the characters going to be tortured. Sounds more like the ending of a tragady to me!