Movie: Life, Like The Great Gatsby Essay, Research Paper

Movie: Life, Like The Great Gatsby

Brian Olson

OLSON 1

Professor John Hughes

ENC 1102

December 3, 1996

Imagine that you live in the nineteen twenties, and that you are a very

wealthy man that lives by himself in a manchine, on a lake and who throws

parties every weekend. This is just the beginning of how to explain the way

Jay Gatsby lived his life. This novel, by F. Scott, Fitzgerald is one that is

very deep in thought. Fitzgerald releases little clues along the way of the

novel that will be crusual to understand the ending. For instance, he makes

the blue coupe a very important clue, as well as the Dr. T. J. Eckleburg eyes on

the billboard that Mr. Wilson (the gas station attendant ) refers to as the eyes

of god. There are also other little things that relate to the reason of

gatsby’s death. The main character’s of this novel each have their part to do

with the ending, Nick Caraway is probably the main character of this novel, as

he comes down from New Jersey to new York to visit his cousin Daisy, who is

married to Tom Buchannan. These are some of the incidents that are included in

the novel as you will read further I will relate some issues of the novel, as

well as other critics have included their views on The Great Gatsby.

F. Scott, Fitsgerald was an American short story writer and novelist

famous for his depictions of the Jazz Age(the 1920’s), his most brilliant novel

work being The Great Gatsby(1925). He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on sept.

24, 1896 and died in Hollywood, California on December 21, 1940. His private

life, with his wife, Zelda, in both America and France, became almost as

celebrated as his novels. Fitsgerald was the only son of an aristocrat father,

who was the author of the star spangle banner. Fitzgerald spent most of time

with his wife, latter in their relationship they moved to france where he began

to write his most brilliant novel, The Great Gatsby. All of his divided nature

is in this novel, the native midwestener afir with the possibilities of every

Americans dream in it’s hero, Jay Gatsby, and the compassionate princeton

gentlemen in it’s narrator, Nick Carraway. The Great Gatsby is the most

profoundly American novel of it’s time (Houghton).

Fitzgerald had an intensely romantic imagination, what he once called ?a

heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,? and he rushed into experience

determined to realize those promises. Latter on in Fitzgeralds life, he started

to drink very heavily and became very unhappy. In 1930 his wife had a mental

breakdown and in 1932 another, from which she never recovered. With it’s

failure and his despair over Zelda, Fitzgerald was close to becoming an

incurable alcoholic. He surpassed becoming an alcoholic though, and moved out

west to become a Hollywood screenwriter were he met his new wife Sheilah Graham,

but he never forgot about Zelda and his daughter Scotti. (Johnson, 384).

The Great Gatsby is an excellent review on how fitzgerald preceived his

life to be, in the same sense that he also was very wealthy. Gatsby, in this

novel is the mistiries wealthy man that lives in the big house across the lake

from Tom and Daisy Buchanann. There would always be some type of party going on

at his house, but for some reason he never attended to them, he would always

watch from his window. Nick Caraway is Daisy’s cousin who comes to visit, Nick

needs a place to stay, so he finds an ad for a guest cottage that Mr. Jay

Gatsby owns. After Nick has moved in Jay and Nick become pretty close friends.

Jordan has always wondered who The Great Gatsby was, so she uses Nick to find

out more about him. As the story goes on, there are some odd things that

Fitsgerald relates to the story as important things. These important things

make you really think about what it means to the story. The Automobile in The

Great Gatsby is a very big topic for the conclution of the story. What we have

in The Great Gatsby is a creative manipulation of the automobile as symbol and

image to accomplish a variety of ends (O’Meara, 74). O’Meara goes on to say

that when Fitzgerald accentuates mechanism and minimizes aesthetics, he

depersonalizes vehicles and underscores the behavior of their drivers. The

existing criticism on automobiles in The Great Gatsby usually centers on one or

the other of these two functions.(O’Meara, 75). The result of the car is that

it ends up killing Myrtle. Kenneth and Irving Saposnik discuss the automobile

imagery from a technological standpoint. Knodt asserts that all of the novel

symbol’s of technology – automobiles, trains, and telephones are connected with

destruction and evil (Saposnik, 131). I believe in this theory, that vehicles

are a result evil in almost every movie. In this case the evil is the Blue

Coupe sedan that ends up killing Myrtle. The other thing that sticks out to me

is the billboard that has the two eyes on it with glasses. This board is

referred to Mr. Wilson as the eyes of god, he believes that they can see

everything and when the car ends up killing his wife Myrtle, he tells people

that god saw what happened. A footnote for the line in Andrew Turnnbull’s

edition of The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald(1963)describes the dust jacket as

showing ?two huge eyes, intended to be those of Daisy Fay, brooding over New

York City, and this had been Fitsgerald ?s inspiration for the eyes of Dr. T. J.

Eckleburg?(Turnbull, 166).

The brief exegesis examines the imagery of cats and dogs in Scott

Fitzgerald’s jazz age novel, The Great Gatsby. Toward the end of the novel,

Nick Caraway refers to the hot summer days on Long Island as ?dog-days?(Kehul,

118). John Kehul goes on to mention that many of the characters in the novel

are portrayed in canine terms. They cynically, in the sense of the Greek root

kynikos, meaning ?dog-like.? Their ?bites,? particularly in relationship to the

main character, Gatsby, become worse then their ?barks.? In contrast to this

canine element, Gatsby has a ?heightened sensitivity?(120). In The Great

Gatsby I did notice a lot of the characters mentioning dogs or phrasing one

another as ?you old dog you,?. Myrtle mentions to Tom (the man she is having an

affair with) that she would like a dog. I believe that Fitzgerald resembles

these dogs as a symbol of affection. Canine imagery first appears in chapter

one, when Nick casually tells the reader that he once owned a dog. He lists his

possessions: an old dodge, a finish woman who cooks and cleans for him, and his

dog. ?I had a dog–at least I had him a few days until he ran away(124).

Almost forty years after the book was written, Ernest Hemmingway recalls

Fitzgerald giving him a copy of The Great Gatsby: It had a garish dust jacket

and I remember being embarrassed by the violence, bad taste and slippery look of

it. It looked like the book jacket for a book of bad science fiction. Scott

told me not to be put of by it, that it had to with a billboard along the

highway in Long Island that was important in the story. He said that he liked

the jacket, but now how didn’t like it. I took it offto read the book (feast

176). According to Hemmingway, the cover of the book only ?had to do with? the

billboard and had already fallen out of favor with the author(179). I believe

that the cover of The Great Gatsby is a unique one, in a way that people really

would believe things like that if they never had any type of religion

background or were just messed up in the head.

As I was explaining earlier in the paper about all the characters, I was

mentioning things about Nick Carraway. Nick Carraway is also the narrator of

the novel, he is probably they most sufficient character in the novel, meaning

that he is always relaying information to others rather than getting involved in

the mischief. What I mean is, that, the affairs between Tom and Myrtle, and

Daisy and Gatsby. Nick knows just about everything about everyone and he is the

newest person in town. I think that Fitzgerald put like this because, Nick had

no other meaning to the story if he didn’t get involved with the secrets that

were going on. Near the end though, Nick is clueless as to what is going on

with Myrtle and Tom until the night of the accident when Myrtle runs out in

front of the speeding yellow cadilac. Myrtle had thought that Tom was driving

the car, and so she dashed in front of it because she wanted to leave with

Tom and get away from her husband that was not to rich or smart like Tom was.

In The Great Gatsby, the fact that the billboard is only mentioned once or twice

in the film, but it so crucial to how the result of the ending is. Fitzgerald

is trying to point out that this billboard is the point were everything takes

place, like, the eyes looking down on the two cars going to party and that they

are always looking at Mr. Wilson. When Mr. Wilson’s wife (Myrtle) dies he is

shock and is looking for answers to what happened. As O’Meara points out

earlier, cars are a means of destruction and evil. In two cases this is true.

One, being that big yellow cadilac killed Myrtle and two, the fact Tom is using

his car as a medium of exchange for Mr. Wilson’s wife and free gas. Mr. Wilson

does not relize the fact that his wife is cheating on him with Tom, the man he

wants the car from.

In all conclusion to The Great Gatsby, many little things in the novel

were substantial to how the ending was to be. Fitzgerald had really related the

billboard of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg that looked like owl eyes and referred to a

the eyes of god by Mr. Wilson when he talking to Tom. The other thing that sets

the tone of this novel is the car. this was the murder weapon that killed

Myrtle and was recognized by Mr. Wilson as the car that Jay Gatsby was driving

that night, which was result of the death of Mr. Jay Gatsby by no other than the

man that looked at the ?owl eyes ? all day outside his gas station. Well the

fact of living in the nineteen twenties and being a millionaire and throwing

parties every weekend doesn’t sound that bad, I just wouldn’t want to be The

Great Gatsby.