1. The Great Gatsby: American Romance
Much of this lecture is based on a lecture by Arthur Weinstein, P.H.D. Harvard, and current American Literature Professor at Brown University

2. Objectives Upon completion of this lecture, you should be able to
Make connections between Fitzgerald’s life and the book
Explain three interpretations of the book
Provide several examples of the Romantic interpretation of the novel

3. Biographical Info Hometown College Relationship
1. Born in 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald went to Princeton as a precocious writer and a wild party boy. While there, he began what would later become his first novel, but left the university in 1917 to join the Army.
2. At an Army post near Montgomery, Alabama, Fitzgerald met the beautiful, talented, well-born, and unstable Zelda Sayre, whom he courted and later married. This core experience is replayed variously in the plots of both Gatsby and Tender Is the Night.

4. Historical Standing Why were they the right ones to tell the story?
2. Fitzgerald and Zelda were among the "beautiful people." They attended never-ending parties and went on binges; they drank themselves into stupor; they were breathtakingly handsome, smart, savvy, and spoiled. This attachment to the rich and famous, this fascination with the way the beautiful people lived, does not endear him to critics interested in ideological arrangements. Fitzgerald is usually dealt with as a target rather than as a subject in fashionable work today.

5. Bibliography Fitzgerald’s Role Books Include: Most Successful?
Most Complex?
Fitzgerald's position in American literature is that of chronicler of the Jazz Age, the giddy 1920s,
Fitzgerald became a literary success with his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), and his second, The Beautiful and the Damned (1922). Each work is replete with the Fitzgerald staples: wealth, glamour, narcissism, a tinge of horror, brooding, and death. The Great Gatsby (1925) is his masterpiece, but his wild life with Zelda, saturated with excess, alcoholism, and impending madness on her part, leads inexorably toward "crackup." Tender Is the Night (1934) testifies eloquently to this evolution.
4. Gatsby is Fitzgerald's most accomplished book, but Tender is his most complex and heartbreaking, and his last unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon (1940), dealing with Hollywood, makes us wonder what he might have done had he not succumbed to his demons. "There are no second acts in American literature," Fitzgerald is famous for saying, and he understood failure in a way that few others did.

6. Academic Standing Not in vogue Why not?
2. Fitzgerald and Zelda were among the "beautiful people." They attended never-ending parties and went on binges; they drank themselves into stupor; they were breathtakingly handsome, smart, savvy, and spoiled. This attachment to the rich and famous, this fascination with the way the beautiful people lived, does not endear him to critics interested in ideological arrangements. Fitzgerald is usually dealt with as a target rather than as a subject in fashionable work today.

7. Three Interpretations
Love story or romance between two people
Moralistic tale
Love story to capitalism
Which is most common?
On the contrary, Fitzgerald delivers the music of a madcap era and he shows us what ultimately "finances" great fortunes: Not simply money or brains or luck, but burning desire, the driving force that harnesses our power and moves worlds. Fitzgerald is to be understood as the lyric poet of capitalism, the man who best understood (perhaps because he could least resist) the magic of riches and glamour. To present this phenomenon fundamentally as a love story, a story of desire so strong that it seeks to reverse time and recapture the past, is to fuse the personal and the cultural in striking fashion.
Professor Weinstein

8. Gatsby seems to have many sides that fulfill these various interpretations.

9. A Moralistic Tale The Great Con?
Think about the rumors and subtle portentous details
Like the ancient gods, for whom there are multiple myths of birth, there are multiple legends of "origins" for Gatsby.
People think he is:
a nephew or cousin to Kaiser Wilhelm,
a German spy during the war
an Oxford man
a bootlegger
or a killer.
Orchestra palying yellow cocktail music
Laughter is easier minute by minute spilled by prodigality tipped out by a cheerful world
Get a sense of swell of this and evanescence of it…

10. A Love Story to Capitalism
Gatsby the self-made man
Gatsby can be understood as the 1920s (manic) version of Benjamin Franklin, the boy without resources who made himself into a tycoon.
Gatsby is going to be the 1920’s version of Franklin- not the prudent Franklin, the circumspect Franklin, the workaholic but not the self made man- quintessential American Story- he will sculpt his own life, the rags to reaches.. he’s far more sinister but for more romantic- he did it for love…

11. A Love Story Between Two People
Unlike Franklin, he did it all for love.

12. Gatsby the Romantic
Fitzgerald delivers the music of a madcap era and he shows us what ultimately "finances" great fortunes: Not simply money or brains or luck, but burning desire, the driving force that harnesses our power and moves worlds. Fitzgerald is to be understood as the lyric poet of capitalism, the man who best understood (perhaps because he could least resist) the magic of riches and glamour. To present this phenomenon fundamentally as a love story, a story of desire so strong that it seeks to reverse time and recapture the past, is to fuse the personal and the cultural in striking fashion.
Arthur Weinstein

13. Gatsby the Romantic
“There was something gorgeous about this man, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person.” Chapter One

14. Gatsby the Romantic
“He smiled understandingly, much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced- or seemed to face- the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresisitible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that is had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey” (Fitzgerald 53).
From Chapter 3

15. Great Parties!!
In the party scenes, Fitzgerald delivers the flavor of the Jazz Age.
“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars”
“By seven o’clock the orchestra had arrived… a whole pit full of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos and low and high drums.”
“The moon had risen higher and floating in the sound was a triangle of silver scales trembling a little to the stiff tinny drip of the banjos on the lawn..” Chapter III
His aura is reflected in the enormous parties he throws, a wild pursuit of the American dream that is deeply romantic.
Orchestra palying yellow cocktail music
Laughter is easier minute by minute spilled by prodigality tipped out by a cheerful world
Get a sense of swell of this and evanescence of it…
2. Gatsby’s origins may be unknown, but his parties are indisputable. Owner of a huge mansion on the water in "West Egg," Long Island, he regularly hosts gala events to which people come for pleasure, revelry, and mayhem. In the party scenes, Fitzgerald delivers the flavor of the Jazz Age. There is an air of madcap evanescence, conveyed by language that is often stunning in its freshness and wit. Nick Carraway offers us an unforgettable retrospective of the folks who came to Gatsby's parties.

16. Gatsby the Romantic Why all the hubbub?
Gatsby, we learn, bought this mansion and gives these parties in hopes of one day re-encountering his lost love, Daisy. Daisy is now married to Tom Buchanan and lives in a mansion across the bay in "East Egg," the more traditionally wealthy part of Long Island. Gatsby can see the green light on her dock, which comes to represent all his desire and longing.
“he talked about the past- Nick says- and I gathered he wanted to recover something some idea of himself that had gone into loving Daisy- and he keeps trying to return to this particular moment- a moment 5 years ago when he and Daisy was walking- they came to a place where the sidewalk was white with moonlight and they stopped and they turned towards each other… he sees- that he can suck the pap out of life. He knew when he kissed this girl, to this perishable girl… as his lips touched he blossomed for her like a flower and … one of the most romantic passages in American Literature
It comes in the middle of the novel he gulps the incomparable milk of wander…

17. There’s Something About Daisy
“…her low thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget:” (Fitzgerald, 9)

18. Does Daisy Love Gatsby?
Chat with your neighbor

19. Does Daisy Love Gatsby?
Here, deares;.” “Take ‘em down-stairs and give ‘em back to whoever they belong to. Tell ‘em all Daisy’s change’ her mine. Say;”Daisy’s change’ her mine!” (Fitzgerald 76).
What would you do if you were Daisy, and you got the letter from Gatsby the day before your wedding to Tom?

20. Does Daisy Love Gatsby?
“ Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees– he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder. (Fitzgerald, 110) Chapter 6

21. Does Daisy Love Gatsby?
“His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lip’s touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
(Fitzgerald, 110) Chapter 6

22. The Great Goofy Gatsby How is Gatsby humanized in his
initial meeting with
Daisy?
My house looks well doesn’t it- you see the mixture of lies- theres something phony there’s a lot of pathos in what he has done for Daisy- I always keep it full of interesting…
He is straining completely overwound- hadn’t stopped looking at her- he is revaluing everything in his place in terms of how she looks at it- he stares at everything in a dazed way- he’s giddy, gazed he was running down like an overwound clock… trying to get across something of an aura of Gatsby-t his book is dependent… all of this suggests a mysterious figure- the parties too- the fabulous wealth- and celebrities- all of that is a creation of Gatsby- middle of book- what makes a person create all this type of wealth-
What is it that drives the American dream because that’s what we’re talking about
It’s not just smarts or ambition- it’s a deep romantic view of this thing- it’s out of his boundless love for this woman that all of his desire is unleashed- actualized in his possessions – book has the poetry of capitalism- so unpolitically correct- the poetry of things- the beautiful things that you could have that a love like this has driven him too…
Only passage in literature like this- he took out shirts.. quote… very unique…
Shirts with stripes and rich colors… Daisy cries- they’re such beautiful shirts, it makes me sad- to me this is what poetry is about- it’s all blooming and it’s like the horn of plenty the bounty of life, and she weeps into them- the sensuousness this woman plunging into thes shirts- the text wants us to be sensitive of these things- we may see these as ephemeral things-

23. The Colossal Vitality of Gatsby
“But I didn’t call to
Him, for he gave a sudden intimation that
He was content to be alone– he stretched out
His arms toward the dark water in a curious way…
I could have sworn he was trembling.
Involuntarily I glanced seaward-
and distinguished nothing except a single
green light” (Fitzgerald 20).
He is straining completely overwound- hadn’t stopped looking at her- he is revaluing everything in his place in terms of how she looks at it- he stares at everything in a dazed way- he’s giddy, gazed he was running down like an overwound clock… trying to get across something of an aura of Gatsby-t his book is dependent… all of this suggests a mysterious figure- the parties too- the fabulous wealth- and celebrities- all of that is a creation of Gatsby- middle of book- what makes a person create all this type of wealth-
What is it that drives the American dream because that’s what we’re talking about
It’s not just smarts or ambition- it’s a deep romantic view of this thing- it’s out of his boundless love for this woman that all of his desire is unleashed- actualized in his possessions – book has the poetry of capitalism- so unpolitically correct- the poetry of things- the beautiful things that you could have that a love like this has driven him too…
Only passage in literature like this- he took out shirts.. quote… very unique…
Shirts with stripes and rich colors… Daisy cries- they’re such beautiful shirts, it makes me sad- to me this is what poetry is about- it’s all blooming and it’s like the horn of plenty the bounty of life, and she weeps into them- the sensuousness this woman plunging into thes shirts- the text wants us to be sensitive of these things- we may see these as ephemeral things-

24. Gatsby, like America is multi-faceted
There are three ways of looking at Gatsby- America-
America- the romantic
America- the corrupt…
America- the Self Made Country

25. Discussion Questions
Summarize how The Great Gatsby continues the notion of the American dream first articulated in Franklin's Autobiography.
Describe the tug-of-war between the critical, deflating tendencies of The Great Gatsby and the counterforces of creation and romance.