Printable View
Just for commenting on the two threads relating to people named Nick, so that they showed up really close together on my "New Posts" list. Thus, when I finished reading about the real, living-breathing LitNet member Nick, I was startled to see a thread titled "Is Nick gay?"Quote:
Originally Posted by ZoeyJuly
That is all.
haha i have that effect on people jk..:lol:
I think that what you are proposing is a bit of a stretch and not plausible in any sense, whatsoever, but it is still quite amusing. Good job mate.
in a stage version of it, both he and jordan are gay. i think he might be, in the same way that it is hinted charles is in brideshead revisited.Quote:
Originally Posted by robfearon
I've always wondered this too but I think the front part of my head chose to ignore it, I always forget people are gay and then ask them what they think of someone and just get "that look". Maybe Fitzgerald is giving us "the look" right now? :D
Maybe Nick is in love with gatsby...
Quote:
the fact that they are "groaning" down the elevator simply means that F.Scott was using a literary device.
why must we all be so immature?
Literary device not literal intepretation. two different things. Literary devices refer to specific aspects of literature, in the sense of its universal function as an art form which expresses ideas through language, which we can recognize, identify, interpret and/or analyze. Literary devices collectively comprise the art form’s components; the means by which authors create meaning through language, and by which readers gain understanding of and appreciation for their works. They also provide a conceptual framework for comparing individual literary works to others, both within and across genres. Both literary elements and literary techniques can be called literary devices.Quote:
it's not immature tothink he's gay or bi... it's immature to think that everything Fitzgerald wrote was supposed to be interpreted literally!
perhaps the 'underwear scene' was supposed to show how uncouth, slobbish, etc. that society truly was.
i agree with the drunk concept more than the gay one, though it is an interesting twist and take on Nick. xD
just reading the book... found this passage (is it correct to call it a passage?) chapter three when he describes other things he's done besides gatsby's party:
"I even had an affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and worked in the accounting department, but her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction, so when she went on her vacation in July, I let it blow away quietly."
and this:
" I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives... sometimes in my mind i followed them to their apartments... and they turned and smiled back at me..."
so I'm guessing he's fascinated by gatsby but is capable of being attracted to women?
Since homosexuality was rarely spoken of and thought of as vulgar during the 1920s, I think it's safe to say that Fitzgerald wouldn't blatantly create a homosexual character. However he does hint at the possibility of a sexual encounter with Mr. McKee through ellipses and the description of Mr. McKee "clad in his underwear."
With that being said, I think Fitzgerald's main point at the end of Chapter II revolves around moral corruption. As the alcohol sinks in around midnight, the party ends with Tom Buchanan breaking Myrtle's nose without an ounce of guilt. Then as Myrtle begins "bleeding fluently," she tries to cover "the tapestry scenes of Versailles" instead of attending to her nose.
Abruptly switching to Mr. McKee and Nick walking out on Mrytle's distress, Fitzgerald uses Nick's scene with Mr. McKee to further hint at the moral corruption of the party and of the 1920s in general.
"Mr McKee was a pale, feminine man from the flat below. He had just shaved, for there was a white spot of later on his cheekbone ... He informed me that he was in the 'artistic game', and I gathered later that he was a photographer."
"It was nine o'clock - almost immediately afterwards I looked at my watch and found it was ten. Mr McKee was asleep on a chair with his fists clenched in his lap, like a photograph of a man of action. Taking out my handkershief I wiped from his cheek the spot of dried lather that had worried me all the afternoon."
When Gatsby is talking with Nick:
"There was the smile again, but this time I held out against it. 'I don't like mysteries,' I answered, 'and I don't understand why you won't come out frankly and tell me what you want. Why has it all got to come through Miss Baker?'"
When Meyer Wolfsheim is talking with Nick:
"'Fine fellow, isn't he? Handsome to look at and a perfect gentleman.' 'Yes.'"
****
Part of me wants Nick to be bi, because it makes the story all the more interesting. So that's probably why I'm listing a bunch of quotes from the book that may not even have anything to do with the assumption. Eh! :p
well, i think it's not so obvious, but if you read it over, it says that mr. mckee was "clad in his underwear," and our lit class discussed this scene, cause it was a bit weird, lol... but we basically realized that mckee and nick got drunk, they went to mckee's house and they did it , and mckee shows him pictures from his portfolio, because we already read that mckee is a photographer... and the "beauty and the beast..." are all the pictures he took... nick may not have deliberately had sex with mckee, as they were drunk, but throughout the novel, it kinda seems that he sort of a has the personality of a homosexual (no offense), cause he's not that very strong, and he's way more sensitive than most guys i know, he tells the story with a lot of detail, and he feels connected to gatsby, almost interested in him. i think someone before said something about nick only liking jordan because she was masculine... i agree with that, cause when nick first meets jordan, thats what he notices... so yeah, this is what i think, at the most he's probably bisexual, thats what our class thought when he discussed nick's sexuality...
considering Fitzgerald's style of writing, if Nick was gay, he would have made it a bit more obvious and there would be more quotes, however, i too got the impression that he went to bed with the guy.
I took that bit where he's in McKee's bedroom to mean he had passed out, because the of the passage after:
I don't think he's gay, there would have been more clues in the novel if he was...Quote:
Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning Tribune, and waiting for the four o'clock train.
I'm pretty sure that the passage in Chapter 2 hints that they did it, or at least did something. After all, it cuts from an offer to go to lunch to them suddenly in the guy's bedroom. It's purposely ambiguous because if he had been any more descriptive, we'd all be scandalised and it would have overshadowed the novel.
And of course Nick has to be near Gatsby a lot in order for him to narrate the novel but there's still something a bit creepy. Nick tells Gatsby off for having an obsession but Nick is a bit obsessive too.
* "They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."
I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end.
This is basically your airport moment. It's basically an 'I love you'
I do not mean to be obstinate, but I think reading TTG along the lines of new age homoerotic revisionism goes against the narrative angles of the novel, and does not in fact complete or compliment any undercurrent within the text.
Now, this doesn't mean that Fitzgerald doesn't leave odds and ends which aren't curious, and not worth chewing on--and I read the novel so long ago that finishing it over the course of these few weeks made it feel fresh, but I do not see an argument for the freedom of gay relationships in the book.
I grant that Nick isn't macho man, and I will even grant that Hemingway was impatient with the pathos of Fitz's touchy feely newspaper columns, but I think the undertow of the book leads elsewhere. We don't know what the obscene word was that Nick scratched off the step with his foot, but I do not think *faggot* was in use at the time of the novel's currency, and I don't think it matters what the word might have been; it signifies that Gatsby went from celebrated to ostricized, all in the course of protecting Daisy from her crime, and maybe Jay's possible exposure as a gangster.
Tom's racism as an obviously jarring note, that I cannot quite put my finger on, unless Fitzgerald was doing it to diminish a powerful character, but for me, the homoerotic subtext just doesn't fit, not even with the elevator episode--the men were drunk; they saw Tom seriously hurt his lover, did nothing to stop him, and that scene most likely evinces a cowardice they were trying to efface.