Great Gatsby HELP

Poor Gatsby. :bawling:

I felt really sorry for him at the end, but why was he so lonely? i didnt really get that either - he seemed like a decent bloke and wasnt really hiding anything severe (at the beginning i thought that maybe he's murdered someone), so why was it that only his father and the bloke with the owl-eyes turned up for his funeral? In 5 years, since he last saw Daisy he made no friends?

I think it was that he had a lot of aquaintances, but no real friends. He never bonded with anyone, never was able to make lasting connections/friendships. He was nice enough, sure... and people were more than willing to show up for a free party or free food. When the money ran out and the parties stopped, nobody paid him any attention anymore. Nick was the only one who he let get close to him, and really only because he wanted to get to Daisy...though I think in the end he really DID grow fond of Nick as a person. I think there are a lot of people like Gatsby out there.

Gatsby was the afinity of "Eastern Money". Gatsby started poor and earned his money (questionably) but he was driven by the thought that money would give him happiness. This is almost opposite of Nick's beleives coming from Mid-West Old Money". If you remember in the end Nick moves back to the Mid-West, showing the evident distingtion between the East Coast and Mid-West, Gatsby was the east and everything Nick did not want to be appart of.

I am fascinated by these two passages:

"[T]he phone rang, and Gatsby took up the receiver
'Yes ... Well, I can't talk now, old sport ... I said a small town ... He must know what a small town is ... Well, he's no use to us if Detroit is his idea of a small town...'
He rang off." pp 100-1 Pengiun ed.

"When the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said Chicago was calling I thought this would be Daisy at last. But the connection came through as a man's voice, very thin and far away.
'This is Slagle speaking....'
'Yes?' The name was unfamiliar.
'Hell of a note, isn't it? Get my wire?'
'There haven't been any wires.'
'Young Parke's in trouble,' he said rapidly. 'They picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New York giving 'em the numbers just five minutes before. What d'you know about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns -'
'Hello!' I interrupted breathlessly. 'Look here - this isn't Mr Gatsby. Mr Gatsby's dead.'
There was a long silence on the other end of the wire, followed by an exclaimation ... then a quick squawk as the connexion was broken." p 173 Penguin ed.

SO what kind of scam was Gatsby running? Was Wolfshiem involved? etc.
Seems to me there's a story in there.

Wofshiem's mispronouncations serve to emphasise his 'Jewishness'. See comments on anti-semitism in another thread

I am writing the thesis on Nick Carraway in the Great Gatsby.What about your opinions? I need help: the more, the better!!

I have tried to put down a few points from my research paper. Hope it will be any help to you.

The novel’s narrator, Nick is a young man from Minnesota who, after being educated at Yale and fighting in World War I, goes to New York City to learn the bond business. Honest, tolerant, and inclined to reserve judgment, Nick often serves as a confidant for those with troubling secrets. After moving to West Egg, a fictional area of Long Island that is home to the newly rich, Nick quickly befriends his next-door neighbor, the mysterious Jay Gatsby. As Daisy Buchanan’s cousin, he facilitates the rekindling of the romance between her and Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is told entirely through Nick’s eyes; his thoughts and perceptions shape and color the story.

If Gatsby represents one part of Fitzgerald’s personality, the flashy celebrity who pursued and glorified wealth in order to impress the woman he loved, then Nick represents another part: the quiet, reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East. A young man (he turns thirty during the course of the novel) from Minnesota, Nick travels to New York in 1922 to learn the bond business. He lives in the West Egg district of Long Island, next door to Gatsby. Nick is also Daisy’s cousin, which enables him to observe and assist the resurgent love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. As a result of his relationship to these two characters, Nick is the perfect choice to narrate the novel, which functions as a personal memoir of his experiences with Gatsby in the summer of 1922.
Nick is also well suited to narrating The Great Gatsby because of his temperament. As he tells the reader in Chapter I, he is tolerant, open-minded, quiet, and a good listener, and, as a result, others tend to talk to him and tell him their secrets. Gatsby, in particular, comes to trust him and treat him as a confidant. Nick generally assumes a secondary role throughout the novel, preferring to describe and comment on events rather than dominate the action. Often, however, he functions as Fitzgerald’s voice, as in his extended meditation on time and the American dream at the end of Chapter IX.
Insofar as Nick plays a role inside the narrative, he evidences a strongly mixed reaction to life on the East Coast, one that creates a powerful internal conflict that he does not resolve until the end of the book. On the one hand, Nick is attracted to the fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of New York. On the other hand, he finds that lifestyle grotesque and damaging. This inner conflict is symbolized throughout the book by Nick’s romantic affair with Jordan Baker. He is attracted to her vivacity and her sophistication just as he is repelled by her dishonesty and her lack of consideration for other people.
Nick states that there is a “quality of distortion” to life in New York, and this lifestyle makes him lose his equilibrium, especially early in the novel, as when he gets drunk at Gatsby’s party in Chapter II. After witnessing the unraveling of Gatsby’s dream and presiding over the appalling spectacle of Gatsby’s funeral, Nick realizes that the fast life of revelry on the East Coast is a cover for the terrifying moral emptiness that the valley of ashes symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this insight demonstrates, he returns to Minnesota in search of a quieter life structured by more traditional moral values.

The character of Nick Carraway functions prominently in this novel. He is a transplanted Mid-westerner who buys a house in West Egg and sells bonds on Wall Street in New York City. Young and attractive, Nick becomes friends with Jordan Baker at a dinner party, where he is reunited with his cousin, Daisy. Nick, who claims to be the only honest person he knows, succumbs to the lavish recklessness of his neighbors and the knowledge of the secret moral entanglements that comprise their essentially hollow lives.

Nick Carraway is the narrator of the entire novel, the protagonist of his own plot, and the moral judge of the events that surround him. He is a practical and conservative young man who turns thirty during the course of the story. Raised in a small town in the Midwest, he believes his hometown to be stifling and decides to move to the East Coast to learn the bond business. He hopes to find a sense of identity and freedom in New York. He rents a small bungalow out from the city on a fashionable island known as West Egg. His next door neighbor is Jay Gatsby, and his distant cousin, Daisy Buchanan, lives across the bay with her husband, Tom, on the more fashionable and wealthy island of East Egg. Nick plays an important role in the main plot of the novel, for he is responsible for reuniting Gatsby and Daisy.

During the course of the novel, the naïve and innocent Nick becomes totally disillusioned with the lifestyle of the wealthy on the East Coast. For most of the book, he is disgusted by Gatsby, with his wild parties, ostentatious dress and manners, and his shady business dealings. He is horrified when he meets Meyer Wolfsheim, a racketeer and business associates of Gatsby, who wears human molars as cuff links and who fixed the World Series. He feels shame for Jordan Baker for her incurable lying and cheating, both on and off the golf course. He is shocked that Tom has a mistress to whom he wants to introduce Nick and horrified that he hits her in the face, breaking her nose. His greatest disillusionment, however, comes with Daisy. He sees her shallowness and carelessness and knows that she is trifling with Gatsby. More shocking is the fact that she hits and kills Myrtle while driving Gatsby's car and does not even bother to stop; she then willingly lets Gatsby take the blame for the accident. When Gatsby is killed, he is appalled that Daisy does not even bother to telephone or send flowers to the funeral. It is not surprising that in the end he judges Gatsby to be worth more than the whole bunch of the Buchanans and their wealthy friends.
Nick Carraway does indeed find his identity on the East Coast. At first he is hesitant to take a stand or to judge those with whom he comes into contact; however, as the novel progresses, he begins to find everything about New York disgusting. He realizes that he has no desire to marry the likes of Jordan Baker, or live the careless, purposeless lifestyle of the Buchanan's, or be associated with immoral characters like Meyer Wolfsheim. As a result, on his thirtieth birthday, Nick realizes that his place in the world is in the Midwest, a symbol of morality and conservatism. In an orderly fashion, he fulfills his personal responsibilities in the East, including an explanation to Jordan of his feelings for her. He then returns to live in his small hometown and marry his old girlfriend, who has faithfully waited for him. As a result, Nick's plot ends as a comedy, for he has found himself and his place in life; he has also matured enough to make wise, moral judgements.

Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby opens with Nick Carraway, the novel's narrator, introducing himself as a man who tends to listen and observe without passing judgment. Carraway immediately proceeds to preface the story he recounts over the course of the novel by passing judgment on his former companions. Mysteriously hinting at themes which will pervade the plot of his tale Carraway reflects, "When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby...was exempt from my reaction -- Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn" (6). Thus, providing plenty of room for speculation as to what provoked such a critical response, Nick begins his story.

After serving in World War I, Nick moves east from his Midwest roots to learn the bond business, settling on the island of West Egg, New York, "one of the strangest communities in North America" (9). Nick reveals, however, that his story really begins on a June evening in 1922, when he drives over to East Egg (the more fashionable and wealthy of the twin islands) to have dinner with "two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all" (11). Nick meets with an old college associate, Tom Buchanan, and his wife, Daisy, as well as Jordan Baker, an unexpected guest. For more detailed information about these characters, please see the Character Profiles section.

When the light-hearted conversation includes a brief reference to a man named Gatsby -- his next-door neighbor -- Nick's curiosity is evident. Tension mounts during dinner, however, when Tom leaves to answer a phone call, and Jordan reveals to Nick that it is Tom's mistress calling. Later, perhaps searching for sympathy in response to Tom's phone call during dinner, Daisy cynically tells Nick that she believes "everything's terrible" (21). Though riveted by Daisy's voice while she speaks, Carraway finds her insincere, and leaves the Buchanan house feeling "confused and disgusted" (24).

Upon arriving home Nick sees a silhouette emerge from the mansion next door, and assumes it is Gatsby. When Gatsby suddenly stretches his arms toward the water, Nick turns to see what he reaches for, but "distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock" (26). When Nick looks back towards the silhouette, Gatsby has vanished.

Moderators sorry for the multiple posts.

I'm finishing up a Dialectical journal, and one particular question i'm having problems with is to discuss Fitzgerald's use of satire in this book. Nothing in particular stands out to me. Anyone have any suggestions

Just curious what people think, but I see a lot of similarities. Obviously Gatsby has the ill-gotten wealth similar to the mob money of the Sopranos, and they are both well-made/written, both take place on the east coast, but the other connection is that both give us average, non-wealthy, un-connected observers a chance to take a peak behind the scenes into the lives of the ultra-wealthy and confirm what we all knew deep down: that it's not all it's cracked up to be. What looks like "the life" on the outside is riddled with problems. There's an emptiness behind the facade, they have problems with intimate relationships just like the average person does, despite the appearance of having many friends (big parties, "the family") they are all just as likely to be buried alone (or shot by their own team which happens often on Sopranos).

I think there's a similar theme to both works.

Well, I loved it. Although it didn't last long enough, my book had 171 pages, it felt like about 50.

the word "gonnegtion" is spelt the way that these men would say it and the actual spelling of the word is connection however it is spelt the way the would say it such as "oggsford"

Was Myrtle angry with her life:flare: :flare: :flare: :flare: or was she sad:bawling: :bawling:!!!!