Thought Piece 2 - Saira

1. Based on your reading of the novel so far, do you think Fitzgerald accomplished his goal?

The Great Gatsby was and still is something very new and extraordinary, especially for the period of literary readers at the time of 1925, they got a new outlook on the jazz age through The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald kept his word, when he said he was going to write something “beautiful and simple and intricately patterned” and even though, I have been through only three chapters I can certainly say that Fitzgerald has made this book very detailed and intricately patterned, so much that you can almost visually imagine what Fitzgerald is trying to show us. It doesn’t matter what he’s talking about through Nick, whether it’s the settings around him, "the front was broken with by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon", past knowledge on any of the characters “a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence…”, conversations with characters, “’is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked delicately, ‘it’s a bitch’ said Tom decisively…” or even what the characters are doing at the moment in time in the book “the large room was full of people. One of the girls in yellow was playing the piano, and beside her stood a tall red haired young lady from a famous chorus, engaged in a song.”

Fitzgerald has without a doubt accomplished his goal, with each chapter comes more detail which makes this story extremely extraordinary, as something different is going in every chapter. Even in this period nothing like the Great Gatsby has been written again.

2. How far do you agree with Wilson's comment that the 'characters were unpleasant?' Is there any way to argue against this?

Personally, I agree with Wilson and do find some of the characters quite unpleasant, however when it comes to Nick I don’t feel like he’s a unpleasant character as he is very likeable and easily connects to the audience but at times I find it a little disturbing that we barely know anything about him, yet we believe everything he tells us.

Tom, Daisy and Jordan are an unpleasant bunch but they’re much better than Myrtle, Tom’s mistress and her bunch. In my opinion, Tom is a very unpleasant character because he’s a very inhuman character he shows no emotions at the start of chapter two till the end of chapter two, where he “broke her nose with his open hand”, something that makes him seem animalistic. When it comes to Daisy, I don’t know what to think anymore, especially because I don’t know if she’s actually dumb or she’s actually pretending to be dumb. However, when it comes to Jordan in the first chapter I really thought that she was an unpleasant character, however in the third character we see Jordan in a different light, she’s no longer ‘stiff’ and her own party becomes “too polite” for her.

When it comes to Myrtle, the “other woman” and her bunch, I can absolutely agree that they’re very unpleasant. Especially when it comes to Myrtle, it’s obvious that she’s only with Tom for  the luxuries of life but when she speaks of herself, she gives herself great importance and thinks she’s above everyone else. She’s also a very hypocritical character, “all they think of is money” when truly that’s all she thinks of. Catherine, Myrtles sister is also introduced to us as “beautiful by people who ought to know” and when Catherine speaks it reflects onto Myrtle, both sisters are very alike, hypocritical, misinformed liars. The bunch of people associated with Myrtle are very loud and artificial, which immediately makes the mood unpleasant and the obvious vulgarity of the bunch, the way they converse and act with each other shows how greatly they think of themselves.

Even though I agree with Wilson, I believe that these unpleasant characters show different social class and different styles of characters, they bring variation into the book and make it more interesting.