The Great Gatsby
discussion
What does Gatsby mean when he tells Nick that if Daisy ever loved Tom it was "just personal"?
Mark wrote: "I'm branching out. I've been meaning to post this question in the "Is Nick Carraway gay?" discussion, not because it has a damned thing to do with that question but because that's where all my fr..."
It strikes me that Gatsby is obsessed with Daisy, not in love, although the two states are not dissimilar.
In his childish obsessed frame of mind, Gatsby is in denial about Daisy's rejection of him in favor of Tom. "...Just personal" represents Gatsby's refusal to comprehend what was incomprehensible, the dismissal of a vitally unacceptable reality.
Daisy, rendered vulnerable because of Tom's infidelities, was temporarily dislodged from her devotion to her flawed husband by Gatsby's intense pursuit. Her adulterous enthusiasm for Gatsby fed his obsessive flames for Daisy, making rational thought even less accessible to him.
Love-crazed, obsessed, Gatsby swirled in a hormonal soup of irrationality, and "just personal" was a phrase that allowed him to cope with Daisy's rejection by diminishing her attraction for Tom as inauthentic, something less than the true love that they once shared before the war and he still craves.
Gatsby epitomizes the saying: "Being in love is a form of insanity."
This obsessiveness interpretation of Gatsby's "only personal" comment tends to support Nick's own assessment: "What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn't be measured?", with obsessiveness being the intensity that cannot be measured.
Gatsby is great.God is great.
Gatsby is God.
I have a friend who could probably speak at tremendous length here about that line, and I don't have the time right now to give enough support to what I'm about to say, but I think you're onto something here in the novel that we have never touched on in the "Is Nick gay?" thread. And you're right; the discussion probably doesn't belong in that thread.
So...Gatsby like God has this immensely grand notion of the universe that he conceives and gives shape to. But no matter how perfect this creation was in his mind as he conceived of it, here in the temporal world it can't possibly match the grandeur and perfection of how he had it all planned out while he was over in Europe and then back in America as he worked toward creating the grand illusion that is himself. So if Daisy falls short of that perfection he had first envisioned and then breathed life into, then it can only be "personal," not something that really has a part in his bigger plan that is transcendent and eternal.
Go back and look for the connections in the novel not only between Gatsby and God/Christ, but also connections to a kind of Platonic/neo-Platonic line of thinking. It's definitely worth a long and robustious new thread of discussion!
Petergiaquinta wrote: "Gatsby is great. God is great. Gatsby is God."OK, now I get it. When you set it up to be a "discussion question," the user interface is automatically formatted in such a way that it limits the ability to discuss the question. That makes a lot of sense, Goodreads.
Here's what I posted earlier in response to Monty and Peter before I figured out how the discussions work (and are poorly designed):
I'm with you, Monty. But to my mind your arrows are sticking all around the bull's eye rather than hitting it dead center. That's not intended to take anything away from all you've said. Good stuff, but Fitzgerald could have just as easily decided Gatsby would say:
"In any case," he said, "it just wasn't meaningful."
OR
"In any case," he said, "it just didn't matter."
OR
"In any case," he said, "it was just a silly fleeting love, not as strong as ours." One would hope that option would have made Fitzgerald throw up in his mouth a little had the thought of it, but you get the idea.
Instead we have not only this "In any case," he said, "it was just personal." as well as Nick's curiosity and mild shock about the statement.
I think Peter is getting closer to the way I see it. What is the opposite of personal? Wouldn't it be ... public? Something that is destined to be more than just the whim or desire or emotions of a mere individual?
Much is said about Gatsby's character in addition to "his conception of the affair" when we see him, again, diminishing or dismissing a love between two people as "personal." For what the fuck else is love between two people supposed to be? It is quintessentially personal, no?
Gatsby sees his love of Daisy and Daisy's love of him in the same way that so many political leaders, public intellectuals and shapers of popular culture and public opinion in America still saw manifest destiny in the times leading up to and including the 1920s.
Yeah? Too far out on a limb?
For those who think manifest destiny is an idea that has been antiquated by history, I give you American Exceptionalism. A rose by any other name ... and like that.
I took it as a colloquialism of the time to mean that she didn't love him but she had her own personal reasons for being with him that had absolutely nothing to do with love. (...financial security and social standing).Kind of like how in modern times, when say that "it's nothing personal".....he's saying that with Daisy, her decision to marry Tom was personal and calculated. She picked him for a reason and it most certainly wasn't love. It was all about her personal gain. Knowing that she didn't love Tom and only married him for his money and social status, makes Gatsby feel better.
I'm going to have to go through that section again to be able to speak intelligently about it, but if I can speak unintelligently for a moment...By "personal" he could be referring to her personality. I've--personally--always thought of Daisy as a kind of Shakespearean foil to Gatsby the hero, and in that sense she has her own fatal flaw that works to enable Gatsby's. In Daisy's case, her flaw is that she wants to be wanted. She loves to be loved. She doesn't actually want or love the person who wants or loves her, but her personality/spirit is such that she needs validation in the form of desire to justify herself.
Gatsby isn't really the sharpest pencil in the box, so that kind of analysis might not be what he was going for. He might know that kind of thing intuitively, however, given that he is himself something of a wounded bird. He needs Daisy to validate him more or less in his entirety. Daisy is happy to do that... when it validates her in return.
It's the failure of either character to see past themselves that results in their ultimate tragedy. Gatsby being murdered in pursuit of his goal, and Daisy saddled forever to a man who is indifferent to her.
Mochaspresso wrote: "I took it as a colloquialism of the time to mean that she didn't love him but she had her own personal reasons for being with him that had absolutely nothing to do with love. (...financial securit..."That's interesting (and deflating). But I wonder if there's any third party confirmation available that it was "a colloquialism of the time."
And the way Fitzgerald, through Nick's reaction, draws so much attention to the statement makes me wonder (has me hoping?) if there's not something more than that going on there.
But I must be careful. To quote Detective Martin E. Hart: "You got a chapter in one of those books on jumping to conclusions? You attach an assumption to a piece of evidence, you start to bend the narrative to support it. Prejudice yourself."
Mark wrote: "...diminishing or dismissing a love between two people as "personal." For what the fuck else is love between two people supposed to be? It is quintessentially personal, no?"Ideally, love between two people is indeed quintessentially personal, however I was far from convinced that the Buchanans' marriage had a strong foundation of love. Marriage, even one sanctified by religion, does not necessarily confer love on a relationship, particularly when a large family estate is involved. If anything, theirs was suspect in that vein; so Gatsby's dismissal of it had some logical foundation.
I think Fitzgerald wanted us to think Gatsby's obsessive love for Daisy was authentic and pure, but it was tainted, dishonored by their adulterous affair. Dismissing the marriage was placing himself, Gatsby, above the law, above social decorum, even above God. You don't own someone just because you love them. If you truly love them you put their happiness above your own.
In the hotel meeting room Daisy came to her senses and rejected Gatsby for the second time. And he couldn't accept it, could not face the truth, further demonstrating his undeserving weak character.
Monty J wrote: "I was far from convinced that the Buchanans' marriage had a strong foundation of love. ..."Sure. But he didn't dismiss their love as "one of convenience" or "all about the money" or as "motivated more by desire for strong social standing than by true feeling."
He dismissed it because it was personal. I'm telling you, I think there's something there. Fitzgerald does seem to want to draw particular attention to it. Unless Mocha's right and it's just a colloquialism.
Jay is not the sharpest pencil around. How I love that expression.Yes, that is without saying. When Daddy Gatz comes by to Nick`s, he shows him Jays teenage daily planner. We can see from this and his other deficiencies that he is not an intelligent person. No, Biloxi is in Mississippi and SF is not the Midwest. In the latter cases either it was Jay that was ignorant of the facts or SF himself, so when Jay says that it must have been personal, he intended to say the very opposite,(i.e. the security of Tom`s wealth, the social position of having scrambling a couple of rungs on the social ladder, a good breeder with a greater possibility of strong, healthy children, etc.)
Mochaspresso wrote: "It was all about her personal gain. Knowing that she didn't love Tom and only married him for his money and social status, makes Gatsby feel better."Yes, this is what I was getting at. Gatsby saw the Buchanans' relationship as inferior, "just personal."
"...she didn't love him but she had her own personal reasons for being with him that had absolutely nothing to do with love. (...financial security and social standing)."
Scarlet O'Hara reincarnate.
Mark, your quotation is from chapter eight and comes towards the end of Gatsby's final meeting with Nick. They have spent the whole night in each other's company and he has shared some secrets about his past, most of which Nick has already revealed to us. Also revealed is the information that he "took her..." (Daisy) "...one October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand."This is reported, not even using indirect speech. But it's as close to his own words as Nick can narrate. We are hearing exactly why he believed, still believes, he and Daisy share true love. Nick goes on to report the depth of his deception and self deception - with telling use of the the word "person" in adjoining sentences:
He might have despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under false pretences. I don't mean that he had traded on his phantom millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as herself - that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of fact he had no such facilities - he had no comfortable family standing behind him and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere in the world.
A little further on, Fitzgerald has Nick preserve a short speech of Gatsby's in direction quotation,
'I can't describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her, old sport. I even hoped for a while that she'd throw me over, but she didn't because she was in love with me too...'
As far as he is concerned, they were married then. So how come, as Gatsby and Nick part for the last time, he tells him again in one of those rare bits of direct speech that Daisy's love for her husband Tom "was just personal"?
In Gatsby's inverted view, "personal" has come to mean fraudulent. It's something made up to show to the world. Or arbitrary. It's not important, just as the life of the individual soldier in war. When Daisy and he were equals, they were true lovers. Nothing can change that. He admits she might have felt a passing love for Tom when they were first married. But he sees it only as confirmation of her truer feelings for him, and asks Nick if he can follow the logic. Before Nick can answer, he dismisses the thought with the declaration that "personal" - ie false/unimportant - is over-ridden. Nick's answer is to ask us – the readers - if Gatsby wasn't the victim of a misconception. This is what we are meant to think.
The reasoning goes like this: the flaw in Gatsby's argument is not a simple misjudgement of Daisy's love. It's his inability to see through his own delusion. At heart, and even in his head, he is still a bit of a hick. As a con merchant, he can't appreciate Tom's seeing through him, and he kids himself that Daisy was merely frightened by Tom in the big confrontation scene. We don't know what Gatsby and Daisy talked about in the car before Myrtle was run over, and it is a bit of a mystery why Fitzgerald has them driving back together (except to satisfy the plot direction of killing Myrtle!). But whatever they did talk about was forgotten in the panic following the accident.
This role playing of Gatsby's is reinforced in their parting, and in Nick's final description of the man. The words, “I disapproved of him from beginning to end” showing the two-faced nature of their relationship,
'They're a rotten crowd,' I shouted across the lawn. It was the only compliment I ever paid him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch of them put together.'
I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him. First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we'd been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time.
The “radiant and understanding smile” is of course his carefully constructed personality coming through (a little earlier he has “sat down gloomily”). Both men are in fact only being personal.
This always happens! I write my piece and post it only to find everyone else has commented and chatted and things have just moved on. I'm not playing any more. My teddy is out of the pram. I'm pretending to be a asleep. And I'm crying. So there!
It's past my bedtime anyhow. Nighty-night!
Philip wrote: "The “radiant and understanding smile” is of course his carefully constructed personality coming through (a little earlier he has “sat down gloomily”)"The foregoing, when taken in concert with Nick's opening declaration ["If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life..."] brings into focus the false, deceptive, even self-delusional nature of Gatsby's personality.
Jay Gatsby is a phantom, a mental construct, incapable of offering Daisy, the woman of his dreams, an authentic relationship because he is afraid she will not accept the real man, Jimmy Gatz, who kept as a boy that diary with the weekly schedule and budget.
Only in death is Jimmy Gatz revealed, and it is too late for Daisy to get to know the real person behind the facade. And here the archetypal nature of Gatsby springs into the spotlight.
Everyone, male and female, has a polished public persona, a social veneer they present to the world and particularly to a potential mate. Jay Gatsby represents that polished version of self, which happens to be irreconcilable with his ethically compromised authentic self whom Tom has exposed as a criminal.
Everyone, male and female, has a moment of reckoning when their public persona bubble withers before their potential mate: a balloon of credit card debt, unfiled tax returns, snoring, sees her in daylight without make-up, etc. Jay's conundrum reminds us of ourselves. Who, really, are we? How much of our secret true self are we willing to reveal and how close is it to the polished version?
Repeatedly and early in the novel, like the tolling of a bell, the existential question is voiced: "Who is Jay Gatsby?"
Philip wrote: "When Daisy and he were equals, they were true lovers."But they were never equals. Nor could they be because Gatsby had sold her from the beginning on his facade, keeping Jimmy Gatz hidden.
What would you expect Monty? He was attracted to her when they first met. Had he told he was from the other side of the tracks, perhaps she would have brushed him off. Yes, he`s a fraud, but you lack a bit of sympathy for his character and prefer a bigoted, indolent, philandering jerk. Somehow, you are kinder to Tom, but he`s a bastard. Breaking a lovers nose-what kind of monster is he?Yes, perhaps Tom is better suited but then she is no "catch", except by the standards of her social class. And I for one, don`t take exception to that phrase.
Geoffrey wrote: "Somehow, you are kinder to Tom, but he`s a bastard. Breaking a lovers nose-what kind of monster is he?."I don't mean to be at all kind to Tom. It's just that I don't have very high expectations of him. I expect more of Gatsby because of his humble origin. And I attack him because so many readers seem willing to overlook his flaws and adore him.
Gatsby also is the viewpoint character on whose shoulders the message of the story is carried; so he must be carefully scrutinized.
Philip wrote: "Mark, your quotation is from chapter eight and comes towards the end of Gatsby's final meeting with Nick. They have spent the whole night in each other's company and he has shared some secrets abou..."This is good. Thanx Philip.
MontyI don´t so much deplore Jay, but have no respect for him. He´s just a fool, so I wouldn´t have so much disgust but just low regard for his person.
I understand you. Sometimes I have overstated my case as well because I felt there needed to be a balancing out of viewpoint. SF himself pities Jay and is sympathetic to his person. Then there are those of us who just believe him to be a horse´s ass and not deserving either our adulation, or his hero status.
Monty J wrote: "The foregoing, when taken in concert with Nick's opening declaration ["If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life...", brings into focus the false, deceptive, even self-delusional nature of Gatsby's personality."You've hit the seed shit there. I wish I'd remembered the opening of the book!
It was late for me last night and I stupidly forgot to add that the line Mark picked out, "it was just personal" is of course an inversion of the usual excuse, "It's personal." It IS personal in the conventional sense. What Gastsby is trying in his gauche self-educated way is to be ironic. I think he's also trying to overrride the personal aspect to his rivalry with Tom, to be magnanimous in what he still believes in his victory.
BTW, when I said Gatsby and Daisy became equals, I only meant equal from his point of view. But please bear in mind, that his taking Daisy - his having it off with her - is something he would not have expected. We don't know if she was a virgin, but he would believe that she was. In his delusion, they became married at that point. The poor mad fool.
Philip wrote: "...equal from his point of view."Yes, of course.
"In his delusion, they became married at that point."
Agreed.
"The poor mad fool."
Says it all.
Monty J wrote: "Mark wrote: "I'm branching out. I've been meaning to post this question in the "Is Nick Carraway gay?" discussion, not because it has a damned thing to do with that question but because that's wh..."
I have to say I utterly agree with your sumising on this tpoic. Your observations of Gatsby and his actions are very correct.
I think Gatsby suffers from OCD or some mental disorder to be so obsessed with Daisy, which makes for a great unrequited love story. Does Daisy love Tom? I think she feels that they are social equals. I think Daisy loves Daisy and is incapable of love for anyone other than herself and this is one of the points of the book.
Monty J wrote: "so Gatsby's dismissal of it had some logical foundation ..."That's clear to me. It's just dismissing any love on the grounds that it's "just personal" seemed weird. But I've just reread your comments and the obsession angle makes a lot of sense.
Philip wrote: " ... this always happens ... "If you mean that Monty J beat you to the punch: yes and no. You're both going down the same path and arrive at more or less the same place, but your interpretation added to Monty's.
Thanks to both of you.
You know, if we want to be disgruntled with Nick because he's two faced and Gatsby because he's a delusional hick grasping for an imagined heaven through criminal and immoral means, we easily can. I'm far too flawed a person myself to sit in that kind of judgement (even of literary characters who, let's remind ourselves, aren't real). And I have to wonder if that's what Fitzgerald intentions were. Nick is a two faced shit. Gatsby is an obsessive dreamer criminal. And you're done. Jolly good, you've completed the puzzle. I wonder ...
To sum Nick up as two-faced and despise him for that, case closed, seems reductionist to me. Janus, after all, was the God of beginnings and transitions. Perhaps we can learn more from Nick if we see his attitude toward Jay as more paradoxical than hypocritical. Most logical paradoxes are ultimately proven false but they sharpen critical thinking in the process.
I have to get back to that critical theory book. It's good. And I've only nibbled at the reader response chapter. Maybe I'm indulging in a reader response interpretation of TGG (maybe I'm not the only one).
I think this: Jay Gatsby is America.
I agree that Jay Gatsby is America. Daisy herself was not a nice person...neither was the asexual Jordan.
Mark wrote: "...how does that make labeling any love she might have had for Tom as "just personal" a dismissal or diminishment of it?"Drilling down and parsing, the answer depends on what Gatsby meant by "it."(I feel like Bill Clinton here.)
"It" could have referred to Daisy's love for Tom or it could have referred to her choice to marry him. We have been assuming the former, but the latter makes more sense to me.
Daisy's choice to marry Tom could have been one of convenience, a choice of wealth and position and physical appearance, with love a secondary notion. In this case her choice was "just personal," with security and position and Tom's robust physique as her "personal" reasons.
"Just personal" would then be a polite way of accusing her of exploitation without calling her a gold digger.
Weren't both Daisy AND Tom from the same upper social class? That's why it was "just personal"?
I don´t believe Daisy was of Tom´s class considering when Jay visited her in his earlier courtship that Jordan describes her home on a street with other homes. This strikes me more as upper middle class suburbia rather than the more isolated mansions of those with overwhelming wealth.Had she Tom´s wealth she could have had her own home.
The best definition of socio-economic class I have come across was a nine-tiered class system in America. The top ninth would be Bill Gates, Koch Bros., those with immense wealth and extensive holdings.(upper-upper)
The next ninth are those millionaires who don´t need to work as well to support themselves but don´t have enough money to buy Fortune 500 companies and the purchase of a yacht is limited to 50 feet. (middle-upper class)
The next ninth are the nouveau rich with 2-10 million, enough to live on in a luxurious lifestyle for the remainder of their lives.(lower-upper class)
The 4th are the professionals. Usually engineers, psychiatrists, accountants, doctors, etc. They live comfortably, take more than 1 vacation a year and travel to exotic places in good style....have Volvos and the home has a jacuzzi. (Im being a Little facetious here).upper middle class
Tom clearly is at the 2nd level, possibly at the first. I don´t believe Daisy to be of the same background but that would not preclude her from being of the same social set as Tom. After all, there are few of Tom´s wealth and it would significantly restrict his choice of lifetime mates. This may also explain his excessive philandering as he has chosen a woman to marry who is slightly lower than him in the social pecking order, resulting in his disrespect of her person, without his realising that it is actually he who is the pond scum.
KathyYou´re absolutely right. Daisy is unbelievably self centered and narcissistic.
Mark wrote: "I think this: Jay Gatsby is America.That kinda highfallutin stuff is way below you, man. Gatsby is no more America than a certain large statue donated by a recently defeated France.
If you want to study close reading with a twist of sociolinguistics, try the book I suggested. It's shorter but covers much the same ground. I'll send you a link to it, when I'm on the other machine.
Yes, Monty got one over on me by digging out the P-Word in chapter one. But I pat myself on the back for answering the question you posed us. I still say we work well together as a team.
Disagree that Nick is a shit. He is also Everyman after all. If he's a shit, we all are. Which we ain't.
BTW, I have just copied the whole of the Is Nick Carraway Gay? thread. Like I said, one day it might just vamoos.
I think I need to re-read the parts about Nick.
Philip wrote: " I still say we work well together as a team..."I toast to that. You can catch up later or by proxy or through similar rituals ... whatever.
I have long since lost track of this close reading related book you mention. Please do resend reference to the title.
Cheers!
Geoffrey wrote: "I don´t believe Daisy was of Tom´s class considering when Jay visited her in his earlier courtship that Jordan describes her home on a street with other homes."My experience of very rich people - in more than one country - is that they often choose to live quite moderately. The rich don't get rich by wasting their money. It's characters like Gatsby who flaunt their wealth, some living beyond their means to do it.
Fitzgerald's "The Far Side of Paradise", while not being a good novel, does paint some realistic impressions of life for the well off in the period. Also, he wrote drawing on his youthful experiences with Ginevra King and Zelda.
Mark wrote:I toast to that.
Toasting you back will have to wait until April 1st (when I get down off this wagon). If there's anything left by then.
Philip wrote: "while not being a good novel..."Philip: Have you read The Beautiful and Damned? No spoilers, please. I've had one run at it and stalled and am back at it again. Just curious if you've read it.
Geoffrey wrote: "a nine-tiered class system in America ..."Where does this nine tiered approach come from? I wonder if it was designed with more with current times in mind than the 1920s. If believe there's a case to be made that the American middle class was not as substantial in the 1920s as it would quickly become after WW II ... I know everything's relative, I suppose middle class could be defined as the lower rungs of your 4th level and what I presume is the third level.
BTW, do you really think the person who mentioned Johnny Lydon in the other thread was a "troll" for doing so? Or was that an inside-joke that I'm on the outside of?
I think said person was just sharing...unless you're referring to me because I'm the guy who dropped Lydon's name into the mix first. There is something a tad trollish about me, but there's nothing I can do about my genes!
And I'm sad no one wants to pick up on my observations about Gatsby as a divine figure breathing life into his conception of the world...ah well, I'll stop being lazy and do my own heavy lifting here.
So here in Chapter 6, Nick says, "The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end." That's on page 65 in my edition.And then at the end of Chapter 6, Nick tells of "one autumn night five years before" when Gatsby is walking down the street with Daisy: "Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees-he could climb it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.
“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 lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.” That's pages 73-74.
Nick tells us that Gatsby's story is appallingly sentimental, but at the same time Nick is "reminded of something--an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words that I had heard a long time ago." Nick wants to give voice to it, but he cannot because words fail him in the same way that Gatsby's vision of ineffable beauty and perfection fail him the moment he links that vision to the temporal imperfections of a woman like Daisy. And so Gatsby wants Daisy to say that she never loved Tom; he wants to tell Nick of course he can change the past and turn back time because in that beautiful mind of his he can, but in the tainted, real world he lives in of course he cannot. And that's why he is indeed a fool as some have just said, but he's still more than a fool...I suppose he's a fool in the way that God is a fool for creating us and supposing that we'll go right along doing what he expects of us.
So there, in this particular way of looking at Mark's question, is why it's "just personal." It's "personal" in the way that human imperfection is "personal" and cannot measure up to the perfection that is expected of us.
And that's not to dismiss anything else that anyone (or mostly anyone) has said on the thread thus far. But I really think that Fitzgerald is doing something a little more "transcendent" (?) with that line. I think Mark is on to something really crucial to the novel as a whole by raising the question that he has.
MarkI came across the 9 tier socioeconomic system years ago and it stuck firmly in my mind. It made sense then, it makes sense to me even now. It is a more contemporary concept, but I don´t see why it wouldn´t apply to the 1920´s. The pyramid would just look different.
If I could find it I would, but I don´t even know what sociology school adopted it, nor any of its creators.
The fifth level would be middle, middle class, mostly consisting of civil servants, skilled tradesman and retail managerial class, ie. the floor managers and back office people of Sam´s Club, Macy´s etc.
The sixth tier would be low-skilled Factory workers.
Seventh tier is what we would normally call the poor, but in this case the working poor. CVS and A & P sales personnel, i.e. people not making much more than mínimum wage.....McDonald´s employees.
8th tier are the marginally employable. These are people with non permanent "shit" Jobs....ie. migrant farm workers, cement mixers on the construction sites, etc. Their financial security is tenuous at best and are often indebted. In previous times, they would have become indentured servants.
And the last tier, panhandlers.
Upper class has 3 levels and so do the other two, ie. middle class and lower class.
Petergiaquinta wrote: "So here in Chapter 6, Nick says, 'The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, ...'"Nice. I'll have to come back to this and ponder more.
I think it was mentioned more than once on the other thread (you know, the Is Nick or Isn't he? one), perhaps even by you, is that one of the amazing things about TGG is how it so easily yields itself up to widely varying interpretations. Joyce created something similar with Ulysses but it was diabolical and mandarin in its complexity and one feels that while there are plenty of easter eggs hidden all about it only yields itself up to one or two correct answers.
I'm equally chagrined and challenged that Philip thinks my Gatsby = America thing isn't a ball worth picking up. Sure, it's been said and done before, but the story checks out.
Must get dinner started.
More later.
PhilipThat the rich live moderately is not necessarily a truism. Even should we look at the novel, we can plainly see that Tom and Daisy do not live moderately.
My experience is that the rich do live extremely well off. I recall the richest classmate in my grade school lived in the most choice piece of property on the Atlantic Ocean in our área, and had the most expensive home in the county. Her dad had 9 gas stations, an oil distrubutorship for the county and a 50 lane bowling alley. I never did know what his other holdings were but there wasn´t ever a fear of showing off their wealth.
The next wealthy family had a 18 room mansión. They owned a Factory that made cardboard cartons. Those are my experiences of megawealth. I would classify them at somewhere between the 3d level, ie. nouveau rich and 2nd tier.
But yes, you´re absolutely correct in saying that there are those who live moderately who have immense wealthy. I recall a client of my father´s who owned mines in Eastern Canada worth approx. $10 million who did not own a luxury car and his wife did not wear jewelry or expensive clothes.
PhilipWe´ve all raised points that have not entered into the general discussion. I can feel your pain, Bill can´t because he doesn´t read GOODREADS, unless you invite him.
Mark wrote: "I'm equally chagrined and challenged that Philip thinks my Gatsby = America thing isn't a ball worth picking up. Sure, it's been said and done before, but the story checks out. "No, you're right...there's something quintessentially American about Gatsby. We could haul out the whole American Dream thing and run through those talking points, but I'll leave that to someone else. What's even more quintessentially "American" to me is that Hopalong Cassidy novel that old Mr. Gatz shows Nick. In it, a teenage Gatsby has created a schedule for himself and a list of resolutions, something right out of Ben Franklin's autobiography. Somebody somewhere called Franklin the first American, if I remember rightly, and that list written out in a dime-store cowboy novel idealizing the vanishing frontier is about American as things can get.
There's also something else painfully American (and almost prophetic) about Gatsby's elaborate facade and the way it comes crumbling down around him just a few short years before the bubble of the Jazz Age pops in the Great Crash of 1929. It's almost like Fitzgerald has a crystal ball...
Petergiaquinta wrote: "So here in Chapter 6, Nick says, "The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, ..."Wow. That's the kind of reading I'm talking about.
But Bogart=America. And so do Guthrie, Marilyn, a statue called La Liberté, Hershey Bars, The Ford Model T, generals Lee and Grant (hence the Lee-Grant tank), all kinds of - and indeed every kind of - contender. Go down this road and you'll find several sad nutters screaming "Reagan - one more time for the Gipper!" And what about John Wayne? You can't tell me he doesn't =America when you know damn well half a billion people round the world see America as a gun-toting revenger with God on his side. I'd as soon try Burroughs=America.
If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer Ginsberg = America:"It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again."
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I've been meaning to post this question in the "Is Nick Carraway gay?" discussion, not because it has a damned thing to do with that question but because that's where all my friends are (along with some assorted heroes, villains and cameos from the fleeting faceless extras of the universe). The passage strikes me (and the heart of it strikes Nick the same way) as a curious one. I have some nascent ideas about what's going on but they're half baked at best. Please tell me what you think this means or how it fits into the novel's larger meaning:
Even if Gatsby does see his affair with Daisy as immeasurably intense, how does that make labeling any love she might have had for Tom as "just personal" a dismissal or diminishment of it? Or is that not what's going on here? Am I the only that sees this as a tough nut to crack? Please tell me what you think. Thanks.