Nick

• “The rules of behavior associated with an amusement park.”  


  View on class and alcohol -- types of people at Gatsby's parties
• “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning—” 


  -Past tense --> dreams are in past, have faded with his death

  -Green light is symbolic of American Dream - unreachable, something to drive Americans to progress 

  -Orgastic: chased but fleeting 

  -Oxymoron 'recedes before' --> the aim to progress to ideals of the past 

  -Links to the Declaration of Independence and their focus on the pursuit of happiness for all men
• “You can’t repeat the past.” (pg. 110) 

  -Nick's realist nature in comparison to Gatsby
• “They’re a rotten crowd, you’re worth the whole bunch put together.” (pg. 154)


   

  • Connotes fruit --> upper-class on the outside looks pretty and appealing, on the inside they’re rotten and morally corrupt  
  • Links to fruit at Gatsby’s parties
• “Represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.” (About Gatsby) 


  Snobbery in regard to Gatsby
• “They drifted here and there unrestfully...were rich together.” (About Tom/Daisy) 


  • Upper class adrift, desire nothing because they have it all
  • Element of air - privilege as this also means they can move anywhere , no boundaries of social class
• “I am one of those few honest people that I have ever known.”  

  -Ironic

  -Unreliable narrator
• “They didn’t know that the party was over.” (Chapter 9) 


  • Prescience from Fitzgerald --> end of 20s golden age and beginning of the Great Depression  
  • Cycle of American dream –rise and fall