Love / Family

• 'unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, i had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark... so i drew up the girl beside me... her wan, scornful mouth smiled and i drew her up again closer, this time to my face.' 


  Lexical focus removing any sense of self from Jordon / women ('mouth' 'disembodied face') dehumanises her into an object of male pleasure.

  Double pre-modifiers = coldness

  Nick claims he does not idolize Jordan, but he rather dehumanises her.
• '...possessed by intense life.' Nick on Gatsby and Daisy, Ch5

  Love has a boderline spiritual nature.
• 'the yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world.' ch6


  love is a pursuit of material wealth
• ‘I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before… she’ll see.’ ch6

  Love is a pursuit of a problem and a solution.

  There is a sinister element to Gatsbys pursuit of Daisy, his determination under any level to make Daisy love him, despite the obstacles.
• 'afterward he kept looking at the child with suprise' ch7


  The child is a physical manifestation of the love between Tom and Daisy, Gatsby has nothing to prove their love.

  Adverbial phrase 'with suprise' shows him struggling with facing the reality of Daisy
• 'her eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on Jordan Baker, whom she took to be his wife.' ch7


  Myrtles love has formed a deep aspirational desire to be with Tom, and she is in a state of mortal fear when that crumbles.
• ‘I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight watching over nothing.’ Nick on Gatsby, ch7


  Reinforces the sad, delusional natue of Gastby clinging to a love that no longer exists with nothing to hold it up.
• ‘he took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously, eventually he took Daisy.’ ch8 


  Repitition of 'took' and adverbs 'ravenously and unscrupulously' form the idea of Gatsby having to feast on his younger experience, dilemma of whether he loved Daisy for her or her wealth.
• ‘Angry and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.’ ch9 


  Conflicting sense of emotion, love causes conflict.
• ARITS: they struggle socially and economically throughout the play but unite in the end to realise their dreams of buying a house.
• ARITS: Mama strongly believes in the importance of family and their shared dream, and the conflict between Walter and Beneatha pains her.
• ARITS: Even after facing such trauma with the lost money, they come together to reject Linder and become strong individuals functioning as a family.
• ARITS + GG: Nicks lustful obsession with GG (excess + money) is similar to Walters obsession with 'rich white men', their lust and obsession with something they cannot achieve.
• GG: Gatsby's elusive love interest Daisy has been considered to be inspired by Ginevra King of Chicago, a woman Fitzgerald was rumoured to have an affair with in 1915, him being the other 'man'
• GG: Gatsby's love for daisy leads him to his death, it stops his upward trajectory, preventing him from actualising his dreams. 

  Fitzgerald represents love as paralyzing, allowing the characters to deceive themselves of happiness.
• GG: shows how love was vital for existence, it grows with money.
• GG: Gatsby's AD was gaining Daisy's love, and hers was an aristocratic husband to maintain her survival in patriarchal America.
• GG: G's love for Daisy is why he throws lavish parties, to be talked about so his name travels to her.
• GG + ARITS: Both authors represent the conflict in working class marriages stemming from one reaching for a dream outside of their class (Myrtle and Walter), and how this causes them to resent their exhausted partner (George and Ruth)
• GG: 'i married him because i thought he was a gentleman... i thought he knew something about breeding'

  'walked through her husband like a ghost'

  ARITS: 'most backward race of people'

  'you remember how we used to talk when Travis was born … about the way we were going to live...'
• ARITS + GG: Both Beneatha and Jordan haver relationships to silence the pleas from those around them begging them to marry, they are not found out of love.
• ARITS + GG: Beneatha uses the men in her search for identity, and Jordan could be argued to be sing Nick for his social status to cover her identity as a cheat

  'but i'm not interested in being someones little episode in America'

  'i thought you were an honest straightforward person'
• GG: 'possessed by intense life' pg92