The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby - by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, Writing this blog as thinking activity. To get more idea about this activity click here to visit teacher's blog. Here i will discuss the below questions.

1) How did the film capture the Jazz Age - the Roaring Twenties of the America in 1920s?

2) How did the film help in understanding the characters of the novel?
3) How did the film help in understanding the symbolic significance of 'The Valley of Ashes', 'The Eyes of Dr. T J Eckleberg' and 'The Green Light'?
4) How did the film capture the theme of racism and sexism?
5) Watch the video on Nick Carraway and discuss him as a narrator.
6) Watch the video on psychoanalytical study of Jay Gatsby and write about his character

So, Let's have a look to the discussion of these questions. By these questions we will get the whole idea about movie thoroughly.

1) How did the film capture the Jazz Age - the Roaring Twenties of the America in 1920s?

First if we want to know about this idea about America in the movie, we have to know about Jazz Age. The characters of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby represent a specific part of 1920s American society: the rich people of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald's own experiences during this era form the basis of the novel. It was the time when millions of people have died in the war and Spanish flu then Europe and America got this age afterwards.

Jazz Age is about the concept of how the development of everything like fashion and business etc. it was the giant flow of alcoholism, bootleggers, and one of the massive rise in gang crime caused by the ban on alcohol. Prohibition ultimately caused more problems then it solved, New York and Chicago becoming hives of gang activity during this era. As we can see in the movie too as it has setting of the Jazz age New York. Jazz spread like wildfire across the US and Europe in the twenties due to the sudden availability of cheap records. It gave the way to self – expression at large.

Watch this video to get more idea about The Jazz Age.

2) How did the film help in understanding the characters of the novel?

In the film, when we watch, we can find all characters are quite faithfully presented as in the novel. All the characters have become more impersonal due to the fact that Luhrmann puts more effort into the visuals of the movie and that can be seen as a loss to the movie. Luhrmann has mostly put his effort into how the movie looks aesthetically and somewhere along all the special effects and the glitter the characters have lost the personalities they had in the novel, since the viewer will focus on the visuals instead of someone describing the characters.

The film help very vastly in understanding the characters of the novel. Though one may have surety about novel’s character due to the changes in the process of adaptation.

3) How did the film help in understanding the symbolic significance of 'The Valley of Ashes', 'The Eyes of Dr. T J Eckleberg' and 'The Green Light'?

The valley of ashes

The valley of ashes is the place that ashes grow everywhere. It symbolizes the poverty and hopelessness.

The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg

This is powerful symbol. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They may represent God staring down upon and judging American society as a moral wasteland, though the novel never makes this point explicitly.

The Green Light

Nick first sees Gatsby stretching his arms towards a green light at the end of Daisy's dock. Here, the green light is a symbol of hope.

4) How did the film capture the theme of racism and sexism?

‘The Great Gatsby’ film capture the theme of racism and sexism at certain points. Throughout time women have been written as the lesser sex weaker, secondary characters. They are portrayed as dumb, stupid, and nothing more that their fading beauty. They are written as if they need to be saved or helped because they cannot help themselves. Women, such as Daisy Buchanan who believes all a women can be is a “beautiful little fool”. He convinces the women that their place in society is to be helpless and at his mercy. This is especially apparent through Tom Buchanan 's wife Daisy. Daisy believes, “that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” She believes that all she is a beautiful little fool, but no one can blame her. Whenever Daisy is spoken about it 's not in relation to her intelligence, but rather that, “‘Her voice is full of money,’ Gatsby.

When we think about extramarital affair, according to the Cambridge English dictionary ‘An extramarital saxual relationship is one between a married person and someone who is not thier husband or wife : an extramarital affair.' In this movie we find this sort of relationship between ‘Tom and Myrtle’ and ‘Daisy and Jay’. In that time the rich people used get that kind of affair with the ladies to fulfilled their sexual desires. We can have a look at this thing with sight of class conflicts. Somehow Luhrmann has portrayed this perspective successfully by the Tom and Myrtle’s relationship. Also we can see some vulgar sort of scenes are there at apartment parties. How all the women and men are going lunatic to the parties and to get the aura.

In the term of racism, We see in the film Tom’s character is carrying this term. And he is oftentimes showing his narrowness towards this idea of racism. When they are at dining to have food so he is doing misbehaving with the maid of his own house. Tom has very deeper thought of racism in his conscious and it is showing in his behaviour oftentimes in the film.

5) Watch the video on Nick Carraway and discuss him as a narrator.

In the video, They says that Nick Carraway is as a narrator probably not reliable. He is in sanatorium because he is dealing with alcoholism, insomnia, anger, depression. It is the psychological and emotional trauma he suffered. When we see him in the story we have sympathy to him from the beginning. And there doctor said to him to write his experience to overcome this trauma. So The Great Gatsby is a cathartic experience somehow. So his unreliability started from this point that author or narrator is not having proper state of mind.

6) Watch the video on psychoanalytical study of Jay Gatsby and write about his character.

In this video, there is the psychoanalysis of Jay Gatsby’s character. The professor of psychiatry and behavioural science ‘Jared DeFife’ gives the ideas about Gatsby’s character. He is dealing with the main two aspects of this psychoanalytical study that are “guilt” and “shame”.

The shame part of Gatsby is that when he is born in the poor family, he did not like to be poor. Somewhere he is showing that he is shameful for his lower class upbringing like his father is farm worker, not very successful. Then he became the self made man. He changes his name, and has create a persona of himself. It can be the reaction against the shame.

Guilt, is emotion that people feel when they have done something wrong. According to psychologists, this is the reaction formation. When he is showing his wealth and lavishness by organizing parties. And another thing is that he is doing wrong something in business too. To cover up those wrongs he might taking attention of people to his parties. Here the symbol of ‘Eyes’ is very appropriate to understand this observation that how Gatsby has the kind of inferiority for his own self by his deeds that who is watching at him, and to cover that he is doing all this things. As a human being we are afraid to being seen and the negative things being seen. Another emotion has portrayed here is the “Self Grief”, when he lost Daisy, when he returned to the war. Then he trying to recapture what he has lost. Here we can see the grief reaction, in that people cannot move forward and being depressed. And they only being stuck to at that point or that person only. And it is complicated totally and heavy.

Now we can easily get idea about The Jazz Age, Characters, Symboles, Themes etc. 

THANK YOU!