Where the story as what we’ve been waiting for ‘begins’

“There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. […] n weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus”

• Big parties, luxury, Rolls-Royce… <- the Gatsby we’ve been waiting for
• The society we’d like to be the part of
• Nick expects to meet Gatsby

Gatsby’s signature is big and flowing

“As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table”

• But: contradiction -> he came to see Gatsby, but the people ‘deny his existence’
• Parallel with the end: after his death, nobody knows who he was, nobody acknowledges that they’ve known him
• Self-interest: the book is about it <- the people are in it, in the party for THEMSELVES 

~ American capitalism: showed corrupt, hollow, but we’re attracted to it due the success it shows us

“At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled”

• Jazz age

When Nick first meets Gatsby, he does not recognise him

• When they first meet, the butler just tells Gatsby that he has a call, so he has to go <- you get it and that is taken away

Every time there is a positive thing in the novel, a negative, dangerous undertone is also there

“Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.”

• Says Nick
• That’s why this book is a satire
• Solecism
• Huge arrogance, Trimalchio
• He thinks he is an only honest person on Earth
• Criticism, mocking of society, pointing out the flaws of the jazz society, which  was celebrated at it own age -> the book was not successful, only years later

 

*notes made by this video