Thursday, March 17, 2016

Describe the mystique that surrounds Gatsby The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald..

Nick Carraway first encounters Jay Gatsby at the end of
Chapter One of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, but only for an
illusionary moment.  Gatsby stands with his arms outstretched, trembling and gazing at
the green light at the end of Daisy's pier, and then he is gone.  Gatsby is an
enigmatic man who longs to recreate his romanticized past because he has no future, only
the present.


Gatsby has a mystique about him because very
little is known of  him; only distant impressions are suggested.  Just as he suddenly
appears on a lawn in West Egg, Jay Gatsby spontaneously has parties with strangers who
know nothing of each other as well as nothing of Gatsby.  In Chapter Four, he asks Nick,
"What is your opinion of me?" and states that he is going to tell Nick about himself so
that there is no "wrong opinion" of him.  But, it is not until Chapter Six and Seven,
the reader does not learn of Gatsby's background or of his criminal activity.  Until
this point, Nick and the reader only are told that Gatsby had parents from the Midwest,
but when Nick asks specifically, Gatsby says, "San Francisco."  He claims to have gone
to Oxford, but only produces a photograph that was supposedly taken while he was in
college, and chokes on the words.  Nick narrates,


readability="14">

He hurried the phrase" educated at Oxford," or
swallowed it, or choked on it as though it had bothered him before.  And with this
doubt, his whole statement felll to pieces, and I wondered if there weren't something a
little sinister abou him, after all....For a moment I suspected that he was pulling my
leg, but a glance at him convinced me
otherwise.



Something in
Gatsby--"the great Gatsby"--hints at magic and illusion as in "the Great Blackstone" and
other vaudeville personages.  He has beautiful, but unknown guests at his opulent
parties, his library has real leatherbound books, his car possesses mythological
characteristics with its "fenders like wings," and its fenders that reflect the light. 
Gatsby, too, creates an aura of luxury and charm that has no history behind it.  He is
seen with unsavory characters such as Meyer Wolfscheim, but appears at a party in white
flannels with a golden tie.  He claims to have visited the capitals of Europe--Paris,
Venice, Rome--yet he possesses an absolutely loyal heart. Jay Gatsby is an enigmatic
character who bases his sense of worth upon the approval and love of Daisy Buchanan, and
who 



believed
in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year receded before
us.


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