‘THE GREAT GATSBY’: NEW YORK CITYWhere anything can happen...

What does New York City mean to the characters of ‘The Great Gatsby’?

New York City is the heart of the action. It is mentioned often as being the hub of where people meet, fight, and go for entertainment. This setting is vital to the plot of the story as it hosts a venue for many of the influential moments in this novel.

New York City undoubtedly plays a big role in this story, and its significance is huge. Many important things happen in this city. Listed in chronological order, they include: •Gatsby meets Meyer Wolfshiem in New York City

•Nick, Tom, Myrtle, Catherine, and the Mckee couple have a small party in a NYC apartment. This is where Tom slaps Myrtle.

•Gatsby drives Nick to New York City for lunch and reveals much of his past.

•Meyer Wolfsheim, a con-artist, is introduced as Gatsby’s partner, which leads one to suspect Gatsby’s finances are derived by illegal means.

•Jordan Baker reveals the romantic history of Daisy and Gatsby to Nick. This is where Gatsby asks Nick indirectly through Jordan to arrange a meeting for himself and Daisy. Nick agrees.

•Tom, Daisy, Gatsby, Nick and Jordan go to NYC for the afternoon. They rent a suite at the Plaza Hotel which is where Tom confronts Gatsby about his knowledge of his affair with Daisy.

•Nick tries to find Gatsby’s friends for his funeral, specifically he visits Wolfshiem. He denies the funeral invitation.

Significance

Through the chapters, it has been demonstrated that the characters in ‘The Great Gatsby’ believe in the power of the city, visiting it often for any important matters that need to be dealt with.

•pg 19: Tom met his mistress, Myrtle, on a train to New York City. He smacks her in the face at a party in NYC on pg 41. Also, when Myrtle leaves her husband to visit Tom, NYC acts as her alibi, although we all know she isn’t actually going to visit her sister.

•pg 80: explains more about Daisys past while in the Plaza Hotel (downtown NYC). “There were wild rumours circulating about her-how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye to a soldier who was going overseas.”

•On the hottest day of summer, Jordan, Nick, Gatsby, Daisy and Tom go into the city as a means of entertainment. This leads to an intense dispute between Tom and Jay, ultimately ending all the fantasies Gatsby had about reliving the past with Daisy.

Which encourages this theme statement...

Those who understand the basic lifestyle of New York City are therefore able to comprehend that in this metropole, you are capable of accomplishing everything you could ever dream of while also defeating any social norms, even if the odds are stacked against you. Explanation: The people that are able to embrace the eccentricities and uniqueness of the city also understand that the dreams and challenges of many others are what creates that sense of being unordinary.

•pg 73, Gatsby and Nick drive by a limousine that is part of a funeral procession. Inside this limousine is a white chauffeur driving around three black people. Seeing such a thing is bizarre and very out of the ordinary, but Nick laughs aloud and thinks to himself “Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge, anything at all...” Nick understands that perhaps, at some point in time, the black people had all sorts of odds stacked against them, but nonetheless they are now sitting inside a limousine being chauffeured around by a white man.

ThemeTheme

•pg 32 “We drove over Fifth avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner.”

•pg 38 “The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediterranean.”

•pg 40 “I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight.”

•pg 61 “I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night.” “I liked to pick out romantic women from the enchanted crowd”

•pg 73 “Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of a non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”

The mood of this novel is heavily influenced by lots of imagery. These quotes show that if Fitzgerald wanted his readers to think of NYC as an enchanted, magical, dreamy, or beautiful place, he would use words to create such a feeling.

Imagery

If Fitzgerald wanted his reader to think of NYC as

gloomy, haunting, and murky, he would use darker

imagery to create this feeling as demonstrated in

these quotes:

•pg 40 “Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed to their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets.”

•pg 61 “I lunched with them in dark crowded restaurants.” “For some reason it was the gloomiest event of my day.” “In the metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes.”

•pg 62 “When the dark lanes of the Forties were five deep with throbbing taxi cabs, I felt a sinking in my heart.”

• pg 143 “His voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamour on the sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated overhead. Human sympathy has its limits and we were content to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind.” “We passed over the dark bridge, driving

on towards death through the cooling twilight.”

Imagery continued...

Motifs are used in ‘The Great Gatsby’ in regards to New York City in order to highlight certain characteristics that would further enhance the way Scott Fitzgerald wanted the reader to think about the extravagant city.

Alcohol is a motif that we see a lot of throughout this novel, specifically:•At the small party in NYC in chapter 2.

• When Tom confronts Jay about his cheating with Daisy in chapter 7, there is a bottle of whiskey that he had brought along for the trip.

Motif

The references to alcohol demonstrate that the characters don’t follow rules because they think they are above the law (alcohol was banned due to prohibition at this time)and are ultimately careless.

Motifs are used in this story to draw your attention to specific

characteristics of the individuals in ‘The Great Gatsby’.

The constant displays of carelessness tells us that some of the characters think they are better than most people, thanks to their social standing. They feel that they should be able to do whatever they please, whenever they please.

The use of motifs in this novel are constantly employed to add an array of elements to the

characters that Fitzgerald has created.

The idea of carelessness is another recurring motif in New York City. Examples of such include:•pg 63 Jordan is driving with Nick through the city when she almost collides with a pedestrian. She is to blame, as she was being careless, but she then goes on to state that she hates careless people.

•On pg 75, Meyer Wolfshiem explains how his friend Rosys carelessness ended up leading to his ultimate demise, being shot on the streets of New York.

Scott Fitzgerald uses a delicately balanced combination of significance, imagery and motif to sculpt his masterpiece of a novel ‘The Great Gatsby’. New York City plays a large part, I believe, done

purposely in order to add equal parts of glamour, mystery and excitement to this timeless novel about the ultimate perils and

successes of an elite group of New York’s finest.