The themes in Gatsby

The first chapter of the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F.C. Fitzgerald, introduces some of the major themes with which it will deal.  Which themes does the first chapter of The Great Gatsby introduce?  Relate these to the novel as a whole.

 By Iren Plastinina

Introduction

Nick Carraway, the narrator in the novel, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, reveals the major themes in the first chapter, as he does throughout this book.  The major themes being introduced in chapter one are World War I, East and West, Relationship, Nostalgia, Class and the Hollowness of the Class system, Gender roles, and  Violence.  In the following paragraphs I will explain why I believe these are the major themes of the chapter and relate them to the novel as a whole.           

Themes

World War 1

This novel is set in the beginning of 1920s, where the economical boom and the physiological effects of World War I still had not faded.  That WWI is a theme is inevitable since both Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby were officers and soldiers overseas during the war.  In the first chapter one learns WWI is the reason to why Carraway, who originally is a Midwesterner, came to the East cost, because he felt restless and uneasy in the Midwest.

East and West

All of the main characters in the book came from the West to settle down in the East.  Carraway went westward to Europe under the war, when returning to the Midwest afterwards he found it unappealing.  Even more significantly in the novel, the East and West Egg of Rhode Island, where the narrator lives on the West Egg, the less fashionable of the two Eggs, where the newly rich in their new vulgar homes live without established social connections. 

When they eat dinner at Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s home on the East Egg, Daisy is looking at the setting sun in the west, which is toward the West Egg.  Carraway also distances himself from the wealthy atmosphere on the East cost.  At the end of the first chapter, Gatsby standing on the West Egg focusing his eyes on the green light near Daisy’s home on the East Egg.

Relationships

The chapter starts with the narrator commenting on the relationship he had with his father and the advices his father gave to him.  Very early in the chapter he also comments on his relationship with Gatsby and his personality.  One clearly understands that Nick Carraway admires many of Gatsby’s qualities.  Unlike the other inhabitants of the West Egg, Carraway also has relations to the East Egg, the home of the American aristocracy with old money, and an elite background, where his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom are located in their white palace.  The Buchanan’s appear to be happy but already in the first chapter one notices discontentment, especially from Daisy, who expresses regrets about her marriage and sadness because of Tom’s unfaithfulness to her.  Tom has a mistress in New York and he does not try to hide this fact.  Daisy also confides in her cousin and tells him that Tom was not to be found when she gave birth to their daughter.  The couple also asks the narrator about some rumours they have heard about him pursuing a love interest back in the Midwest, where Carraway gives a clear impression of not wanting to discuss the subject.  Tom suspects Daisy of opening her heart to her cousin and warns him about not believing what Daisy has told him.

Nostalgia

The story the narrator shares with the reader happened a couple of years earlier.  The first chapter opens with Carraway remembering his father’s words and goes on with a description of Jay Gatsby.  It becomes clear to the reader that these two persons were of great importance to the narrator and that he misses them much.  Tom Buchanan also experiences a longing for the past when he recalls his days of glory as a football player at Yale University.  His wife Daisy also remembers her past with their other dinner guest, the golf playing miss Baker, where the two young women spent their childhood and teens together.

Class and the Hollowness of the Class system

The differences between the newly rich and the old aristocracy, where the new millionaires are portrayed as vulgar, lacking social taste and grace, while the old wealthy families are represented by Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who lives in their white  palaces on the East Egg.  To emphasise breed and taste, the two women at the dinner party in the first chapter wear white clothes.  However, the old aristocracy may have taste and grace, but as Nick Carraway sees it, they are careless and selfish bullies who are used to the fact that money fixes anything and therefore never worry about hurting others.  As an example one can look at the way Tom treats his wife, while being unfaithful he does not bother to hide it because he is certain it will have no consequences for him.

Gender roles

To some extent this novel also writes about gender roles, but in a more conservative way.  In the first chapter we learn that Daisy is unsatisfied with the role she has when she tells her cousin about her daughter, where she wants her to be born as a beautiful fool so she does not discover how cruel the world is.  Born into money and married into more money Daisy is corrupted by them and also dependent of them.  Daisy dare not confront persons that upset her, but she confides in her cousin.  Her friend, Jordan Baker, is a more masculine type with her boyish look and her androgynous name.  Unlike other women, she has a job as a professional golf player.  Both women are interesting because none of them fit the more traditional way of portraying women in literature of the time, where they are mostly two types, either Maria Magdalena or Madonna. 

Violence

In the first chapter one recognize the underlying violence in Tom Buchanan as he uses his massive physical strength to threaten/frighten the people around him, as an example of his way of behaviour, one can look at the technique he uses on Nick Carraway, moving him around like a puppet, when he comes over for dinner.  One can also see it in the way he moves, without warning and very fast, almost like a wild animal.

Relating the themes to the novel as a whole

On the surface this is a love story with an unhappy ending, where Gatsby attempts to win the love of Daisy.  Jay Gatsby is a WWI Veteran and the war is also where he started to build his fortune.  Also Carraway is a World War I Veteran and the narrator in this story, disillusioned after what he experienced during the war, and critical to the American way of life.  I believe that Nick Carraway feels more connected to Gatsby through their common war history and that this is why he appears to have a more relaxed view, or at least an ambivalent one, on how Gatsby obtained his fortune.  One senses the underlying critic of almost all other major characters while reading the novel, which becomes clearer in the later chapters.  He informs the reader that he is a tolerant man who will withhold his judgement while telling what he experienced during the summer of 1922.  However, while reading this story, one clearly sees that Carraway is not a passive narrator who merely states facts, but gives his comments on most things that happens, meaning that all characters, including himself, and events in the book, is coloured by his moral standards.  The only one escaping this judgement is Jay Gatsby whom Carraway admires, even though Gatsby resides, at least to some extent, opposite to the narrator’s ethical view of how someone should live his life.  He also tells his story, which is a story from the past told in the present, partly in a nostalgic way.

The novel focuses on the upper class of young people between 20 and 30 years of age and their relationships, where most of them seem to be restless and rootless, living a hollow life focusing on wealth, material possessions, and pleasure.  The West and East egg of Long Island represents the gap between the newly rich and the wealthy old American aristocracy.  West and East also have importance to the fact that all of the major characters came from the West to settle in the East.  The novel deals with the social and moral values of the 1920s in a critical way emphasizing the hypocrisy, snobbery, and greed of this time.  The women’s social status is also a topic in this novel, however conservative it is, where all female characters differ from the typical role they have in literature from this period.  Violence is represented in different ways, first by Tom when he attacks Myrtle Wilson after she teases him with his wife, the car accident where Daisy kills Myrtle, and when Jay Gatsby gets murdered by Myrtle’s husband in his swimming pool, because Gatsby, being a gentleman, has taken the blame for the car accident.  The most important theme in this novel is the American dream, which is contradictory of all other themes.  This theme is impersonated in Gatsby and when he dies so does the American dream.