The Great Gatsby: Thwarted Love and the Corruption of American Values

Jay Weir

SCED 419

Final Project

The Great Gatsby: Thwarted Love and the Corruption of American Values

Children today are swamped with stories that have happy endings, endings that see the protagonist get what he or she wants, against all odds, and then live happily ever after with the desired member of the opposite sex. The characters of today’s movies and stories are also very different from real life. The two characters that will inevitably fall in love usually are good, trustworthy, and if they’re a little rogue-ish have redeemable qualities to them. Life isn’t like that at all. It also doesn’t always make a story better to have a happy ending. Some stories, just like in real life, need to end sadly to be real and to be true. People in the real world are also not all innocent , pure, or naïve. Real people will sometimes do underhanded things, morally bad acts, to attain what they desire. The Great Gatsby is the classical literary example of a story without a happy ending but is still complete and holds true to life. It also has very real characters, people with flaws and negative qualities that don’t change at the end.

Young readers may find the classic novel difficult, but luckily there are recent novels targeted directly at them that are more accessible but with similar themes and story lines. First up is Youth In Revolt, a story whose protagonist will stop at nothing to get the girl of his dreams, including but not limited to: wrecking his mother’s car, putting sleeping pills into a girls coffee every morning, and tricking an entire school system by dressing like a girl for months on end. Another novel that follows the plot line of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work is Jake Reinvented, a retelling of the classic story with younger characters that are in high school. The reading level is a little lower making it easier for everyone to enjoy, and the characters in the story are the same age as the students that will be reading it.

Novel Annotations:

Youth in Revolt is an absurdist young adult novel written by C.D. Payne and set in present day California. The story is told through the diary entries of Nick Twisp, a fourteen year old boy that is after the love of Sheeni Saunders. He meets her when his mother and her boyfriend take Nick on a bit of vacation to avoid some trouble with marines. During the vacation Nick meets the lovely Ms. Saunders and after spending the week with her is madly in love. The two exchange letters and Sheeni encourages Nick to find ways to meet her, usually underhanded machinations that get Nick in trouble not only with his parents, but with the law. Much like Jay Gatsby, Nick will do anything to get the woman he desires, and similarly Nick must compete with the person Sheeni is already dating. Daisy was married to a large athletic man, and Sheeni is dating an athletic and strong boy as well. The similarities between the two novel’s characters can easily lead to activities and lesson ideas that compare characterization, how quickly authors reveal the characters intents to us, and who does it better.

Overall, Youth in Revolt shows the drop in moral values that occurs when people are after a single thing that they do not believe they can live without. It is concurrent with the characters and theme in The Great Gatsby of the downfall of the American Dream and American Values that occurred in the 1920’s, but set in modern times and with younger, easy to identify characters.

Jake Reinvented follows the life of Jake Garret through the eyes of Rickey, a high school senior and his best friend. Rickey relates the story of Jake Garret through their senior year together, retelling the parties Jake holds at his house every Friday, the football heroics of the best long snapper the school has ever seen, and Jake’s desire to get the girl the Quarterback is dating.

Just like the original, the story is told second hand from a character that does not necessarily have a huge impact on the main events of the story. It is mainly about Rickey’s friend Jake, the roles of Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby but with different names and different ages. The two don’t start out as friends right away, but quickly become buddies. Rickey, like Nick, enjoys Jake’s free spending ways and desire to entertain and be liked, and in exchange helps Jake go after the girl of his dreams.

To get a real feel for the time period of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work, there are a few historical facts that need to be looked at. First and foremost is prohibition. During the 1920’s alcohol was not allowed to be drunk, but this law was nearly impossible to enforce on the scale necessary to be effective. By transporting alcohol illegally, or brewing it in secret and distributing it to people mobsters and organized crime grew in power and numbers. Al Capone started this way, and because of his immense smuggling operations he became extremely rich and organized crime grew exponentially from then on. Alcohol is important to the classic novel and the two young adult novels similar to it. Being drunk happens in all three, as well as seeing drunken people. Gatsby throws huge parties complete with illegal booze, Jake throws high school parties for underage drinkers, and Nick Twisp drinks wine as well as eats hallucinogenic mushrooms. Each character participates in the illegal activities to try and obtain their wishes and dreams.

The dreams of many people started to come true, especially musicians in the 1920s. Jazz started at this time, and it was proclaimed the music of the devil (by older white people), and would corrupt all the innocent young people of the day. Although dancing to jazz doesn’t play a huge part in any of the stories, it is necessary to know some of the background for the classic novel. Part of the reason people of the older generation claimed jazz was corruptive was from the roots of the music. Jazz came from African Americans in New Orleans. Prejudice and racism was in full swing and wouldn’t be swayed until forty years later, so anything coming from the African American community was looked down on by white elitists. This is reflected by Daisy’s husband Tom on one occasion early in the book when he references a book about the Norwegian race. Neither of the two modern novels have any racism presented in them, at least not to the same degree as the classic.

Fitzgerald’s Themes in Modern Music:

Thwarted love and the corruption of American values are two motifs at the center of all three stories, and there are also songs made in the past few years that reflect similar ideas. Although most love songs today end much like the stories and movies read and shown today, there are still songs that don’t end happily. Actually, music is less influenced by the rest of the media, and often are more honest and truthful than other popular mediums.

The Fountains of Wayne’s “Someone to Love” falls in line with the love story theme from the novel, and much like the novel this song does not have a happy ending. The song relates the tale of two people, Seth Shapiro and Beth Mckenzie who each are leading boring lives when the two should be searching for love. The two have the chance of meeting and starting a relationship which is what the song leads the listener to believe will happen, but the last stanza reveals the twist: “Seth Shapiro is trying in vain/ to hail a taxi in the morning in the pouring rain/ Beth Mckensie sees one just up ahead/She cuts in front of him and leaves him for dead.” Daisy doesn’t necessarily leave Gatsby for dead, but she does let him take the blame for the death she caused. Gatsby tried desperately to impress her, resorting to crime to achieve his wealth, and using his wealth to buy anything Daisy might like, but in the end it isn’t enough for her. After Gatsby takes the blame for Daisy, she literally leaves him for dead just as Beth McKensie did to Seth Shapiro.

Modest Mouse, a band known for looking at life pessimistically, has a song that represents the moral turbulence of the 1920s. This song is about not making any progress, that people today aren’t any better than people were years ago, specifically in the lines “For every invention made how much time did we save?/We’re not much further than we were in the cave.” The recurring line “We are fixed” also represents the same ways that society and the American Dream was lost in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald makes a distinction between the newly rich and the old wealthy families, but the economic expansion does nothing for anyone’s morals or values, and no one in the book tries to better the world.

Fitzgerald’s themes in Modern Cinema

The Princess and the Frog is an example of two differing viewpoints on the American dream, prince Naveen’s side which is much like the young generation in the 1920s who just wanted to have fun and experience pleasure. Tiana represents the old American dream of people working hard to succeed and better themselves through their work to become better people and productive members of society. The film is also set in the Jazz age New Orleans, so share the same time period of the novel.

The second movie that goes along with the Corruption of American Values motif is Burn After Reading. Although a bit risqué for high school, it could be shown if permission is sought and warning given about some of the content, specifically language and some violence. The film is a terrific example of a group of people who are all trying to get what they want at any cost. The traditional values of America, such as working hard, respecting your neighbors, living a respectable life, all go out the window in the name of sex, extensive cosmetic surgery, and money. The film does not have many characters that have redeemable qualities, which is what Nick Carraway discovers at the end of the novel. Much like the novel, the only character that the audience really sympathizes with (the Jay Gatsby of the movie) dies violently and for a misunderstanding. The film -if viewed with the intent of watching people fall slowly into depravity or violence- will fit very well with the themes of Thwarted Love, and Corruption of American Values.

Useful Websites

The first website is simply a timeline of the events of Jay Gatsby’s life, starting with his birth, and ending how everyone must end: with death. This timeline can help students visualize the events, and as the events in the book unfold more can be added to the timelines. Printing the timeline out would be great, and adding other characters lines to it would create an even bigger picture of the novel. Visualizing how all of the character’s lives intertwine is a great way to see how the novel worked, where the climax was, and segues easily into the history portion of the text. Here is the web address: http://gatsby.weebly.com/timeline.html

The second Website gives 25 symbols from the classic novel and their meaning. Sharing the website with students would give them an idea on how to start a paper on a specific symbol from the story. Symbolism is rampant in the story as well, and the website does a great job of looking at not just a variety of different ones, but also categorizing them. It is not the most scholarly website, but for a jumping off point it would be less daunting for students to see what a regular person might have written as opposed to scholars. Here is the web address: http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/twentiestoday/symbolism.html

Scholarly Articles

The first article dissects the scene of Gatsby’s death, his floating on the mattress in the pool. It is a terrific example of the meaning of a symbol in the book, and could be used as an example for what the final assignment will be. The article also brings into the reading John Donne, a terrific English poet. His poem can be used to describe the love that Gatsby wants with Daisy, or that Nick wants with Jordan Baker.

The second article is about President Obama and how he represents the morals and ideals that Jay Gatsby so desired in the 1920’s. The comparison is a good one, and can be used to relate the novel to today. It also goes into the symbolism of characters, another example that could be used for the final assignment.

Individual Assignments

The first assignment is an ongoing task that starts with the novel and ends with the novel. The idea is to have students relate how they feel after each chapter or section of reading assigned. The students will keep journals in Composition notebooks kept in class. Each entry has three parts, the first being a five sentence summary of the events of that section of text. The second is an inference as to where the novel is going to go from there, and break number two down into relationships that will grow deeper, relationships that will fall apart, and if any of the characters will get what they want. The last question is purely an opinion one, and it is “How did this section of the book make you feel? Describe your emotional reactions during the reading.” The idea is to look in-depth at the novel in pieces, digesting each part to get a full understanding.

The second assignment comes at the end of the book, and can coincide with the website on symbols. Each student will select a symbol from the book whether it is on the website or not, and write a three page paper on the different meanings that others have found in that symbol, and then also giving what he/she felt the symbol meant. The assignment will make students look for allusions and read scholarly articles about the book.

Group Activities

Timelines often help me understand a book better, and the best way to create a timeline is with other people. I often leave things out, or only think specific moments are important, but if someone else points something out to me that I missed, I feel like I understand the book better. In four groups, the students will construct a timeline for one of the characters in the novel. At the end of the lesson, all the timelines will be placed on top of each other so students can see how the lives of the characters intertwined and affected one another. This can be an ongoing assignment, or it can be done at the end of the unit as a summary tool.