APEnglish–Los Al

Two ideas pop up a number of times in chapter 1: time and family. These are, of course, related concepts: families are developed and extended through time. Words like heritage, inheritance, hierarchy, ancestor, descendant, generation are words intimately linked to the concept of time: ancestor = ante (before) + cedere/cesse (to go).

So, first “time.” Time is a tricky concept, especially for novels where time is incredibly elastic: it stretches and shrinks depending on the author’s needs. You may have experienced this most memorably in some Hollywood movie where the bomb has a timer that is ticking inexorably down to doomsday, but it seems that movie seconds are much, much longer than the seconds that you are experiencing in the theater (or, more likely, at home on the sofa), and the hero finds some way—no matter how ridiculous—to defuse the bomb and save the girl.

Moments such as those in movies seem improbable and not a little annoying. But novels present us with a totally different set of expectations. First off, the modern novel is dependent on psychology more than a selection and series of events, ie., plot. This happens for many reasons: the rise of psychology in the 19^th century (especially with Sigmund Freud’s theories), the morose feeling that it’s all been told before (honestly, how many truly different stories have you actually come across?), the mature blossoming of Individualism, among many others. Psychology is probably the most salient point here, because our minds work on a different schedule than a clock’s. How many of you have experienced something that felt like it took forever, but it was only a few minutes; been so bored it seemed like the hands on the clock had frozen? Or the inverse: It felt like it was only a moment but was really hours later?

In Gatsby, like To Kill a Mockingbird, the author manipulates the time sequence because it allows Nick, our storyteller, to construct a better story. He tells us that everything has already happened before “last autumn” when he returned to the Midwest. He says Gatsby turned out all right, in the end. What “end”? He doesn’t say. I guess we’re supposed to read the story to find out what he really means. So, we have an artistic re-ordering and re-visioning. Nick already knows the whole story; he’s going to break it down in a coherent order for us. He’s also had time to think about what happened and has drawn some conclusions that he is going to describe to us (in a hundred and seventy pages or so—apparently he loves detail).

Nick’s story is further complicated by the fact that he is a major character in the story and he didn’t know, at the time, how everything was going to work out. So he has the difficult task of trying to present his thoughts and such without appearing like he knew how the story was going to end up. Just try to do that and stay honest, without editing or apologizing, about your thoughts and feelings…

Ok, so on to family. Nick begins the novel with a reference to his father. This should be a red flag: family is important, especially father-son relationships. Well, to be blunt, why? What can you come up with? What do families represent? What do families achieve? In light of our previous discussion on time, try to approach a family’s structure not horizontally (by generations: sisters, brothers; mothers, fathers; grandparents), but as a vertical structure (greatgrandfather-granddad-dad-son, etc.). What do family’s represent for people, what are they supposed to do. In case you’re still not clear on the horizontal/vertical relationship here’s a visual example that may be familiar to some: Biblical family tree. What is different between the vertical and horizontal relationships?

Recall, that Daisy is related to Nick, hence his reason for going over to her house. And, by the way, his reason for tolerating Tom: he’s family. He may not be the best family member, but you don’t get to choose your family, do you?

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Filed under: Summer Reading, The Great Gatsby and