The Great Gatsby

1
The Great Gatsby

• Chapter Two

2
The Valley of Ashes

• Opening paragraph, page 29
• It is bleak and desolate
• It symbolises moral decay and destitution

3
The eyes of Dr TJ Eckleburg

• Advertising hoardings a relatively new thing
• Blue and gigantic
• They look out of no face
• His eyesbrood on over the solemn dumping ground
• The ideas of vision and seeing are vital to the
  novel

4
The Wilsons

• They live in the valley
• They are noticeably of a lower class
• They live in a small block of yellow brick
• The garage is unprosperous and bare

5
George Wilson

• Spiritless man, anaemic
• walking through her husband as if he were a
  ghost
• A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit
• Tom says Hes so dumb he doesnt know hes
  alive

6
Myrtle

• She is in total contrast to her husband
• An immediately perceptible vitality
• She buys things- Town Tattle, a magazine,
  perfume, a puppy
• Toms relationship with her is physical and
  material.

7
Nicks Narration

• Though I was curious to see her I had no desire
  to meet her (page 30)
• What does this suggest about Nick?
• We are given a hint that he is not a fully
  trustworthy narrator
• Everything has a dim hazy cast over it
• Yet he describes in great detail
• Catherine and her solid, sticky bob etc.

8
Affectation

• How are the people portrayed as false
• Catherine, top of page 36
• Myrtle, pp36-7
• Myrtle, page 42. The story of meeting Tom
• NB the details of clothes
• Myrtle, pp42-3. The shopping list.

9
The party in New York

• There is a lot of gossip, some of it blatantly
  untrue
• Daisy was not a Catholic
• There is again a suggestion that there is a class
  system at work that mans way below you!
  (page 40)
• The mood is broken by the sentence
• Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke
  her nose with his hand. (page 43)

10
Nicks Drunkenness

• I became entangled in some wild, strident
  argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes
  into my chair
• I was within and without, simultaneously
  enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible
  variety of life
• Nick loses some of his usual reserve
• After Myrtles nose is broken he simply observes
  then leaves
• Europe?

11
A man named Gatsby

• Again Gatsby himself is absent

12
Homework

• Read the next two chapters