The Great Gatsby

1. The Great Gatsby Chapter Six

2. Summary • Nick reveals more about Gatsby’s, his humble origins and his time with Dan Cody. • The Buchanans attend one of Gatsby’s parties. • The growing tension between Tom and Gatsby is evident.

3. Gatsby’s Past • Original name was James Gatz (changed to Jay Gatsby when 17) • Came fro North Dakota (midway between the East and West coasts of America) • As Dan Cody’s assistant, Gatsby sailed around America three times.

4. Gatsby as Magician • Transforms himself form a humble Midwestern boy to an East Coast celebrity. • Transforms Daisy, within his own imagination, from a Southern girl to an ideal of radiant life and beauty. • The phrase ‘The Great Gatsby’ suggests the showmanship of stage magicians, who practise an art of illusion and use such names to advertise their performances.

5. Dan Cody • Gatsby’s mentor • Transformed himself into a millionaire • Used by Fitzgerald to deflate idealised version of pioneer life.

6. Gatsby • “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.” • This illuminate Gatsby’s creation of his own identity. • Plato’s philosophy stresses the illusory nature of the world we know through our senses. • Gatsby, caught up in property and money, is still driven by desire for something beyond physical possessions.

7. Wonder • In Gatsby’s eyes the city streets become trees, transformed into a green world by means of imagination and intense feeling: • “he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.’ (p96) • The image of the nurturing breast is important: it is echoed in the ‘fresh green breast of the new world’, but in-between there is the mutilated breast of Myrtle Wilson. Through metaphor, Fitzgerald contrasts a visionary reality with a brutal, material reality.