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Section Four The Jazz Age(the
1920s) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
I. The Jazz
Age
The Jazz Age is the period in the U.S. history
(starting in 1919 and ending in 1929). It has two characteristics.
The first one is economic boom. During that period of time, heavy
industry increased and cars became popular because of the Fords'
contribution. There were high profit and full employment. People
could make a lot of money. So it was also called “Dollar-Decade”.
The second one is that people broke away from traditions. The change
of value appeared. In the past, people would work hard and be
thrifty to be a good man. But now they were absorbed in
money-making. Being successful means having a lot of money. Good men
were the people with a lot of money. They enjoyed themselves
greatly. They behaved strangely for all these shocked the older
generation. It was also called “ Roaring Twenties”.
II. F. Scott Fitzgerald
1. Life and
Literary Career
Fitzgerald is generally regarded as the
spokesman of the 1920s, the peculiar decade that combined the
postwar economic boom and the sense of spiritual disorientation. He
was born just before the turn of the century, and his life roughly
coincided with the consolidation of monopoly capitalism in the
United States. He was both a leading participant in the typically
pleasure-seeking and money-making life of the 1920s, and at the same
time, he was a cool self-conscious observer. During the 1920s, he
enjoyed success, fame, and wealth, as a young lucky writer, but
declined in spirit like his country when the stock market crashed in
1929, when the grim 1930s began to move into the Great Depression.
During the 1930s, he tasted the bitterness in personal life and in
literary career. So, he was the most representative novelist of the
1920s, the spokesman of the “roaring 20s”. His works not only
reflected, but also helped to influence the prevailing mood of the
time.
He was born in Saint Paul--in the Mid-west of America.
He was the only son of an unsuccessful upper class father and an
energetic mother of a common, Irish family. His family was socially
prominent and genteelly poor. His grandfather on his mother's side
had a small fortune in the business. This gave Scott some advantages
in a money-oriented society, and eventually gave him his expensive
education first in a fashionable Catholic preparatory school in New
Jersey and then at Princeton University in 1913. He found American
society vulgar yet full of bright opportunities. Although he wanted
to be popular in this setting, he felt the snobbishness of his
classmates because he came from the “wrong” part of the country and,
on his mother's side, from the “wrong” social class. Furthermore, he
was not rich and he felt inferior to his more brilliant
classmates.
Fitzgerald tried to erase his background at
Princeton. He was handsome and witty. He made a place for himself in
the university's literary groups; he was invited to join the best
clubs; and he wrote musical comedies which were well received. While
he was still at the university, he fell in love with a rich girl who
was known as a great beauty. After appearing to favor him, she then
became engaged to another man. Fitzgerald fell ill, failed his
exams, and left Princeton without graduating in 1917.
He
decided to fight as a soldier in the First World War, but he was
sent for training to Montgomery, Alabama in the South in 1918. There
he met Zelda Sayre, the beautiful light-hearted daughter of a State
Supreme Court judge. He fell violently in love again, but Zelda told
him that if he could become rich enough to support her very well,
she would marry him. As soon as he left the army in 1919, he went to
New York to become rich, but the only job he could find paid him
very little. When Zelda heard this, she broke their engagement. In
despair, he went home to his parents in Saint Paul, to finish
writing a novel which he had started at Princeton. He became a
novelist for the sole purpose of earning enough money to marry
Zelda.
In 1920, Fitzgerald's first novel This Side of
Paradise was an instant success. It was the first American novel
to portray the young, postwar, pleasure-seeking generation, and to
reveal the new morality of the Twenties. Fitzgerald found himself
rich and famous at the age of 23. At last he could afford the high
style of life which Zelda demanded and which he himself longed for.
They were married; throughout his life, Fitzgerald's greatest
happiness and deepest sorrow were caused by Zelda.
For four
years, this good-looking, dashing young couple plunged into the
gaudy, wealthy society of their generation. They were treated like a
prince and princess. They lived so extravagantly that they
frequently spent more money than Fitzgerald earned for parties,
liquor, entertaining their friends and traveling. It was this style
of living which gave the decade of the 1920s, such nicknames as “The
Roaring Twenties”. “The Jazz Age” and “The Dollar Decade”.
In
order to keep earning enough money, Fitzgerald wrote short stories
for magazines and a second novel entitled The Beautiful and
Damned (1922), all of which were immensely popular. People
admired him for his spendthrift life and for his great literary
production because this was the ideal the young Americans pursued in
the 1920s. Yet The Beautiful and the Damned already betrayed
the author's doubts and his fear that this way of life was
destroying the people who pursued it.
In 1929, Fitzgerald and
Zelda moved to France, where they joined the Lost Generation
(Gertrude Stein's nickname for the young expatriates). There, in
1925, Fitzgerald wrote his best novel, The Great Gatsby. It
is the story of an idealist who is destroyed by the influence of the
wealthy, pleasure-seeking people around him, a portrait of moral
decay. This book was not so well liked by the public as his earlier
ones at first, but today it has been regarded as his
masterpiece.
In the next few years, Zelda began to show signs
of mental illness, and they returned to America. Zelda suffered a
mental breakdown in 1930, and another one or two years later, from
which she never recovered. She had to be placed in a sanitorium.
Throughout this time of anxiety, Fitzgerald wrote some fine short
stories and a moving novel about the life they knew in France,
entitled Tender Is The Night. The novel was not finished
until 1934. Although it is now considered an excellent work, it was
received very coldly then. Times had changed. America was deep in
the Great Depression, and nobody wanted to read about expatriates in
France. The failure of the book and despair over Zelda's illness
caused Fitzgerald's health to break down, physically and
spiritually. He drank to excess and became incurably
alcoholic.
In 1937, he recovered enough to work again, but he
no longer wrote stories. Instead he went to Hollywood as a
script-writer for films. There he met a woman journalist who cared
for him and acquainted him with the life of film makers and film
stars. He began writing a novel about Hollywood, and many critics
believe it would have been his masterpiece. It was only half
finished when he died of a heart attack in 1940. A few years later,
Zelda was killed in a fire which destroyed the sanitorium where she
was confined.
2. His Point of View and
Style
Fitzgerald's fiction reveals the hollowness of the
American worship of wealth and the unending American dreams of love,
splendor and gratified desires and shows what America meant in terms
of the reckless 1920s: prohibition, speakeasies, new cars, victory
abroad, popular fads and new wealth. The Great Gatsby
represents the American scene during those riotous
years.
American dream means that in America one might hope to
satisfy every material desire and thereby achieve happiness. It is
deceptive because it proposes the satisfaction of all desire as an
attainable goal and identifies desire with material. Fitzgerald once
said, “America's great promise is that something is going to happen,
but it never does. America is the moon that never rose.” This
indictment of the American dream could well serve as an epigraph for
the protagonist Gatsby.
Fitzgerald was the victim of his own
success. Critics considered him so much a part of the rich,
fashionable life of the 1920's that for many years they failed to
understand the serious side of his books. There is no doubt that his
early success damaged his life and spoiled his literary
production.
In the long run, his understanding and moral
interpretation of the era was far more important than his
participation in its gaudy extravagances. His literature has
outlasted his period he wrote about.
In his first books and
stories, Fitzgerald saw life through “a haze of youth ”, where
tragedy consisted only of growing older. He expressed what very
young people believed in 1920: that they could wipe out the past and
rebuild the world into something much better, free from the ideas of
the older generation. He wrote about himself and his friends. At
first he presented the charm and glamour of the new generation, but
within a few short years he turned from its spokesman into its most
incisive judge. He penetrated beneath the surface of their life to
reveal its worthlessness.
Fitzgerald never truly belonged in
the life of America's wealthy class, which he both longed for and
mistrusted. He wanted to have the appearance of belonging to the
upper crust, believing that the appearance would give him the
freedom to conduct his life just as he wished. However, he found
that wealth altered people's characters, making them mean and
destructive. Money bought only tragedy and remorse. In his best
novels, he both condemned and pitied the rich.
Fitzgerald
dealt most astutely with the double theme of love and money. He
understood the corrupting relationship between the two better than
any other American novelist. Fitzgerald also understood, from his
own experience, the constant need for more money which drove these
men and women to unscrupulousness.
He did not like the rich.
He resented their undeserved privileges, their vulgarity, and their
secret belief in their own superiority. He saw that the rich boys
could buy more than luxuries-- they could attract the affection of
any girl they wanted. He believed that the wealthy class corrupted
the whole of American society because it became everybody's ideal to
join it. He wrote from true experience, for he himself was fatally
attracted to it. A deep attitude of morality underlies his
stories.
Later in his life, Fitzgerald wrote. “I would have
gone on writing musical comedies, but I am too much of a moralist at
heart, and really want to preach at people in some acceptable form
rather than entertain them.” He found an admirably “acceptable form”
in the modern novel.
His style of writing is closely related to
his theme. It relies on an accumulation of well-chosen and ironic
detail, carefully observed from life. He exactly reproduces the
language and conversation of the time. In his chapters, he moves
rapidly from one brightly presented scene to the next, leaving the
tedious process of transition to the reader's imagination.
3.
His Works
Fitzgerald's first, highly successful novel,
This Side of Paradise (1920), can now be seen as an immature
work describing the wild, rebellious young men and women after the
First World War. In this novel, Fitzgerald spoke as one of them, at
the age of 23. He made a true portrait of the very young, with their
new way of dressing, their disregard of manners and propriety. He
caught the glamour which they saw in themselves, and made his
readers see them as glamorous and important, also.
His second
novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1921) followed a similar
theme and increased Fitzgerald's popularity even more. The book
describes a handsome young man and his beautiful wife, undoubtedly
modeled after himself and Zelda. The couple enjoy a frivolous life
among their wealthy friends while waiting to inherit a large
fortune, but they degenerate into jaded middle age before they can
get the money.
The Great Gatsby (1925) is considered by
many to be Fitzgerald's best novel. It is a lively, deeply moral
book, which shows the two sides of his character. The narrator is a
decent Middle Western graduate from an eastern university (like
Fitzgerald) who observes the life of his rich neighbor, Gatsby. This
young man has grown rich quickly and illegally as a “bootlegger” in
order to join the wealthy class and recapture a beautiful but
shallow girl who slighted him when he was poor. Gatsby entertains
other rich people at fabulous parties but his death is brought about
by the carelessness of others and all his so-called friends abandon
him in the end. The book is a severe criticism of the whole
society.
Tender Is The Night (1934) is Fitzgerald's
second important novel, in which he condemns the wasted energy of
misguided youth. The hero is a psychiatrist who marries a rich
patient but he sacrifices all his talent and energy to maintain an
illusion of love with a wife who abandons him anyway. The book
passes a harsh judgement on the false values of the
1920's.
The Last Tycoon (1941) was Fitzgerald's
unfinished novel, which told about a film-producer trying to
maintain his honesty in the corrupt environment of Hollywood. The
book was edited and published by a literary friend of Fitzgerald
after his death.
Fitzgerald wrote many short stories. One of his
best is “Babylon Revisited”, the story of an American's
return to Paris in the 1930's and his regretful realization that the
past was beyond his reach, where he could neither alter it nor make
amends.
II. Selected Reading The Great Gatsby(电影片段)
1.Plot Overview
Nick
Carraway, a quiet young man from the Mid-west, comes to work on the
New York stock exchange. Though inclined to reserve his personal
judgements on others, Nick is eager to experience life in the East
and is ready to work hard to make a successful career. He rents a
modest bungalow house, next to a pretentious and vulgar mansion
built in the style of a French castle, owned by the ridiculously
wealthy Jay Gatsby. West Egg is the home of people like Gatsby, who
have made quick money and huge fortunes but who lack the traditions
related with inherited wealth and
titles.
Nick is invited to dine with
his cousin, Daisy, and his husband, Tom Buchanan, who is also a
midwesterner and has recently come east. They live in East Egg,
where people like the Buchanans with inherited wealth make their
homes. As a sophisticated observer of character and surroundings,
Nick notices that the home of the Buchanans is lavish, and the young
couple enjoy arrogant leisure. Tom is muscular, handsome and proud
of his house and horses. Daisy and her friend, Jordan Baker, laze
around in stylish dresses to kill the time. Daisy is charming and
graceful in her social manners and always murmurs in a magical voice
which “was full of money” so that the listener finds it pleasant to
lean forward to catch her meaning. She also takes great delight in
mentioning her three year-old daughter. When Nick chances to mention
Gatsby, the millionaire neighbor he does not know himself, Daisy
asks, “What Gatsby?” Their living style is so lazy and cozy that
Daisy is puzzled about what to plan for entertainment. Yet there is
a tense moment when Tom goes out to answer the phone and Jordan
Baker wants to listen to Tom's conversation: Tom is speaking to his
mistress, Myrtle Wilson. Daisy later confesses to Nick that she is
not happy but sophisticated since “she has been everywhere and seen
everything and done everything.” Nick feels disgusted and disturbed
when he leaves the Buchanans. Tom's keeping another woman is an
obvious result of dissatisfaction with his life.
Gatsby hosts
a succession of fabulous parties at his house where he treats his
guests to his motor-boats and private beach, apart from the endless
flow of cocktails.
Nick is invited to one of these parties.
He doesn't see his neighbor in person, but meets Jordan Baker there
and they begin to develop a mild romance.Jordan tells Nick of
Gatsby's love affair with Daisy five years ago. Daisy was said to
have broken off with Gatsby with the intervention of her family
which has been very rich. But soon Daisy recovered from the loss of
Gatsby and became engaged to Tom. They married the following
year.
Jordan also reveals that Gatsby has bought his house in
West Egg just to be across the bay from Daisy. For Gatsby, Daisy is
the promise of fulfillment that lies beyond the green light gleaming
all night on her dock. Gatsby's hidden motivation of “purposeless
splendor” is to capture the woman who has come to represent his
ideal. Gatsby believes that he can win his woman back with his
wealth, that be can attain the ideal she stands for through material
success. Now he wants Nick to invite Daisy to tea so that he can
meet her again. Up to the present moment, everything Gatsby owns
exists only for the attainment of his vision: to repeat the past and
win his woman back.
Hostility explodes when Tom forces Gatsby
to tell the truth about what is going on between him and Daisy. At
last, Gatsby blurts out that Daisy has never loved Tom. But Daisy
corrects him by declaring that she has loved them both. Tom points
out that Gatsby's accumulation of wealth is connected with criminal
activities. Daisy now is lost to Gatsby forever, despite his frantic
attempts to revitalize the “dead dream.”
On the way back to
West Egg, Gatsby's big yellow ear hits Myrtle Wilson and Daisy
drives away. From Gatsby's father, Nick learns how rigidly Gatsby
had worked towards self-fulfillment from
youth. Nick can no longer tolerate the moral chaos
that lies beneath the wealth and sophistication of Eastern society.
So he decides to return to the Midwest. Months later, he meets Tom
Buchanan and realizes that it was he who told Wilson where to find
Gatsby and he and Daisy had fled to New York before Gatsby was
murdered.
2. Brief Comment
2.1. The Theme of
the novel
The theme is the emptiness and failure of
American dream. Daisy stands for American dream. “Gatsby tries to
win Daisy” stands for his realization of American
dream.
2.2.Writing Techniques used in this
novel
(1). The narrator in this novel Nick Carraway is a
reliable narrator. He is an inside character. At the same time, he
is also an outside narrator of the story. He is also the writer's
spokesman.
(2). Symbolism is used in this book. There are
symbols e.g. The green light symbolizes Gatsby's dream. The eyes of
the doctor symbolize the eyes of the God.
(3).
Impressionistic technique is also used e.g. “blue garden” and
“yellow bug”.
3. The following is a part of the last
chapter—Chapter IX in the novel—The Great Gatsby.
The Great Gatsby
CHAPTER
IX
After two years I
remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next day, only
as an endless drill of police and photographers and newspapermen in
and out of Gatsby's front door. A rope stretched across the main
gate and a policeman by it kept out the curious, but little boys
soon discovered that they could enter through my yard , and there
were always a few of them clustered open-mouthed about the pool.
Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective , used the
expression "madman" as he bent over Wilson's
body that afternoon , and the adventitious authority of his
voice set the key for the newspaper reports next morning.
Most of
those reports were a nightmare-grotesque , circumstantial, eager,
and untrue. When Michaelis'
testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson's suspicions of his
wife I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy
pasquinade-but Catherine,
who might have said anything, didn't say a word. She showed a
surprising amount of character about it too-Looked at the coroner
with determined eyes under that corrected brow of hers, and swore
that her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was
completely happy with her husband, that her sister had been into no
mischief whatever. She convinced herself of it, and cried into her
handkerchief, as if the very suggestion was more than she could
endure. So Wilson was reduced to a man "de-ranged by grief" in order
that the case might remain in its simplest form. And it rested
there.
But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I
found my-self on Gatsby's side, and alone. From the moment I
telephoned news of the catastrophe to West
Egg Village, every surmise about him, and every practical
question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and confused;
then, as he lay in his house and didn't move or breathe or speak,
hour upon hour , it grew upon me that I was responsible , because no
one else was interested-interested , I mean , with that intense
personal interest to which everyone has some vague right at the
end.
I called up Daisy
half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and
without hesitation. But she and Tom
had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with
them.
"Left no
address?"
"No.
"
"Say when they'd be
back7"
"No.
"
"Any idea where they are? How I
could reach them?"
"I don't know.
Can't say. "
I wanted to get somebody for him. I wanted to Bo
into the room where he lay and reassure him: "I'll get somebody for
you, Gatsby. Don't worry. Just trust me and I'll get somebody for
you- "
Meyer
Wolfsheim's name wasn't in the phone book. The butter gave me
his office address on Broadway, and I called Information , but by
the time I had the number it was long after five, and no one
answered the phone.
"Will you ring
again?"
"I've rung them three
times. "
"It's very important.
"
"Sorry. I'm afraid no one's
there. "
I went back to the drawing
room and thought for an instant that they were chance visitors, all
these official people who suddenly filled it. But, as they drew back
the sheet and looked at Gatsby with unmoved eyes, his protest
continued in my brain:
“Look here, old sport, you've got to get
somebody for me. You've got to try' hard. I can't go through this
alone. "
Someone started to ask me questions, but I broke away
and going upstairs looked hastily through the unlocked parts of his
desk-he'd never told me definitely that his parents were dead. But
there was nothing-only the picture ofDan
Cody, a token of forgotten violence, staring down from the
wall.
Next morning I sent the butler to New York with
a letter to Wolfsheim, which asked for information and urged him to
come out on the next train. That request seemed superfluous when T
wrote it. I was sure he'd start when he saw the newspapers, just as
T was sure there'd be a wire from Daisy before noon-but neither a
wire nor Mr. Wolfsheim arrived; no one arrived except more police
and photographers and newspapermen. When the butler brought back
Wolfsheim's answer I began to have a feeling of defiance, of
scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me against them
all.
Dear Mr. Carraway. This has been one of the most
terrible shocks of my life to me I hardly can believe it that it is
true at all. Such a mad act as that man did should make us all
think. I cannot come down now as I am tied up in some very important
business and cannot get mixed up in this thing now. If there is
anything I can do a little. Later let me know in a letter by Edgar.
I hardly know where I am when I hear about a thing like this and am
completely knocked down and
out.
Yours
truly
MEYER
WOLFSHEIM
and then hasty addenda
beneath
Let me know about the funeral etc
do not
know his family at all.
When the phone rang that
afternoon and longdistance said Chicago was calling I thought this
would be Daisy at last. But the connection came through as a man's
voice, very thin and far away.
'
"This is Slagle
speaking… "
"Yes?" The name was
unfamiliar.
"Hell of a note, isn't
it? Get my wire?"
"There haven't
been any wires. "
"Young
Parke's in trouble , " he said rapidly. "They
picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a
circular from New York giving'em the numbers just five minutes
before. What d'you know about that, hey? You never can ten in these
hick towns--"
"Hello! " I interrupted breathlessly.
"Look here-this isn't Mr.
Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby's dead. "
There was a long silence on the other end of
the wire, followed by an exclamation…then a quick squawk as the
connection was broken.
I think it was on the
third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gatz arrived from a town
in Minnesota. It said only that the sender was leaving immediately
and to postpone the funeral un81 he came.
It was
Gatsby's father, a solemn old man, very helpless and dismayed,
bundled up in a long cheap ulster against ale warm September day.
His eyes leaked continuously with excitement, and when I took the
bag and umbrella from his hands he began to pun so incessantly at
his sparse gray beard that I had difficulty in getting off his coat.
He was on the point of collapse, so I took him into the music room
and made him sit down while I sent for something to eat. But he
wouldn't eat, and the glass of milk spilled from his trembling hand.
"I saw it in the Chicago newspaper," he said. "It
was all in the Chicago newspaper. I started right away.
"
"I didn't know how to reach you.
"
His eyes, seeing nothing, mowed ceaselessly
about the room.
"It was a madman," he said. "He
must have been mad. "
"Wouldn't you like some
coffee?" I urged him.
"I don't want anything.
I'm all right now, Mr. -"
"Carraway.
"
"Well, I'all right now. Where have they got
Jimmy?"
I took him into the drawing room, where
his son lay, and left him there. Some little boys 'had come up on
the steps and were looking into the hall; when I told them who had
arrived, they went reluctantly away.
After a little while Mr.
Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed
slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and un-punctual tears. He had
reached an age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly
surprise, and when he looked around him now for the first time and
saw the height and splendor of the hall and the great rooms opening
out from it into other rooms, his grief began to be mixed with an
awed pride. I helped him to a bedroom upstairs; while he took off
his coat and vest I told him that all arrangements had been deferred
until he came.
"I didn't know what you'd want, Mr.
Gatsby--"
"Gatz is my name"
"--Mr. Gatz. I thought you might
want to take the body West."
He shook his head. '
"Jimmy
always liked it better down East. He rose up to his position in the
East. Were you a friend of my boy's, Mr. -?"
"We were close
friends. "
"He had a big future before him, you know. He was only
a young man, but he had a lot of brain power here.
"
He touched his head impressively, and I
nodded.
"If
he'd of lived, he'd of been a great man. A man like James
J. Hill. He'd of helped build up the country.
"
"That's true, " I said,
uncomfortably.
He fumbled at the embroidered
coverlet, trying to take it from the bed, and lay down stiffly-was
instantly asleep.
That night an obviously frightened
person called up, and demanded to know who I was before he would
give his name.
"This is Mr. Carraway, " I
said.
"Oh!"He sounded relieved. "This is Klipspringer.
"
I was relieved too, for that seemed to promise
another friend at Gatsby's grave. I didn't want it to be in the
papers and draw a sight-seeing crowd, so I'd been calling up a few
people myself. They were hard to find.
"The
funeral's tomorrow, " I said. "Three O'clock, here at the house. I
wish you'd tell anybody who'd be interested. "
"Oh, I
win, " he broke out hastily. "Of course I'm not likely to see
anybody, but if I do. "
His tone made me suspicious.
"Of
course you'll be there yourself. "
"Well, I'll certainly try.
What .I called up about is-" '
"Wait a minute, "I interrupted.
"How about saying you'll come?"
"Well, the fact
is-the truth of the matter is that I'm staying with some people up
here in Greenwich,
and they rather expect me to he with them tomorrow. In fact, there's
a sort of picnic or something. Of course I'll do my very best to get
away. "
I ejaculated an unrestrained "Huh! " and he must have
heard me, for he went on nervously:
"What I called up about was a
pair of shoes I left there. I wonder if it'd be too much trouble to
have the butler send them on. You see, they're tennis shoes, and I'm
sort of helpless without them. My address is care of B. F. --"
I
didn't hear the rest of the name, because I hung up the receiver.
After that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby-one gentleman to whom I
telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. However, that
was my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most
bitterly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby's liquor, and I should
have known better than to call him.
The morning of the funeral I
went up to New York to see Meyer Wolfsheim; I couldn't seem to reach
him any other way. The door that I pushed open, on the advice of an
elevator boy, was marked "The Swastika Holding Company, "and at
first there didn't seem to be anyone inside. But when I'd shouted
"hello" several times in vain, an argument broke out behind a
partition, and presently a lovely Jewess appeared at an interior
door and scrutinized me with black hostile eyes.
"Nobody's in, "
she said. "Mr. Wolfsheim's gone to Chicago. "
The first part of
this was obviously untrue, for someone had begun to whistle "The
Rosary , " tunelessly, inside.
"Please say that Mr. Carraway
wants to see him. "
"I can't get him back from Chicago, can
I?"
At this moment a voice, unmistakably Wolfsheim 's, called
"Stella! " from the other side of the door.
"Leave your name on
the desk, " she said quickly. "I'll give it to him when he gets
back. "
"But I know he's there. "
She took a step toward me
and began to slide her hands indignantly up and down her hips.
"You young men think you can force your way in here any time,"
she scolded. "We're getting sickantired
of it. When I say he's in Chicago, he's in Chicago. "
I mentioned
Gatsby.
"Oh-hl " She looked at me over again. "Will you just-what
was your name?"
She vanished. In a moment Meyer Wolfsheim stood
solemnly in the doorway, holding out both hands. He drew me into his
office, re-marking in a reverent voice that it was a sad time for
all of us, and offered me a cigar.
"My memory goes back to when
first I met him," he said. "A young major just out of the army and
covered over with medals he got in the war. He was so hard up he had
to keep on wearing his uniform because he couldn't buy some regular
clothes. First time I saw him was when
he come into Winebrenner's poolroom at Forty-third Street and
asked for a job.He
hadn't eat anything for a couple of days. 'Come on have some
lunch with me,' I said. He ate more than four dollars' worth of food
in half an hour. "
"Did you start him in business?" I
inquired.
"Start him! I made him. "
"Oh. "
"I
raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right
away he was a fine-appearing , gentlemanly young man , and when he
told me he was an
Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join up in the
American Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he
did some work for a client of mine up to Albany. We
were so thick like that in everything" --he held up two bulbous
fingers-- "always together. "
I wondered if this partnership had
includedthe
world's series transaction in 1919.
“Now he's dead, " I said
after a moment. "You were his closest friend, so I know you'll want
to come to his funeral this afternoon. "
"I'd like to come.
"
"Well, come then. "
The hair in his nostrils quivered
slightly, and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears.
"I
can't do it--I can't get mixed up in it," he said.
"There's
nothing to get mixed op in. It's all over now. "
"When a man gets
killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out.
When I was a young man it was different-if a friend of mine died, no
matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may think that's
sentimental, but I mean it-to the bitter end. "
I saw that for
some reason of his own he was determined not to come, so I stood
up.
"Are you a college man?" he inquired
suddenly.
For a moment I thought he
was going to suggest a "gonnegtion,"
but he only nodded and shook my hand.
"Let us learn to show our
friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead, " he
suggested. "After that, my own rule is to let everything alone.
"
When I left his office the sky had turned dark and I got back
to West Egg in a drizzle. After changing my clothes I went next door
and found Mr. Gatz walking up and down excitedly in the hall. His
pride in his son and in his son's possessions was continually
increasing and now he had something to show me.
"Jimmy sent me
this picture. " He took out his wallet with trembling fingers. "Look
there. "
It was a photograph of the house , cracked in the
corners and dirty with many hands. He pointed out every detail to me
eagerly. "Look there! " and then sought admiration from my eyes. He
had shown it so often that I think it was more real to him now than
the house itself.
“Jimmy sent it to me. I think it's a very
pretty picture. It shows up well. "
"Very well. ' Had you seen
him lately?"
"He
come out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live
in now. Of
course we was broke up when he run off from home, but I see now
there was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in front of
him. And ever since he made a success he was very generous with me.
"
He seemed reluctant to put away the picture, held it for
another minute, lingeringly, before my eyes. Then he returned the
wallet and pulled from his pocket a ragged old copy of a book called
Hopalong
Cassidy.
"Look here, this is a book he had when he was a
boy. It just shows you. "
He opened it at the back cover and
turned it around for me to see. On the last flyleaf was printed the
word SCHEDULE,
and the date September 12, 1906. And underneath:
Rise from
bed ......…………………………… 6.
00 A.M.
Dumbbell
exercise and wall-scaling … ……..6. 15-6.
30 "
Study electricity, etc. ………………………….
7. 15-8. 15 "
Work
...............……………………………….. 8. 30-4.
30 P.M.
Baseball and sports ………………………….. 4.
30-5. OO "
Practice elocution
,
poise and how to attain it ………………
5. 00-6. OO "
Study needed inventions
………………………7. 00-9.
00 "
GENERAL
RESOLVES
No wasting time at
Shafters or [a name ,
indecipherable]
No more smokeing or
chewing.
Bath every other
day
Read one improving book or
magazine per week
Save $ 5. OO
[crossed out] $ 3. 00 per week
Be
better to parents
"I come
across this book by accident, "said the old man. "It just shows
you, don't it?
"Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some
resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he's got about
improving his mind? He was always great for that. He told me I
et like a hog once, and I beat him for it."
He was reluctant
to close the book, reading each item aloud and then looking eagerly
at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the list for my
own use.
4.Questions for discussion
(1). What’s
the significance of Gatsby’s schedule? What does it tell
us?
(2). What
does Gatsby represent in Jazz
Age?
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