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The Great Gatsby Part 5: The "In" Crowd 24989 Views


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Description:

How do you achieve the unachievable dream? Easy. Be wealthy, party everyday, and fake it ‘till you make it. We’ll let you get to work on that, Shmoopers.


Transcript

00:01

We speak student!

00:05

The Great Gatsby

00:07

The In Crowd

00:09

a la Shmoop

00:12

You know, one of the themes

00:14

that grabs me about Gatsby

00:16

is that people care

00:18

so much about being on this in crowd

00:20

and the wealthy, even though it's not them.

00:23

They'll never be accepted anyway,

00:24

even if they really wanted to be.

00:27

What does Fitzgerald say about the American Dream in his novel?

00:31

I mean, it's basically the idea of the unachievable dream, right?

00:34

Everyone in this book wants

00:36

to be rich and

00:38

wants to be the life of the party.

00:41

And no one's going to be.

00:43

Even Gatsby, who is the life of the party,

00:45

is a total facade. Nothing about him is real.

00:48

And so, again, this idea of the unachievable dream makes us

00:51

take a step back and think that

00:53

the whole idea of the American Dream -

00:55

coming from nothing and building yourself up and

00:58

becoming rich and successful on your own -

01:01

is also maybe unachievable.

01:03

And so everything Fitzgerald

01:05

says and does and writes about -

01:08

Gatsby, Nick, and the whole gang -

01:10

we always wanna reflect that back on

01:12

American society as a whole.

01:14

Fitzgerald himself and all his buddies

01:16

went to Paris. They left the country because they were like,

01:18

"Well, there's nothing left for us here."

01:21

So they even left. So we kind of see this --

01:24

all these people wanting what they can't have.

01:26

And we reflect that back and say,

01:27

"Oh, this is what Fitzgerald thought about America as a whole."

01:30

What's Myrtle's role in all this?

01:32

She has her nose broken by Tom and...

01:35

[ grunt ]

01:36

[ glass breaks ]

01:37

so on. Talk to us about that.

01:40

How does Myrtle embody Fitzgerald's American Dream?

01:45

Yeah, Myrtle is another one of these accessory characters.

01:48

So she is

01:50

Tom's mistress.

01:52

She's George Wilson's wife.

01:54

And she is just

01:56

a victim through and through.

01:59

Myrtle is kind of like Nick and Gatsby a little bit in that she's

02:02

part of the working class. Her husband, George, is a mechanic.

02:06

And she's kind of trying to make her way in to this other world

02:09

by being Tom's mistress.

02:12

And just like Gatsby and Nick are a little bit on the outside,

02:16

so is Myrtle. She's not part of this wealthy elite,

02:19

but she's kind of trying to make her way in,

02:21

- and it does not work out for her. - Doesn't work.

02:23

[ car horn beeps ]

02:24

[ whooshing ]

02:28

[ whoop ]

02:30

What does Fitzgerald say about the American Dream in his novel?

02:34

How does Myrtle embody Fitzgerald's American Dream?

02:40

[ ooh ]

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