Gatsby's American Dream: Reading The Great Gatsby Critically, Chapter 1

good morning Hank it's Monday today I want to talk about the first chapter of the Great Gatsby which is often called the Great American Novel not so much for its greatness or its novelist but because of its american-ness so in the last sixty years the United States has been very successful at exporting ideas like the idea of inexpensive hamburgers and also the idea of the American dream you know the American dream it's the idea that everyone regardless of standing in life has an equal opportunity to become successful which in the United States generally means rich the Great Gatsby is in many ways a novel about the American dream but it's also more Universal than that because one we've done a really good job of exporting the American dream and also to the American Dream was actually never that uniquely American it's actually kind of a universal dream these days but one of the charming things about Americans is that we see things that belong to the world and then we're like that's American ok so in the first few pages of the Great Gatsby here's what we know about our faithful narrator Nick Carraway by the way get it care away 1 he used to live in the Midwest then he moved to New York and now he's back in the Midwest something happened in New York that made him go home - he's a little bit highfalutin with words Nick hansip what made him leave New York and introduces us to Gatsby the hero of the novel insofar as Gatsby can be called heroic by saying Gatsby turned out all right in the end it was what preyed on Gatsby what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men in short Gatsby was ok but his dream his American dream was a little troubling the third thing we know about Nick Carraway is that he's rich and how did he get rich not by living the American dream but instead the old-fashioned way by having a rich ancestor we earned this ancestor paid someone off to serve in the Civil War and while that poor sap was fighting Nick's ancestor was busy making money how's that for an American dream so Nick moves to New York to work in the bond business and he gets a house on West Egg which is one of two almost identical islands West Egg being the less fashionable one nickel is in kind of a ramshackle house but both of his next-door neighbors are millionaires including the titular great gatsby about whom we learn almost nothing in Chapter 1 except that he had an extraordinary gift for hope that's the essential fact of Gatsby and also all romantic leads that have come since like I don't care if you're talking about Edward Cullen or the dude from the notebook or Miles halter all of them share an extraordinary gift for hope right all of them share this almost creepy belief that if I can just what I dream of I'll be happy but we don't think much of Gatsby in Chapter one instead we need Tom and Daisy Buchanan and Daisy is like Nick's second cousin once removed and he goes over to East Egg the fashionable place where they live in order to have like the worst dinner ever so Daisy Buchanan's like a professional pretty person and Tom Buchanan is a former football player who Fitzgerald describes perfectly by saying that he was one of those men who achieved such an acute limited excellence at twenty one that everything afterwards savers of anticlimax if you're not yet 21 you may not be able to understand what a burn that is but trust me it's a burn the Buchanan's are also crazy rich like polo pony rich you'll be surprised to learn how they got rich unless you guessed that it was not by living the American dream also take note of this their house golden rights and knickers are there to meet Daisy and Tom there's also this rather hot girl there named Jordan Baker they just have a horrible dinner Daisy is aggressively vapid midway through dinner Tom goes on this horrible racist rant he says the idea is that we're Nordics and we've produced all the things that make a civilization meanwhile they haven't produced to anything they're at a dinner where they didn't make the food they're eating they don't even like their own freaking candles that Alana's more set more than rain on your wedding day or 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife is irony but then everything changes when the phone rings Daisy and Tom leave Jordan Baker explains to Nick that Tom has some woman in New York and then you start to realize that maybe these people who have it all don't a little bit later in a conversation with Nick Daisy says one of the most interesting things in the book Daisy wakes up after giving birth and Tom has left and she looks at her daughter and says I hope she'll be a fool that's the best thing a girl can be in this world a beautiful little fool she's trying to be a beautiful little fool because that's the only way she can see to get through life one of the most interesting things about this chapter is that we are in fashionable East Egg in the center of the world with the richest people on earth and their polo ponies and no one is having any fun Nick leaves the awful dinner he goes home and at the end of chapter one we catch our first glimpse of the Great Gatsby he's standing outside his house arms stretched in the night looking in the distance and Nick follows his gaze and sees out over the bay a single green light that green white has become one of the most important metaphors in American later so watch out for does he keep reading one other thing about midway through the chapter Daisy tells the story of how her Butler used to work as a silver polisher for a big family in New York and he would polish silver morning noon and night and then eventually he had to quit because the stinky carcinogens ruined his nose if the whole first chapter is about how wealth consumes the rich that little anecdote is a reminder that well consumes the poor as well so here's your first non rhetorical question do you think the way the great gatsby portrays luxury and wealth and the American Dream accurately reflects the truth about those things I mean both in the Jazz Age when the book is set and today you'll find a link in the doobly-doo to a thread in your pants to continue the conversation Hank I'll see you on Wednesday

Channel: vlogbrothers

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Keywords: books, novels, fiction, literature, libraries, the great gatsby, reading, writing, publishing, authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Green, nerdfighters, vlogbrothers, book club, classics, library, metaphor, hank green, education, united states, america, idea, comedy, humor, funny, novelist, writer, teacher, american dream, nick carraway, new york, west, hero, protagonist, rich, wealth, millionaire, edward cullen, the notebook, twilight, hope, belief, gold, irony

Id: ehjTS6AhMJ8

Length: 5min 4sec (304 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 19 2011