Central Passage Chapters 5 & 6

"As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby's face...that voice was a deathless song" (Fitzgerald 101).

Gatsby's true character, the one that cannot be concealed with a simple "old sport", is finally revealed in this passage (100).  This man who had so long protrayed himself as a man of wealth and mystery with his lavish parties, is no higher a man than any other on Long Island, when he finally gets to share time with Daisy.  The fact that Daisy is married to Tom and he doesn't even spend a moment feeling guilty over sweeping this woman off her feet, shows so definitely that Gatsby is not really the perfect gentleman who would do anything for anyone.  When Gatsby's interests become entangled, he does not take into account the people he is hurting. 

Gatsby's heart in this passage was depicted as "ghostly".  He encompassed an emptiness, that could only be filled when this affair between himself and Daisy came about.  He lived a lifestyle where he could expend his energy on anything he chose and he chose to use all of his "creative passion(s)" on Daisy (101).  The tone in this passage depicts Gatsby's emptiness that Daisy was able to fulfill.

The most interesting part of this passage was the paralleled emptiness of both Gatsby and Daisy and how that seems to connect them together.  Fitzgerald depicted Gatsby's as having a "ghostly heart" and then proceeded to discuss Daisy as having a voice like a "deathless song" (101).  There is a suggestion that these two characters have sought one another because of the passion that they lack in everything else.  They share a common interest in desiring something more than what they already have to begin with.

Central Passage: The Great Gatsby

"I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair.  Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering.  I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life" (Fitzgerald 40). 

This passage most aptly describes the central passage for the first two chapters of The Great Gatsby because it depicts the chaotic nature of the novel.  There is a continual movement of characters, setting, and action in the novel that makes the form of the novel seem disjointed-chaotic like the characters themselves.  The "soft twilight" is a complete paradox to the insanity of Mrs. Wilson's nose being broken by Tom Buchanan.  The characters seemed very unsettled as they talk in fits of passion and anger. 

This page is also very central because it is one of the few times that we get a lengthy look into what the narrator is thinking amidst all of the chaos.  It is interesting how he feels he is somewhat apart of what is going on in this apartment and also how he is just like the silent onlooker on the street who wonders what is going on in the apartment above.  Nick has a way of being in the setting, but always distancing himself to some point that he is never completely there.

Pre-Discussion Question for "American Literature 1820-1865"

Washington Irving expressed the "difficulty [American writers faced] of how to keep from being a secondhand English writer" (Irving 341).  American writers feared that their predecessors would take too heavy a hand in the creation of their new works, these new works would then be cast out as being conventional and furthermore rejected by the small, elite literary world.  Were Irving's fears of American writing being merely counterfeit English writing confirmed?
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In what ways does this idea speak to the writing of the modern day American Scholars who are finding it "impossible to reconcile their...notions" of American writing because they cannot differentiate between true American writing and writing that is rooted in other countries heritage (341)?

The Choice Ruthie Made

In our discussion in class today of Marilynne Robinson's novel Housekeeping, many comments were made supporting the idea that Ruthie was given no choice to follow Aunt Sylvie, but rather Aunt Sylvie took Ruthie under her wing and forced her to be a part of the unconventional lifestyle.  Teachers questioned Ruthie's ability to stand on her own two feet without the guidance of another person, commanding her that she is "going to have to think for [her]self"(Robinson 135). Yes, it did appear that Ruthie hid behind the shadow of her sister Lucille and Aunt Sylvie, but as Lucille put it, "[Ruthie] has her own ways"(135).   Ruthie's evolution as a woman was in her way; she would sit by the lake instead of going to school, refuse caddy discussion over Coca Cola's, and enjoy adventures with Aunt Sylvie.  Ruthie was not reading "books that were to be improving" as Lucille did, nor did Ruthie desire to sew a "a skirt and a small jacket" alongside Lucille--she wanted to be a kid, to not have to face the fears of growing up, the fear that she may fall into the depression that forced their mother to commit suicide in the opening of the novel (125).  Ruthie chose to be a young lady, her development would come, but not at the same moment as Lucille was 'maturing' into a proper young lady.


Ruthie was given a choice when it came to becoming the characteristic and acceptable women of the 1980's.  Although it was a method for Aunt Sylvie to keep custody of Ruthie, the two of them "polished the windows...washed the china...burned the boxes of magazines in the orchards" to prove that they were capable of being proper women, to prove that they could be together (199).  In these actions, Ruthie had a choice to participate or not.  She could have allowed Aunt Sylvie fail in her efforts to have perfect housekeeping and in the court of law, Ruthie would be taken from Sylvie, but Ruthie obviously did not want that.  She was much more content amidst the frazzled life together with Aunt Sylvie then be the women Lucille, and all other women of that time had become. 


Returning to the idea of Lucille and Ruthie's mother's death, it seems that Ruthie's mother was driven to complete insanity by perfect housekeeping and Ruthie learned this early, escaping this fate.  Ruthie described her mother in the painful rant on page 197, "I remember her standing with her arms folded, pushing at the dust with the toe of her pump while she waited for us to finish our sundaes"(197).  She was pushing things into order, but this 'housekeeping' was an acquired ritual, for Ruthie described her in the "eccentricities" that defined her mother most, her eccentric-nature that did not really care about having a floor clear of dust (196).  Her mother sunk into society, sunk to the level society wanted her to be at: a perfect women; being a perfect woman was what killed her.  Ruthie and Lucille, even at the young age, could recall how she was filled with "bitterness...fell silent from time to time...she would soften and shrink in our hands and become infirm" (197).  Ruthie and Lucille watched their mother die--watch society take hold of her and Ruthie refused to have a parallel fate, of driving her car into the "smothered, nameless, and altogether black" lake in Fingerbone because she was being forced to live in the constraints of society (9).  It is in this notion, that Ruthie's choice to leave with Sylvie and cross the bridge, securing that her life would be surely unconventional from that moment is made.       

The Interaction Between the Raven and the Protagonist

As the Raven is introduced in Poe’s poem, he serves as a very calm, eerie sort of character. The protagonist, no doubt, questions if the bird is a bizarre omen, or a “bird of the devil” (Poe 85). The bird’s composition holds true to that of the conventional description of the devil—cunning, as the Raven keeps repeating the word ‘Nevermore’ and manipulative in that the protagonist becomes increasingly drawn to the Raven by asking “What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore/ Meant in croaking ‘Nevermore’”(71-72). With no answer the protagonist becomes more anxious and shouts frantically at the mysterious bird.

The protagonist begins to falter under the aloofness of the Raven, who simply croaks a single word, driving the protagonist mad. The style of how calm the Raven is in relation to the frantic-nature of the protagonist further emphasizes how the Raven is superior to the man. The man shrieks, “bird or fiend…/Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore/ leave no black plume/ leave my loneliness” (100-101). The fear in the protagonist as he shouts and the foreshadowing when he speaks of the ‘black plume’ emphasize the death to come.


The Raven is most characteristically like the Devil in these moments; the Devil’s capabilities to inflict death and retell the stories of death are depicted just as in the Bible. The Raven, or rather the Devil, harnesses the protagonist’s soul in his dark shadow, bringing the protagonist to demise akin to the demise of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The protagonist began this night pondering “a curious volume of forgotten lore” or simple things, as Adam and Eve lived in quiet serenity (2). The Devil then came to sweep this “weak and weary” man into his hold (1-2). As Eve was beguiled by the Devil’s allure, so was this man by the Raven.