A Whole Heap of Ashes - 9.4.15

     In Thomas Foster's writing of A Whole Heap of Ashes he talks about how The Great Gatsby is not actually about Jay Gatsby. Before reading this I believed that all of the book revolved around Gatsby, but Foster's points proved otherwise. Prior to analyzing this book as a class I believed it was about Gatsby's love story and his journey to win back Daisy Buchanan. However, in the background Fitzgerald gives away information about the society of the 1920's. So from this, it is to be acknowledged that Foster must be saying that instead of the book being written about Gatsby it is in fact written about society during the 1920's. 

     So to begin, Thomas Foster mentions that, "the 'good' people are terrible, everyone is a cheat or a fraud, and the one person who fully embraces the  principles of success and advancement is destroyed." (Foster 145) This quote is basically telling us that everyone runs rampant and was careless about their morals and others surrounding them. Nick had moved from the West to East full of expectations, all being ruined by the end of the novel. Everyone in this novel is a "watcher" and everyone gets what they need or expect to see from everyone else. In other words, everyone is interpreting each other. For example, Nick lets the reader interpret that Tom is in a way a violent and unlikable character from descriptions like, “..he was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner.” (Fitzgerald 9) Foster describes nick as “stiff and snobbish” (Foster 142) which helps influence the reader that it is easy for Nick to disapprove of everyone, and with his midwestern values it helps contribute to that idea.

    So all in all, I agree with Thomas Foster on the idea that The Great Gatsby was not totally in fact about Gatsby himself. To give more reason behind why this story does not actually revolved around Jay Gatsby, each character represents something different about the 1920 society. Gatsby represents the “American Dream” and that dream was to go from “rags to riches” meaning from poor to rich. Tom represents money and wealth, Daisy represents women of the “elite” social class, and lastly Jordan represents all the changes of women during that decade. The changes of women during that decade included voting rights, and more independence given to women all over the country. Lastly, Nick represents midwestern values which were obviously much more different than eastern values.