The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald - Episode 3 - Find Out Why Chapter 5 Is Fitzgerald's Favorite Chapter! - a podcast by Christy and Garry Shriver

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald - Episode 3 - Find Out Why Chapter 5 Is Fitzgerald's Favorite Chapter!

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

 

And I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to love lit podcast.  This is our third episode featuring what some people consider to be THE Great American Novel, and after two weeks of symbolism and irony and politics and layers and layers of imagery and meaning, I am starting to see why people are so fascinated with this book.  It’s so dense.  There are so many ways to read it, and I guess that’s what’s kind of fun about it.  I liked reading it for the story, and I loved the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, although I know there are so many hard core Robert Redford fans out there that have taken me to task for that.  But, as I’ve read it this time, I’ve really enjoyed reading it for the political commentary.  I loved the discussion of the values of Thomas Jefferson and all the distortions or really perversions of the American Dream. 

 

An idea that we mentioned and will come back to- although like I said, I don’t really like the term- American Dream because it seems to me to imply the notion of possibility or  self- improvement on the basis hard work, personal sacrifice and merit as uniquely American, which is most definitely is NOT.   

 

Well, I won’t disagree with that.  Of course, that’s the dream of all the world.  We can look at the life of Paulo Neruda and his hope for Chile for an example we’ve featured on the podcast as well as Julia de Borges although very differently expressed.  But from a political standpoint, 

what Fitzgerald criticizes is less the idea itself, as I told you, he’s a Thomas Jefferson fan as well, but, he challenges this myth that there is a place on earth that is free from the corruption innate in the human heart- that the United States of America is such a place. Regardless of the system of checks and balances inherent in any system, it is an illusion to believe that those who make it to the top of the social, economic and political worlds escape the damaging mercenary temptations inherent in those positions- whether they are born there or whether they build their wealth themselves- and, as I see it, as we read through this book- we see very clearly the lines blurring between right and wrong- legitimate and illegitimate- reality versus illusion and ultimately even good vs evil, if you want to see it in those terms. 

 

And he does it so artfully.  He uses colors, and cars and geography and symbols of all sorts and throws all of these into a glamorous setting of his day.  The original readers saw this book as being modeled after their own modern moment.  This story, if it were set today, would include characters modeled after Kanye West, Tom Brady, Beyonce, and Bill DiBlasio, the music would likely be rap music- the technology would likely include tik tok, iphones, and Zoom.  In fact, if you really want to make a good comparison, F. Scott Fitzgerald was sort of the Shonda Rhimes of his day.  

 

 If you don’t know who that is, Shonda Rhimes, may be the most accomplished television producer and author of our day.  She is the head writer, creator and executive producer of shows everyone knows: Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, How to Get away with Murder and Scandal.  She wrote Crossroads the debut film of Britney Spears , her most recent being Bridgerton. 

 

And Fitzgerald was like that.  Between 1919 and 1934 he made $400,000 mostly from short stories- think of that like tv episodes.  His work was fun, popular and glamorous, like Shonda Rhimes, so when the Great Gatsby came out- it wasn’t taken as the serious work of literature he meant it to me- and if you don’t get the meaning, the story in many ways falls flat.  One newspaper called it, ““Fitzgerald’s latest a dud” Ruth Hale of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle said, “Find me one chemical trace of magic, life, irony romance or mysticism in all of The Great Gatsby, and I will bind myself to read one Scott Fitzgerald book a week for the rest of my life.” 

 

Ouch, that sounds like one of those Edgar Allen Poe Reviews.   

 

Well, it does, and the money speaks for itself.  He only made $7000 from the two printings of the book combined.  He himself knew it was a masterpiece and believed that all the way til his death.  He set out to write, using his own words, ‘something new, something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.”  And he absolutely did every bit of that.  In fact that was one of the things the critics didn’t like about it- it was too geometric to be a great novel- in their estimation. 

 

What does that mean?  How can you be geometric? 

 

Well, things in this book are just too tight- there is even one theory that he modeled the entire thing after a vaudeville show (which normally has 9 acts- and he has 9 chapters)- but in each act there’s a theme modeled after what the corresponding Act would be if it were a vaudeville show.   

 

Do you think there is any validity to that? For those of you who are unfamiliar with that term- during the early part of the 20th century, America had these variety shows called Vaudveille that were really popular.  They basically were little circus like shows- with crazy characters and lots of music.  In a way, I can see it.  We’ve seen crazy characters for sure as well as lots of music. 

 

I really don’t know.  Vaudeville was extremely popular at the time, and if you read the literature they make that case, but honestly, I have no idea, but it woldn’t surprise me.  Everything in this book is just so deliberate.  If you follow the vaudeville pattern- this week we’re going to look at chapters 4-5 which in Vaudeville world should include the act with absurd characters and chapter 4 does fit that bill.  Act 5’s by the way are characterizized by near misses and that works too, as we’ll see. But another remarkable thing about the structure of this book is that the moment when Gatsby and Daisy meet is exactly the smack dab middle of the book.   

 

Are we ready to jump into the weeds of chapters 4-5? 

 

Absolutely, the beginning of chapter  really introduces a long cast of characters, in fact the first two pages are nothing but names.  The most interesting to the story is Klipspringer who stayed at Gatsby’s so long he was nicknamed “the boarder”.  But the really interesting characters are not the guests or even the gangsters although meeting anyone who’s jewelry is made from human molars would generally draw my attention- but in this case, the mafioso is displaced by the deputant. 

 

No doubt, and I know we don’t have time to get into the real colorful men of history who inspired these hilarious descriptions but if anyone is interested, look into the life of Herbert Bayard Swope who’s parties inspired Gatsby’s parties and the bootlegger Max Gerlach who is the model for Gatsby and George Remus who Fitzgerald actually met in Louisville- any Google search is just  fun  if you enjoy those kinds of things. 

  

 And Louisville is where we’re landing today- and it is in chapter 4 that we go back in time to meet  Daisy Fay of Louisville, Kentucky- a place where you’ve actually visited many times because it was also the location the College Board selected for many years for AP readers to congregate and grade the hundreds of thousands of essays from around the world every year. 

 

So true, Louisville, Kentucky the fictional hometown of Daisy Fay, is a Southern City, today famous for the Churchill Downs, Kentucky Derby, and Kentucky bourbon.  Louisville is charming, historical and mythological and right in the middle is the Seelbach hotel-  The hotel Tom Buchanan descended upon from Chicago with an entourage 400 people on the weekend of his wedding. 

 

Fitzgerald, and this is where you’re going to see a LOT of overlap between fiction and non-fiction, like Gatsby, was a soldier during WW1 and stationed, albeit only for a month near Louisville.  On the weekends, he, like a lot of soldiers, would escape Camp Zachary Taylor in his impeccable uniform he had tailor made from Brooks Brothers, enter into the Seelbach hotel as the handsomest man in the room and seek to charm and seduce.  Zelda, his wife, is not from Louisville, she’s from Alabama, another city, so you can see how he plays around with his past.  But she, like Daisy, refuses to marry him because “rich girls don’t marry poor boys.”  To quote Tom Buchanan.  Fitzgerald was stationed near Louisville in 1918, prohibition didn’t start until 1920 so he made good use of the opulent Seelbach bar so much so that he was thrown out of the Seelbach bar at least three times in the four weeks he was there. 

 

Good Lord- well – Fitzgerald in his sober state, sets Jordan Baker’s retelling of Daisy’s past in October of 1917.  I want to point out a couple of things here which I find very interesting and things to think about.  So far, we’ve talked about Fitzgerald’s criticism of corruption and the American dream, we’ve talked about colors and irony, and dust and existential atheism- and all that is in this book- but now I want to change directions and talk about time and personal history, nostalgia and all those things that are beyond politics.  There is a lot of emotional content in this story, this bittersweet feeling of lost opportunity that everyone experiences as they get older in some way or another.  This is set up in the first four chapters with a lot that is happy and exciting- happy nostalgia so to speak- it really peaks in the famous fifth chapter, which was Fitzgerald’s personal favorite and the one he rewrote the most- and kind of turns to negative feelings for the rest of the book- I heard it described as a nostalgia hangover one time and that’s a funny but appropriate metaphor.  It also becomes extremely evident, if it hasn’t been before, that there is no attempt to be chronological – this chapter is very cinematic as it creates these montages of the past and present- New York and then Louisville. 

 

I also want to point out that Fitzgerald, very progressively, changes narrarators and when we hear Daisy’s story, it’s not from the perspective of Nick- a female, Jordan, tells what some would call the female version of the Gatsby story.  Garry read how Jordan first meets Gatsby,  

 

The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fay’s house.  She was just 18, two years older than me, and by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville.  She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster, and all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night.  “Anyways, for an hour!”  When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was beside the curb, and she was sitting in it with a lieutenant I had never seen before.  They were so engrossed in each other that she didn’t see me until I was five feet away.  “Hello, Jordan,” she called unexpectedly. “Please come here.”  I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, because of all the other girls I admired her most.  She asked me if I was going to the Red Cross and make bandages.  I was.  Well, then, would I tell them that she couldn’t come that day?  The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at  some time, and because it seemed romantic to me I remembered the incident ever since.  His name was Jay Gatsby, and I didn’t lay eyes on him again for over four years- even after I’d met him on Long Island I didn’t realize it was the same man.” 

 

It’s so easy to reduce Daisy to the materialstic skank that stays with an awful man for the money because Nick looks at her like that by the end of the book, but I want to suggest, Fitzgerald is doing something so much more interesting than that.  She has a white childhood- nothing the color- but Daisy is Fitzgerald’s doppelganger.  I want to point out something many people have observed- neither Daisy nor Gatsby are every described physically.  Gatsby is described by his dress- Daisy is described by her voice- everything else we have to create in our imaginations.  They aren’t real- they are both dreams.  But while Gatsby goes away and keeps the dream alive for five years- Daisy’s dream of Gatsby dies early.  Notice that as she sits in that car, Jordan remembers it becaue of the way Gatsby looks at her- in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at some time.” What’s more dreamy than that- but the very next paragraph Daisy’s dream is over.  Read what Fitzgerald says,  

 

“Wild rumors were circulating about her- how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say good-by to a soldier who was going overseas.  She was effectually prevented, but she wasn’t on speaking terms with her family for several weeks.  After that she didn’t play around with soldiers anymore, but only with a few flat-footed short-sighted young men in town, who couldn't get into the army at all.  By the next autumn she was gay again, as gay as ever.  She had a debut after the Armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a man from New Orleans.  In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before.  He came down with a hundred people in four private cars, and hired a whole floor of the Seelbach Hotel, and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three-hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” 

 

BTW- I looked up how much that would be today- and the estimates started around 4 million. 

 

True- but the next part is what I want to highlight.  Let me read what Jordan says, “I wa a bridesmaid.  I came into her room half an hour before the b ridal dinner, and found her lying on her bad as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress- and as drunk as a monkey.  She had a bottle of Sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other. “Gradulate me,” she muttered.  “Never had a drink before, but oh how I do enjoy it.”  What’s the matter, Daisy” I was scared, I can tell you; I’d never seen a girl like that before.  “Here, deares”She groped around in a waste-based she had with her on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. “Take ‘em down-stairs and give ‘em back to whoever they belong to. Tell ‘em Daisy’s change her mine. Say “Daisy’s change her mind. “ 

She began to cry- she cried and cried.  I rushed out and found her mother’s maid, and we locked the door and got her back into a cold bath. She wouldn’t let go of the letter.  She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up with a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.  But she didn’t say another word.  We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress, and half an hour later, when we walked out of the room, the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over.  Next at five o’clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver, and started off on a three months trip to the South Beach.  I saw them in Santa Barbar when they came back, and I thought I’d never seen a girl so mad about her husband.  If he left the room for a minute she’d look around uneasily, and say, “Where’s tom gone…….let me skip down to the end of the paragraph…skipping over the part where Daisy spends hours rubbing fingers over his eyes…after I left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night and ripped a front wheel off his car.  The girl who was with him got into the papers, too, becaue her arm was broken- she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel. 

 

Wow- well, there are eyes, cars and a lot of the stuff we’ve talked about before. 

 

True- but there’s another really important thing to notice- WATER.  Water plays a huge role in the book- it’s between the eggs, in chapter 5 we’ll talk about the rain, but what does it mean- well- we’ve talked about this in several books- but water is the most primal of archtypes- it’s important in every religion as a sign of rebirth and renewal- which is what’s going on here.  Daisy got baptized the night before her wedding- she went under that icey water and let her letter from Gatsby disintegrate and she came up the ice princess- a woman so devoid of feeling that she exist in a world where she knows she’s nothing both an ornament,  a statue or a collector’s item- the golden girl.  Gatsy founded his vision on Daisy Fay- the fairy- the girl he described as “gleaming like silver safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor”. We’re going to see in chapter 5 that he literally glows in her presence.  But that girl came down to reality well before Gatsby every did.  You’re going to see next week that Gatsby has two baptisms himself, and one is in his backyard in the swimming pool.   

 

Yikes- well after Fitzgerald destroys Daisy’s dream- he goes after Gatsby- at the end of chapter 4, Fitzgerald gives the narrator role back to Nick.  Jordan finishes her story by talking about how Gatsby’s house is across the water from Daisy’s house.  “But it wasn’t a coincidence at all. “Why not.” “Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.”  Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night.  He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor.  “He wants to know , “continued Jordan” if you’ll invite Daisy to your house some afternoon and then let him come over.”  The modesty of the demand shook me.  He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths- so that he could “come over” some afternoon to a stranger’s garden.”  …Jordan ends her chat with Nick telling him he’s supposed to set it up but Daisy isn’t supposed to know about it…then Nick and Jordan make out in the car in quite possibly the most unromantic love scene I’ve ever read, “Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms.  Her wan, scornful mouth smiled, and so I drew her up again closer, this time to my face. 
 

Isn’t there a cliché- if you can’t be with the one you love- love the one you’re with. 

 

This is even worse than that- if you can’t find someone to love- be with a disembodied face. 

 

Chapter 5 is the big meeting- the middle of the chapter- the chapter Fitzgerald told Max Perkins his editor, he loved the most.  

 

It’s also where, from my perspective, this is where we see a lot of the mythical qualities stand out which makes me think Greek- as you know because Shakespeare did a lot with this- Empedocles, the Greek philosopher came up with the famous four-part theory kind of saying everything comes from air, water, earth and fire- and as we see Fitzgerald play around with all the traditional colors, I can’t help but see him play around with the traditional basic elements that the ancients thought created the world.   

 

Great point- there everywhere- Daisy floats around, the valley of ashes is the earth, Manhattan is fire hot, and then there is all this emphasis on water- which we’re going to see water play such an important role in the most important parts of the story-.here in chapter 5, after Gatsby tries unsuccessfully to recruit Nick to work for the mob- which was a kind of funny exchange- we arrive at the famous moment where Gatsby and Daisy meet- and it is “POURING RAIN”- and rain means rebirth, regeneration- Gatsby- it’s also blistering hot- there are references t “pink clouds” after Daisy visits the mansion.  It’s all there all the elements that make for recreating the world- except as we know- this is all an illusion.   It’s all fake.  But let’s walk it back and go through this scene- with the archetypes in the back of our mind with the colors and the Greek elements- but they are the supporting details- the real focus of this chapter is on Gatsby’s absolute determination to walk back time.  Matthew Bruccoli wasTHE premiere American expert on F. Scott Fitzgerald, he died in 2008, but he wrote the preface which is in the authorized version of the book that most students at least in this country use- it has the blue face with eyes in the middle of the cover and red lipstick with the fire of the city below.  Anyway, in his preface, he says that Fitzgerald references time 450 – 87 direct references to the word itself- never mind the constant use of time symbolism.  That is really what I want us to focus on for the rest of this discussion because at the end of the day- what Gatsby wants to do is stop time.  He wants to walk back time.  When he walks in with his white suit and gold tie- he wants to recreate the moment Jordan told us about when he met Daisy this first time- except this time he’s an version of himself that would have been competitive with Tom or whatever image he has made up in his nmind.  Daisy with her “clear artificial note” says, “I certainly am awfully glad to see you again.”  And what does he do, he leans his head so far back that it rest against the face of a defunct mantlepiece clock.  As Gatsby talks the clock tilts dangerously at the pressure of his head and he has to turn and catch it before it crashes and breaks.   When Gatsby says, “I’m sorry about the clock.”  He IS sorry about the clock.  He’s sorry about the lost five years.  

 

For Gatsby, his body is in the present but his mind is five years in the past.  I don’t really want to get Freudian but this does remind me of a Freud quote, Freud says, ““We call a belief an illusion when a wish-fulfilment is a prominent factor in its motivation” (Freud, 1962, p. 28) 

 Yes, and for Gatsby this is something money can buy- time is something you can create; something you can buy- like everything else that is for sale in this world.  If you’re rich enough you can buy everything- even time- even Daisy.   

 

The scene where Gatsby takes Daisy over to his house in the movie version with Leonardo DiCaprio is so memorable.  And now that you mentioned colors- I tend to notice them.  There is a gold odor- whatever that could be- and a lot of purple which is made from blue and red- this scene is about the illusion of love. 

 

Yep- now you’re tracking with Fitzgerald.  Here’s a good line, they are in Gatsby’s bedroom and he is evaluating everything in his house according to the measure of Daisy’s response to it.  Then it says this, “After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence.  He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity.  Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock.” Now that is poetic language if you have ever read it!!!  

 

The funniest scene to me is the one with the shirts. 

 

I know.  It’s funny and I think we should keep reading.   

 

Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which help his massed suits and dressing gowns and ties, and his shrits, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high. 

“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes.  He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each seasons, spring and fall.” 

 

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray.  While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher- shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange,with monograms of Indian blue.  Suddenly with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shrts and began to cry stormily. 

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such- such beautiful shirts before.” 

 

Why do you think she cries?  I have always found this strange.   

 

Well, of course, I don’t know.  But it could be a couple of things- you know, like you mentioned about Daisy, the ice queen from the previous chapter- Daisy may be understanding what Gatsby doesn’t- that this is an illusion their relationship isn’t real.   It could be that Daisy is regretting marrying Tom and thinking about having a life with Gatsby.  But honestly, when I put on- my historical lens, I remember that this is the 1920s, WW1 destroyed for the people, and not just American people, but people in England, Germany, France and Spain- it destroyed for so many the values on which they had created their whole culture and identity. if I look at this book the way you’ve been wanting us to look at it- full of symbolism, mythology and meaning- I land on the idea that for many people up to that point, and even today, we believe that love and materialism are not connected.  People won’t love you because of your money, not really, and you can have love even if you don’t have money.  I mean, we can subscribe to those ideas- but what we see in Daisy is someone who, in her own words, is cynical- that’s the first thing she told us about herself.  This is the woman who literally wants her daughter to be a beautiful fool- and here’s she’s crying.  In general, cynical people don’t cry.  So why is she crying, one idea is because Daisy, like so many of her generation, finds the shirts and the materialism they represent the substitute for the innocent fulfilling love of her white past- the one she doesn’t believe in anymore- the one that doesn’t exist- it’s a beautiful moment that she shares with Gatsby- but she believes the shirts are safe real thing in the room- and that would make me cry too.   

 

Well, it’s certainly possible that this encounter with the real Daisy instead of the one Gatsby had made up in his head is having a similar effect on Gatsby himself.  He says this, “If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay.” “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.”  Remember Green is the color of growth but also the color of money.   

Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said.  Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever.  Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemd very near to her, almost touching her.  It had seemed as close as a star to the moon.  Now it was again a green light on a dock.  His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.   

 

Daisy calls then to the window just a little while later and we see that the rain is still falling, but the darkness had parted in the west, and there was a pink and golden billow of foamy clouds above the sea.  “Look at that” she whispered and then after a moment, “I’d like to just get one of those pink could and put you in it and push you around.” 

 

And this chapter which at face value is absolutely as romantic as this book will ever get ends with such cynicism, such irony- it’s very much the nihilism and post modernism so often seen in the 1920s.  Klipsinger is playing two songs that were super popular in the 1920s, you can listen to them on youtube.  The love nest was a very popular song about a house.  It literally says that the love nest is a small house on a farm but filled with warmth and love inside and is better than a palace with a gilded dome- yikes- this house is the gilded one.  The second song, the one actually quoted in the text is from a song called “Aint’ we Got Fun”.  The lines in the book read this, “One thing’s sure and nothing’s surer the rich get richer and the poor get- children”.   

 

Both Daisy had Gatsby pursued love in their youth-  but they aren’t those people any more.  Daisy is the ice queen, and Gatsby created his own Daisy something he can literally purchase- and  that’s not love either, not really.  Fitzgerald’s sarcasm is in the song choice.  The chapter ends like this, “As I went over to say good-by I saw that the expression of Bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness.  Almost five year!  There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusions.  It had gone beyond her, beyond everything.  He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way.  No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.  As I watched him he adjust himself a little, visibly.  His hand took hers, and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward her with a rush of emotion.  I think that voice help him most, with it fluctuating, feverish warmth because it oculdn’t be over-dreamed- that voice was a deathless song. 

 

And of course Nick leaves them to go walk in the rain. 

 

What do you think?   You don’t have the Jane Austen happy ending feeling do you? 

 

No.  You really don’t.   

Further episodes of How To Love Lit Podcast

Further podcasts by Christy and Garry Shriver

Website of Christy and Garry Shriver