Maddy's Blog Of Wittery-ness: On "The Great Gatsby"

Saturday, October 30, 2010

On "The Great Gatsby"

Godddddddd.
So MAYBE I left the reading of TGG a little bit late.
Seeing as how it had to be read by Monday, and here I am on the Saturday before having just finished.
Well.
What can I say about TGG?
I'm fairly sure we're supposed to be comparing it with Hamlet as far as tragedies are concerned.
Hmmm.
The trad. tragedies have a system where the hero dies.
Now, lots of people did die.
Myrtle.
Gatsby.
Mr Wilson.
I don't, however, consider any of these people to be heroes.
Starting with Myrtle Wilson and her hubby.
He was a slob.
She was cheating.
Hmmmmmmmmm...
Perhaps not so much the heroes. Plus, they didn't really have these great big moments of kind of them peaking (please, refrain from innuendos), with them being at the top of their game and wonderful.
Myrtle was average looking, bawdy and generally dull.
Her hubby was slobby, disgusting, and decided to take a gun to the man he thought killed his wife.
Trouble is, while this could be seen as this marvelous bit of heroic, he then killed himself afterwards.
Uh, no.
That is not tragic.
That's just stupid.
AND he locked his wife up in the house so that she couldn't get out.
Yeah, she'd been cheating.
But let's face it.
HE married her.

Now, for Gatsby.
Admittedly, he was at the peak of his existence at the beginning of the novel.
Big parties, lots of money, yes yes, very posh.
But he didn't have anyone to love.
Sure, he was IN love.
With a married woman he hadn't seen in five years.
Who didn't love him back.
Who was married with a wa-wa. (Baby, for those of you not used to me talking).
So he has an affair with her.
*Facepalm*.
THAT is not heroic.
That's selfish.
If he really loved her, he'd let her go and be free with her hubby and her bubby and her money.
And yet.

So yeah, people end up dead.
But everyone ends up dead.
So how are we to sift the heroes from the average Joe's?

2 comments:

LedzebraOctober 31, 2010 at 2:41 PM
average Joes are often more heroic than they seem.... 0.o
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Maddy HealOctober 31, 2010 at 2:47 PM
EVERYONE is an average Joe. The trouble I have is that to BE a hero, over just being a protaganist, you must have DONE something. Achieved something. Not been a two timing wank-head who is cocky, and stupid.
That is NOT a hero.
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Things That Make Me Happy

1) When my baking comes out really, really excellently.
2) Historical romances
3) Daydreams about being a very successful grown up.
4) Daydreams that are REALLY inappropriate for the location you're having them in, like having sexy daydreams on a bus when trying to hold down a conversation.
5) Strictly Come Dancing
6) The Great British Bake Off
7) When your crochet ends up looking amazing.
8) When Dad brings me a random Crunchie.
9) Lula. Just in general. She is one of the best people alive.
10) Writing fiction and it actually sounding decent.
11) Tudor history
12) Learning songs on my guitar really really slowly, but on my own so it feels like a proper achievment.
13) Realising, 13 things in, that Katie was right about this making me feel much better.
14) Katie
15) How Anna smells. I know I bang on about it, but honestly, phwoar!!
16) Getting over a sore throat and being able to screech out songs when I feel like it again.
17) My purse (It has a big, shiny union jack on it)
18) Going to the market just off Covent Garden.
19) The Globe.
20) Kenneth Brannagh.
21) Mocking Hanna
22) Realising that Hanna has come up with a completely logical scientific theory about the Earth expanding, making her a lot more intelligent than previously realised.
23) ALL of my cousins. There are about 14 of them, and I love each and every one of them. Even the tiny, mental ones.
24) My Grannie. Scary, but she loves me.
25) Being a ginge.
26) Honeycomb.
27) How my room looks like it has pink walls in the morning when my curtains are shut, pale blue walls in the daylight, and white walls at nighttime when all the light I have is the moon.
28) The best piece of post I ever got, still in a frame, still on my bookshelf.
29) Doctor Who
30) Doctor Who jackets, all tweed and elbow patches.
31) Lidl's lasagne
32) Being able to spell lasagne.
33) The picnics Sullay organises.
34) Cold chow mein, covered in sweet and sour sauce and served in a lunch box in front of jealous looking mates.
35) Painting my nails yellow and drawing smiley faces on with Sharpie marker.
36) My brother, even though he's mental and seems to take joy in making my hair look mental, waiting til I have smoothed it over, then doing it again.
37) Having one seat in the living room accepted as MINE for Dr Who viewing.
38) Kissing so hard that you don't realise that your hair is a mess, you're pressed up against a wall and that people might see you.
39) My boobs. They are in my top two of favourites features, just for how excellently jiggly they are.
40) My eyes. The other ones in the top two.
41) When my nose is blocked up a tiny bit, so that I can whistle through it.
42) My neighbour's home made apple juice.
43) When I walk into the house after a bad and very cold day at college and my mum has made stew.
44) My cat, Jake. (He's dead now, but he gets to stay)
45) My cat, Stuart.
46) Accidentally painting my nails to match my underwear.
47) Having my hair stroked when I'm upset.
48) The fact that my dad totally reverts to being a teenager when we go down the Brook to see Stiff Little Fingers.
49) The fact that my dad lets new boys I bring home know that he knows EXACTLY how to make a petrol bomb and how to throw it efficiently, too.
50) The Parasol Protectorate series.
51) Gail Carriger's blog: http://retrorack.blogspot.com/
52) Lemon sorbet
53) Reading a whole book in a day, even if it's trash.
54) The Sociology Corner, both as it was last year and as it is this year, though I do miss Sarah.
55) My mum's disco cds.
56) My AMAZING 50s style prom dress, which I keep wanting excuses to wear again.
57) The fact that, in January, I get to wear it again :D
58) My Union Jack shoes
59) The fact that saving a file as Me At Prom in one word spells meatprom, and so makes me think of cows in top hats.
60) Deleting bitches from FB.
61) The lack of bitches on my FB.
62) My giant pink Ugg boot slippers, that somehow still fit after six years in service.
63) Fucking with people's heads.
64) Writing my blog.
65) Tom and Jerry
66) Looney Tunes
67) Wacky Races
68) My retina-scarring, grandma-on-crack shawl.
69) Wearing men's shirts.
70) How my hair looks when I wake up. Mostly for it's comical nature, occaisionally because it actually looks great. THAT doesn't happen often.
71) Katie singing. It makes me happy inside.
72) My lizard necklace.
73) The thought of being able to wear my winter jumpers again.
74) Snow
75) Kicking ASS on Singstar/Lips.
76) QI when it's extended to an hour long show.
77) The thought of owning a wardrobe full of tea dresses and fake fur stoles and t-bar shoes.
78) My stripper boots.
79) The one happy penguin in all the nonchalent penguins on my phone background.
80) Entertaining the idea of a lip piercing purely to annoy my mother
81) Secretly thinking about getting one when I go to uni anyway.
82) Magners.
83) The own brand cider that they have in this chain of French supermarkets that tastes amazing.
84) Rollercoasters.
85) The Pirates of the Carribean ride at Disneyland.
86) Feeling more cultured than basically every member of my Film Studies class, mainly because they spent the weekend watching American Pie and I watched Strangers on a Train.
87) The contents of the box on top of my wardrobe.
88) Wisteria perfume.
89) Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier.
90) In The Middle by Jimmy Eat World, because of the instantaneous better feeling it brings.
91) The entire shelf I have of shitty romantic fiction.
92) My catapault pencil sharpener.
93) When people get my lyric-quoting jokes.
94) Drawing hearts in the margins of pieces of paper.
95) Fridaying, even though it doesn't really happen anymore.
96) The fact that, despite it's free-ness, IKEA tea is scrummy.
97) Cheesecake.
98) Camping holidays with as many relatives as can be persuaded.
99) Rockham Bay.
100) My lesbian pirate bag.
101) That strange gold coloured Fosters.
102) Ice cream.
103) Russell Grant on Strictly Come Dancing.
104) 80p cups of tea.
105) Rachel's blog.
106) Jumper dresses.

Maddy's Blog Of Wittery-ness

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Saturday, October 30, 2010

On "The Great Gatsby"

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