The Green Light

The Green Light is one of the symbol in the Great Gatsby that appeared on Chapter 1.

"[Gatsby gazed at] a single green light, minute and faraway, that might have been the end of a dock." Chapter 1, pg. 22



Situated at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsby’s West Egg lawn, the green light represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and in Chapter 1 he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. In Chapter 9, Nick compares the green light to how America, rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the new nation.

Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. Just as Americans have given America meaning through their dreams for their own lives, Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor possesses. Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its object—money and pleasure. Like 1920s Americans in general, fruitlessly seeking a bygone era in which their dreams had value, Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished past—his time in Louisville with Daisy—but is incapable of doing so. When his dream crumbles, all that is left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is move back to Minnesota, where American values have not decayed.

Sources: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (pg22)
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gatsby/themes.html (Sparknotes)
Pictures via : http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3238/2818543889_b5bb10c534.jpg
http://www.ovtg.de/3_arbeit/englisch/gatsby/images/brickh_green.jpg
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/4863666/2/istockphoto_4863666-money-background-selective-focus.jpg
http://www.tradebit.com/usr/djmixtapez/pub/9001/An-American-Dream.jpg

The Great Gatsby film versions

The Great Gatsby has been filmed four times:

(Picture of Herbert Brenon via http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Herbertbrenon.jpg/220px-Herbertbrenon.jpg)

1.The Great Gatsby, in 1926 by Herbert Brenon – a silent movie of a stage adaptation, starring Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson, and William Powell. It is a famous example of a lost film. Reviews suggest that it may have been the most faithful adaptation of the novel, but a trailer of the film at National Archives is all that is known to exist;

(Picture of Elliot Nugent via http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a6/Elliot_Nugent.jpg)

2.The Great Gatsby, in 1949 by Elliott Nugent – starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field, and Shelley Winters; for copyright reasons, this film is not readily available;

(Picture of Jack Clayton via http://www.nsunclub.com/JackClayton2.jpg)

3.The Great Gatsby, in 1974, by Jack Clayton – the most famous screen version, starring Robert Redford in the title role with Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan and Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway, with a script by Francis Ford Coppola;

(Poster of The Great Gatsby film in 2000 via http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5151K41BBBL.jpg)

4.The Great Gatsby, in 2000 by Robert Markowitz – a made-for-TV movie starring Toby Stephens, Paul Rudd and Mira Sorvino.

In the HBO television series Entourage, the character Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) is hired by Martin Scorsese for a film adaptation of the book, where he plays Nick.

The second season of the Showtime television series Californication, starting with its second episode The Great Ashby, is partly a modern take on the novel, with the characters Lew Ashby, Janie Jones and Hank Moody as modern versions of Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan and Nick Carraway.

Warner Bros. Pictures are producing a Bollywood adaptation of the novel and is set to be directed by award-winning director, Sanjay Leela Bhansali. It will feature an ensemble cast starring Hrithik Roshan, Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan, Ranbir Kapoor and Prachi Desai. The film is set for release on August 19, 2011.

Sources : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby

Jealousy

Jealous, in my opinion, can be occur to everybody on earth. It is one of the feeling the people have. However, some people may control their feeling better than others. The best example for jealousy is love. For example, the sister jealous to the love of her mom toward her brother, or the jealousy toward boyfriend and girlfriend.In my thought, jealousy occur to the female more than male.
The experience of jealousy involved

• Fear of loss
• Suspicion or anger about betrayal
• Low self-esteem and sadness over loss
• Uncertainty and loneliness
• Fear of losing an important person to an attractive other
• Distrust (wikipedia 0)

Jealous can made the emotion and feeling of temper, led to hate, and led to violent action.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jealousy
Pictures : http://www.raminsoftworx.com/Gallery/Romance/Jealousy_and_Flirtation.jpg
http://encefalus.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/jealousy.jpg
http://th01.deviantart.com/fs6/300W/i/2005/083/b/c/Denny__s_Art__Jealousy_by_EvilTelephone.jpg
http://lesleehorner.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/jealousy.jpg

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sept. 24, 1896, St. Paul, Minn., U.S. died Dec. 21, 1940, Hollywood, Calif. American short-story writer and novelist famous for his depictions of the Jazz Age the 1920s, his most brilliant novel being The Great Gatsby (1925). His private life, with his wife, Zelda, in both America and France, became almost as celebrated as his novels.

Fitzgerald was the only son of an unsuccessful, aristocratic father and an energetic, provincial mother. Half the time he thought of himself as the heir of his father's tradition, which included the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Francis Scott Key, after whom he was named, and half the time as “straight 1850 potato-famine Irish.” As a result he had typically ambivalent American feelings about American life, which seemed to him at once vulgar and dazzlingly promising.

He also had an intensely romantic imagination, what he once called “a heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,” and he charged into experience determined to realize those promises. At both St. Paul Academy (1908–10) and Newman School (1911–13) he tried too hard and made himself unpopular, but at Princeton he came close to realizing his dream of a brilliant success. He became a prominent figure in the literary life of the university and made lifelong friendships with Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop. He became a leading figure in the socially important Triangle Club, a dramatic society, and was elected to one of the leading clubs of the university; he fell in love with Ginevra King, one of the beauties of her generation. Then he lost Ginevra and flunked out of Princeton.

He returned to Princeton the next fall, but he had now lost all the positions he coveted, and in November 1917 he left to join the army. In July 1918, while he was stationed near Montgomery, Ala., he met Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge. They fell deeply in love, and, as soon as he could, Fitzgerald headed for New York determined to achieve instant success and to marry Zelda. What he achieved was an advertising job at $90 a month. Zelda broke their engagement, and, after an epic drunk, Fitzgerald retired to St. Paul to rewrite for the second time a novel he had begun at Princeton. In the spring of 1920 it was published, he married Zelda, and

riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.

Sources "http://www.biography.com/articles/F.-Scott-Fitzgerald-9296261"

(A picture of his work "The Love Of The Last Tycoon" via http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MRFB6HMYL._SL500_.jpg)

(A picture of his most successful work "The Great Gatsby" via http://s3.hubimg.com/u/2838582_f260.jpg)

(A picture of him and his wife, Zelda via http://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/images/fitzgerald_pic.jpg)

Gangster and Mafia in 1920s

If you talk about the mafia, the first name that come to the mind is some crazy movie that the mafia own illegal business and killing people without mercy. Mafia during the 1920s were just like that. The reason why mafia came up with more power because of the prohibition during that period of time. The most influence, dangerous, and famous mafia during that time was Al Capone. Al Capone was an Italian mafia who attempted several murder. He did a lot of murders, however, the polices could not arrest him at all. At last, he finally got arrested, but not for the murder, but for the illegal tax avoiding.

There were some other gangs during the 1920s. Most of them located nationwide, however, mainly at Chicago. In Chicago, it was like a mafia war between gang on the alcohol smuggling. Al Capone had been seen as one of the major problem for the FBI and the local polices.

He was named as the Scarface.

Prohibition was the reason that made the mafia to power. That was why many people say that Prohibition was a failure in 1920s.




(Picture via http://333maxwell.homestead.com/files/Gang1.jpg, http://www.msad54.org/sahs/socialstudies/finely/1920s/1920gr14/images/prohi.jpg, http://generalmichaelcollins.com/WEB_Photo_Folder/1.PhotoAlbum/Cairo_Gang.jpg, http://notesfromthebartender.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/capone6.jpg)

Source : http://atcloud.com/stories/67154

Flapper

Flappers in the 1920s was a new generation of young women. They put short skirts, they bobbed their hair, they listened to jazz and they did certain things that the women before the 20s did not do. Flappers were seen as trouble of the society for makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles which the women before this decade did not even care (Holt 295). Flappers had their origins in the period of liberalism, social and political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end of the World War I, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe. (296)

Writers in the United States, for example; F. Scott Fitzgerald and Anita Loos, and illustrators such as Russell Patterson, John Held Jr., Ethel Hays and Faith Burrows popularized the flapper look and lifestyle through their works, and flappers came to be seen as attractive, reckless and independent. (Thomas 1)

The flapper lifestyle and look could not survive the crash of Wall Street and the Great Depression. The high-spirited attitude and hedonism simply could not find a place amid the economic hardships of the 1930s. More specifically, this decade brought out a conservative reaction and a religious revival which set out to eradicate the liberal lifestyles and fashions of the 1920s. (Holt 314, 315)

As in the first picture, there is two girls. Their hair were bobbed and the way she acted looks"unacceptable" however, they represented the flappers style during the 1920. (Picture via http://www.pastreunited.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/rooftop-flapper.jpg)

In the second picture, 4 ladies with a short skirts were the symbol of the 1920s period. The way she danced, make-up, or dressed were all represented the flappers. (Picture via http://ffwdmag.co.uk/upload/flappers520.jpg)

The Great Gatsby (1995) cover can be see as the woman with eyes-shadow and lipstick. I saw the picture as the flappers. (Picture via http://bestlittlebookshelf.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/gatsby.jpg)

The last picture shown the way flappers dressed at that time. Open-armed dress with red color, short skirt with fancy detail (Picture via http://hollywoodcostumesandparty.com/pics/flappers/flapper2.jpg)

Source : http://www.fashion-era.com/flapper_fashion_1920s.htm by Pauline Weston Thomas.
American Anthem, by Holt Winston Publisher (295, 296, 314, 315)

Prohibition in 1920

Prohibition was one of the major movement during the 1920s. It was the banned of alcohol. It was added to the 18th amendment. Progressive women also gained political experience by participating in the Prohibition movement. Reformers believed that alcohol was often responsible for crime, poverty, and violence against women and children. (179)

However, Prohibition movement turned out to make the society worse. It brought up the crime rate and it led to the illegal activity. Also, the movement led to the influence of mafia nationwide such as Al Capone in Chicago. It took 13 years for editing the amendment and make it legal to make, sell, and distribute of alcohol again.

On the top left corner was the propaganda against alcohol which showed the picture of mother and daughter but no father. "Help me to keep him pure" saying that the mother and daughter did not want their husband/father to consume alcohol. (Picture via http://maxdunbar.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/prohibition1.jpg)

On the second and third pictures, it showed how the police destroyed the alcohol during that period of time. (Pictures via http://moretimespace.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/prohibition.jpg and http://www.teachersparadise.com/ency/en/media/6/6f/prohibition.jpg)

On the forth picture, it showed the influence of mafia during that time (Picture via http://blog.kir.com/archives/images/NORML_Remember_Prohibition_.jpg)

The last picture is my favorite. It showed how one person felt about the legalize alcohol again. (Picture via http://www.constitutioncenter.org/timeline/flash/assets/asset_upload_file998_12215.jpg)



Source: American Anthem by Holt Rinehart Winston Publisher (179)