Gatsby: New York, New York

"Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life" (The Great Gatsby, 176).

Earlier, I briefly described West Egg and East Egg as foil settings. But there's another pair of settings that I also think is noteworthy: the "West" (referring to the Midwest) and the "East" (referring to New York).

The East is a place of opportunity. Gatsby's father mentions that "'Jimmy always liked it better down East. He rose up to his position in the East'" (168). The East is also where Nick goes to learn the bond business. For the novel's main characters, the East is a destination, a place where anything can happen. One of the greatest songs ever:

The West is a place of memories (specifically for Nick, Daisy, and Gatsby). Nick recalls blissfully "the thrilling returning trains of [his] youth" (176). The West is where Daisy and Gatbsy fell in love for the first time. For the novel's main characters, the West is a place of the past.

The quote at the beginning of my post refers to a "deficiency" that Tom, Gatsby, Daisy, Jordan, and Nick have in common. I believe that deficiency is their tendency to cling to the past, a tendency that pretty much everyone in the world shares. The novel's main conflict, the love between Gatsby and Daisy, is based completely on the past. A primary theme in the novel is that everyone tends to hold on to their past, and in the novel, the West seems to stand for the past.

Gatsby: Introducing the Rich People

"I lived at West Egg, the -- well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them" (The Great Gatsby, 5).

The two dueling settings in The Great Gatsby are East Egg and West Egg. From how Nick describes the two locations, I've decided that East Egg is more fashionable, condescending, lazy, and rich. Let's talk about the Tom and Daisy Buchanan, whom Nick visits in East Egg.

Tom Buchanan is "enormous," "supercilious," "wealthy," and a college football player (5-7). Nick hilariously calls him "one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anticlimax" (6). Oh, and he's having an affair with some materialistic married girl named Myrtle.

If I had to choose one word to describe Daisy Buchanan, it would be "insecure." When her daughter was born, Daisy said, "'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool'" (17). That insecurity of hers is clarified quite a bit in chapter four when Jordan tells Nick about the night before Daisy's wedding: "'Tell 'em all Daisy's change' her mine. Say: "Daisy's change' her mine!"'" (76). Her relationship with Tom is very weak, but she really hits it off with Mr. Gatsby.

I've got to finish off with a few more ironies I enjoyed. Tom says, "'Don't believe everything you hear, Nick'" shortly before his wife says, "'We heard it from three people, so it must be true'" (19). I also liked Tom's racist comment that "'we've produced all the things that go to make civilization'" as he lazily enjoys a luxurious meal in a lavish house in a fashionable area, none of which he actually worked for himself (13).

Jovial and Whimsical Tone

Haha, just kidding.

"Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside, too" ("Popular Mechanics," 1).

The setting in the story is very vague -- first, the characters were "in the bedroom" (2), and then they moved "into the kitchen" (19). Other than that, there are few concrete details in the setting.

What we know from the first paragraph is the weather outside and its relationship with the moods of the characters in the story. The snow was "melting into dirty water," and the darkness outside reflected the darkness "on the inside" of the characters. The darkness shows up again when the kitchen window gives "no light" (31). That dark and dreary setting sets a gloomy atmosphere of the story. Certainly, the darkness also lives within the characters due to their actions (particularly at the end -- I can't say what happened specifically, but I'm pretty sure that baby is a goner).

There is one more setting detail. The beginning of the story is in the bedroom, but when the male character moves toward the female, she takes "a step back into the kitchen" (19). That little move -- that tiny shift in setting -- was kind of a defensive move, and it foreshadowed the escalation of their argument over the baby.

Additionally, I've been informed that "Popular Mechanics" is the name of a magazine, which I didn't know. My initial reaction to the title was that it meant "things that people do on a regular basis." If that's the case, then the title applies this story to life in general, and it becomes an allegory for any kind of conflict in which an issue is decided suddenly without thinking of consequences.

Sex, Setting, and Split Infinitives

"As you'd expect, sex was different at the Cottages from how it had been at Hailsham. It was a lot more straightforward -- more 'grown up'" (127).

I wanted to choose a quote that reflected the idea that the new setting of the Cottages is a new experience for all of the characters. I figured this would be the most awkward one.

Now that Kathy, Ruth, Tommy, and other, less significant characters are at the Cottages, they have to make adjustments. It's hard to adjust to a "new life" (131), which Kathy expressed in chapter eleven. Hailsham was more sheltered under teachers like Miss Emily. Some things like donations and sex were mysterious, hushed topics. At the Cottages, the characters have more opportunities to freely talk about things that were previously forbidden for them.

I think the setting of the Cottages is a kind of bridge for the characters, connecting childhood at Hailsham to adulthood (and I figure I'm supposed to have a bunch of questions about what happens to adults in this book). I'm not sure if it's appropriate to compare it to college because I don't think academics have been discussed at all, but I suppose it's kind of like that. It's an awkward transition period, and I think I'll get to learn a lot more about things I'm not quite sure about yet.

Also, there are two split infinitives in chapters eleven and twelve: "to first violate" (129) and "to just listen" (143). It could be Kathy's "voice" or something silly like that, but I think I'm going to blame all of these insignificant-to-most-people errors on British publishers.

(Also, title alliteration? FTW.)

Beyond Hailsham: "A Fantasy Land"

"This might all sound daft, but you have to remember that to us, at that stage in our lives, any place beyond Hailsham was like a fantasy land; we had only the haziest notions of the world outside and about what was and wasn't possible there" (Never Let Me Go, 66).

There's a structural thing in the chapters that's been bugging me (besides the sub-par grammar, I mean). The book, so far, has been based on a bunch of interconnected anecdotes and hasn't been one fluid story, which is fine. But every time Ishiguro introduces a new anecdote, he puts this at the end of the previous one: "And all of that changed the one time that [some person] and I [past tense activity]." Then, there's a line break and the next anecdote starts. I suppose it's nice that there's a pattern.

I'm not complaining about the anecdotes themselves, though. They're doing a good job of slowly creating a world about which I know very little but increasingly more.

I haven't decided yet if the world is a kind-of-utopia like in Brave New World. Miss Lucy's character has kind of been acting as a window into the secret world around the students -- apparently smoking for them was worse than smoking for her (68). Also, like in Brave New World, the characters can't have babies (73).

In Brave New World in your pants, the characters all knew about the mysterious world, and the reader was slowly introduced to it. I like the difference in Never Let Me Go in that we're kind of learning about the "fantasy land" at the same speed as the characters; it makes me feel more included in the book.

"But if you really want to share secrets . . ."

"'It didn't hurt, did it? When I hit you?'

'Sure. Fractured skull. Concussion, the lot. Even Crow Face might notice it. That's if I ever get up there'" (Never Let Me Go, 14).

In A Separate Peace in your pants, I remember reading about the dangers of sarcasm. "It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak." Often, I'm a fan of sarcasm, but in this case, it reveals weakness in Kathy. Tommy is being super apologetic and sincere, and instead of returning that, she hides behind a shield of sarcasm. She also denies Tommy's sincerity at the end of chapter two -- "'Don't talk rubbish, Tommy'" (24) -- so their characters are at odds with the whole issue of sarcasm versus sincerity.

There's something that's been bothering me in these first two chapters, and I think it's a setting thing. Kathy keeps introducing a place as "where you go to have private conversations" and then moving to a different private setting every five pages. I'm nooot quite sure why we can't just stick to one or two; maybe it's really important, like a motif. Really important that I know the characters can have private conversations in the pavilion (6), in the dorm (15), in the Great Hall (22), by the lake (24), in a box, with a fox, in a plane, or on a train. Not those last four, but it still seems excessive to me.

Mmm, I can't read about the Great Hall without at least posting a picture of it:

I'm tired, but I want to finish this.

"'Beauty's attractive, and we don't want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones'" (Brave New World, 219).

The structure of this chapter was based on a lot of quotations. It reminded me of the time Harry and Dumbledore just talked for an entire chapter at the end of the fifth Harry Potter book. I should probably take a break from Harry Potter references.

The quote that I chose, along with the rest of the Controller's speech, helped me form a better idea of the setting. Chapter three kind of helped me understand the year A.F. 632 in England, but that was also the chapter with rapid shifts in point of view. I gained a better understanding of Huxley's theorized utopia. Ignorance is bliss, so the people are happy. Some minds, like those of Bernard, Helmholtz, and John are no longer ignorant, and they would be more happy on an island. I was wondering why the Director was going to send Bernard to Iceland earlier in the book because it seemed out of place, but it makes more sense now. By the way, Iceland is green:

I'm not really sure what's going to happen next. Maybe they'll all live happily ever after on the Falkland Islands, but probably not. I bet . . . something will disturb the stability of the utopia. Hopefully John will.