Gatsby: Money, Money, Money

"'She's got an indiscreet voice,' I remarked. 'It's full of --' I hesitated.

'Her voice is full of money,' he said suddenly" (The Great Gatsby, 120).

That's definitely one of my favorite lines of the novel: "her voice is full of money."

Matthew commented on one of my earlier posts to suggest that The Great Gatsby satirizes the attitudes of the wealthy. To some extent, I think that's true. The mentality and behavior of the wealthy characters in the novel are certainly . . . strange. Take the above quote. We know that Gatsby stole Daisy's heart under false pretenses -- he pretended to be someone he wasn't -- but why was Gatsby so attracted to Daisy? I don't think we can attribute their relationship entirely to money, but I can't help but think that if Daisy weren't so rich, Gatsby wouldn't have gone for her.

Gatsby places high value on wealth. "To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world" (100). And Gatsby isn't alone -- Daisy, Tom, Jordan, Wolfsheim, and many other minor characters center their lives around money. Nick's tone throughout the story is occasionally sarcastic, and in general, he's critical of the rich mentality. "I disapproved of him [Gatsby] from beginning to end" (154). I agree with Matthew; to a certain extent, this novel is satirical, and the author wants to steer us away from the mentality of the wealthy.

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.

"Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."

"Now let us sport us while we may, / And now, like amorous birds of prey, / Rather at once our time devour / Than languish in his slow-chapped power" ("To His Coy Mistress," 37-40).

I like identifying and creating arguments, and my favorite essay last year was the argument essay, so I'm going to answer question three. "Outline the speaker's argument in three sentences that begin with the words If, But, and Therefore. Is the argument valid?

If we had all the time in the world, we could develop our love slowly, but we are immortal; therefore, we must utilize our time well.

I think that the speaker is a little bit extreme in comparing playing "coy" (title) to developing love from the "Flood" to the "conversion of the Jews" (8-10) and to admiring each other for "thirty thousand" years (16). Personally, I think the speaker is just trying to get into his mistress's pants as he refers to her "long-preserved virginity" (28). But they're overstatements, so I guess it makes sense rhetorically. The truth behind it is that the speaker and his lover cannot wait to love each other -- they must "devour" their time now (39).

Carpe diem, right?

I think it's a valid argument, though the comparisons are a little bit extreme. Being shy and flirtatious is nice to an extent, but it can't become the extent. We need to be "like amorous bird of prey" and such. Similes are good.

"me / a princess"

"so i goes ta flushm down / but sohelpmegod he starts talkin / bout a golden ball / an how i can be a princess / me a princess" ("Hazel Tells LaVerne," 9-13).

What did I notice? There's no capitalization and no punctuation, but the poem still flows nicely because Machan started new lines with new phrases and clauses. When we read Shakespeare freshmen year, we said that when somebody spoke in prose, he was usually drunk or uneducated. That might be the case with the speaker in this poem; I'll call her "Hazel." (I'm not sure why -- I just have a good feeling about it.) She does not capitalize or punctuate or use proper grammar because she is less educated and probably of a lower social class.

I also noticed that the phrase "me a princess" was repeated, which probably means that it's important. That repetition underscores how the author feels about being a princess -- it would be completely ridiculous. Why? I would say because of her lower social status. It makes her feel less of a "worthy" person than the cliche princesses in fairy tales.

I just worked up to figuring out the theme, I think. People who rank lower socially don't feel worthy of higher statuses.

Maybe the person who came up with the new movie "The Princess and the Frog" thought of the idea after reading this poem. I really liked that movie -- it was jazzy, and we ate spaghetti tacos when we watched it.

In Celebration of My Third Poem by Donne

"What I will say, I will not tell thee now, / Lest that preserve thee" ("The Apparition," 14-15).

In deducing the connotative situation of this poem, I'm zeroing in on lines like "thou thinkst thee free / From all solicitation from me" (2-3) and "in worse arms shall see" (5). The speaker claims that his "murderess," likely a former lover ("my love is spent," line 15), isn't off the hook. She will receive some sort of persistent request from the speaker, and I don't think it's a nice one. The speaker seems to imply that his "murderess" cheated on him -- that's why I think he wants her to "painfully repent" (16). I split that infinitive in service of the quote's cohesion.

So I'm going to analyze my quoted line based on that situation.

What is the speaker going to say to her? It's an empty threat. However, empty threats can be the most powerful ones. When we threaten people like that, they usually assume the worst. I don't think the speaker actually has a plan as to what he's going to say to his "murderess," or even if he's going to say anything to her at all, but if he does, I know it can't be good. The tone throughout the poem is very judgmental of the woman in question, and this quote extends the tone to threatening, as well.

We Will All Go Together When We Go

"And may there be no moaning of the bar / When I put out to sea" ("Crossing the Bar," 3-4).

I distinctly remember reading this in Channel 1 today and getting "We Will All Go Together When We Go" stuck in my head. Tom Lehrer sings, "We will all char together when we char, and let there be no moaning of the bar." Good allusion, Mr. Lehrer -- he's so smart!

I'm going to dissect the meaning of this metaphor here. "When I put out to sea" (4) is a metaphor for death. Later, "When I have crossed the bar" (16) serves as another metaphor for death, but what about "no moaning of the bar"?

Looking at it in the context of Tom Lehrer's song (which I know I'm not supposed to do, Perrine, but bear with me), we must accept that we're all going to "char" when the bomb drops on all of us. Lehrer sings about why dying together is a good thing -- it's a "comforting fact" that we're all going to be glowing with radiation when we all die, and there's no reason to "moan."

I'm going to use the definition of "bar" in my AHD that says "attorneys considered as a group." A "bar" defined thus is a group of attorneys, who state someone's case on behalf of him. The speaker does not want the "bar" -- those metaphorical "attorneys" -- to mourn his death on his behalf. Rather, he wants a quiet, subdued, and peaceful death.

You're not all that special, but you are.

"And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare" ("My mistress' eyes," 13-14).

In the first twelve lines of Shakespeare's sonnet, the speaker identifies a handful of love cliches and disproves that his mistress exemplifies them. For example, the first line identifies the cliche "your eyes are like the sun," but the speaker denies this simile -- his love's eyes are "nothing like the sun" (1). The speaker is viewing his lover from a very literal standpoint, and relative to other poets, he is humbling his lover. I would say that the tone in the first twelve lines is judicious and condescending.

I quoted the final two lines at the beginning of this post; they mark a shift in tone, as observed in question three in the textbook. It's a "yet" kind of deal, so the speaker is saying, "My lover isn't as great as other guys claim there lovers are, buuut . . ." something. He thinks his love is as "rare" (13) as all of those other women whose lovers have lied to them. Even though he spends twelve lines describing the ways in which his mistress is not special, he still calls her special in the last two lines. I'd call that a passionate and admiring tone.

You know whose eyes are kind of actually like the sun?

London . . . in your pants?

"In every cry of every man, / In every Infant's cry of fear, / In every voice, in every ban, / The mind-forged manacles I hear" ("London," 5-8).

I had the most trouble understanding Blake's poem out of all of them, so I'm going to embrace that and blog about my confusion. First of all, I did notice a few things that are probably key -- the dark, somber tone and the woeful motif of crying. Essentially, what I know for sure is that London is not such a happy place in this poem (litotes).

The third question asks for the meaning of line eight, which I quoted at the top. My best guess is that every person and infant in London is full of sorrow because they're restrained in some way. The only thing I can think of that would restrain them is the monarchy, which is kind of mentioned in the twelfth line. Speaking of which . . .

I don't understand the subsequent stanza at all. "And the hapless Soldier's sigh / Runs in blood down Palace walls" (11-12). The figurative "Soldier" is apparently unlucky and frustrated about something that has to do with the "Palace," which I think could be the crown, which has a lot of power to restrain (hence the "manacles").

And what about that last part? All I see is that there are prostitutes who "blast" the Infant's tear. So in addition to blaming the crown for London's woe, I think that Blake could also be blaming anyone (mostly prostitutes) who "blights" (16) the family.

I'm trying to be very honest with the things I don't understand about this poem. I think it's working. I'll add the label "ambiguity" because I think that could be going on here.

Serial commas: you should use them.

"I only have the one vague memory of Ruth from that early part of our lives.

I'm playing in a sandpit. There are a number of others in the sand with me, it's too crowded and we're getting irritated with each other" (Never Let Me Go, 45).

Now that I've read four chapters, I'm going to talk about Kazuo Ishiguro's style.

With the exception of dialogue, most of the narration is written in compound or complex (or both) sentences. I appreciate that, but I don't appreciate that he doesn't use the Oxford comma. That disturbs the force.¹

The tone of the book has been more conversational than I'm used to. The author isn't afraid of second person point of view, and Kathy refers to herself and the reader as "we" sometimes. It's a better way to connect with the audience, I think. Probably also for that purpose, there are a lot of dead metaphors -- "in hot water" (44), for example.

The excerpt at the beginning of this post confuses me, though. Why introduce a memory as distant and vague and then switch to the present tense? Usually the present tense makes things more tangible and real. So that's a legitimate question I have.

¹I'm seriously serious about this. Just look at the last sentence of the quote at the top of my post -- it almost looks like a comma splice. But noooo, some people just won't use a serial comma. I can sometimes understand it when the list is just of single words, but that sentence would have been ten times easier to read with the Oxford comma. I feel very strongly about this.