The Great Gatsby
Chapter Two
Learning Objectives
1
2
3
Understand the importance
of the second major setting –
The valley of the Ashes
Identify the further use of
symbolism (the colors grey
and yellow) in Gatsby which
increases your understanding
of the major themes
Learn about the two new
characters we meet in this
chapter and think about
their importance to the plot
Theme: artifice and reality.
Setting: the Valley of Ashes, shows the dark side of the
American Dream; the edge of society (literally and
figuratively).
Chapter
Summary
Characters: George and Myrtle Wilson: impoverished
characters who live in the Valley of Ashes. Myrtle is having an
affair with Tom who she sees as her ticket out of poverty.
Setting shifts to a party in Manhattan, New York, the place
where anything goes.
Tom, Nick, Myrtle and others throw a private party where we
see Tom’s cruelty and hypocrisy: he punches Myrtle when she
insults Daisy.
Conflict: Myrtle wants a permanent relationship with Tom; Tom
will never leave Daisy.
The Valley of the Ashes
◦ The Valley of Ashes between West Egg and New York City consists of a
long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes.
Represents a kind of purgatory – a place in limbo but also symbolizes the
shameful underbelly of American capitalism.
◦ These men are devoid of color, working ceaselessly to maintain the status
quo of the Tom Buchanans who don’t seem to work at all.
◦ It represents the moral and social decay that results from the uninhibited
pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves with regard for nothing
but their own pleasure.
◦ The Valley of Ashes also symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George
Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.
◦ Ash: has a traditionally negative association with
decay/waste/dirt – think of crematoriums, ‘ashes to
ashes dust to dust’, cigarette trays. But it has positive
connotations too – the phoenix rising from the ashes
for example.
◦ This can perhaps symbolise the redemptive nature of
humanity – the ability of men to pull through
circumstances of great hardship and suffering.
◦ The ash-grey men at work in this place symbolise the
downtrodden working class chained forever to
industry and monotony. They move ‘dimly and
already crumbling through the powdery air;. Living
out a mere half-life, a million miles from the splendour
and indulgence of the Buchanans’ environment.
The Valley of
Ashes
The Valley of
Ashes – Lack of
Colour and
Definition in
the Landscape
◦ A line of grey cards crawls along an invisible track…
immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden
spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which
screens their obscure operations from your sight.
◦ This perhaps represents the idea that this section of
society is deliberate hidden from view (notice how the
train curls away from the Valley, as if it ‘shrinks away’
from having to confront it.)
◦ In modern industrial society, the polarisation between
the haves and have-nots, between the slaves and the
masters, grows ever stronger.
◦ By repeating images of greyness, obscuring cloud and
blindness, Fitzgerald emphasises the tendency of the
privileged to casually ‘overlook’ the reality of hellholes
such as these.
The Eyes of Dr T.J. Eckleberg
…above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment,
the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleberg…[his] eyes…are blue and gigantic – their retinas are one yard high. They
look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent
nose…his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn
dumping group.
The sign on the hill is ambiguous – Fitzgerald gives no overt explanation of its relevance in the move – and yet
it pervades the consciousness of the reader as we pass through the Valley of Ashes into the life of the
Wilsons.
The Eyes of Dr T. J. EcklebergContinued
◦ Reminds us – by its sheer size and the incongruity of its surroundings – of the importance and
influence of advertising in modern culture. These eyes have no natural place on the hillside,
and yet they dominate the landscape, being its most prominent feature.
◦ Fitzgerald has deliberately chosen an advert for optometry in order to point out the modern
man’s inability to see the corruption of our society and environment. This lack of vision
applies to all of the characters in the book, each of all fail to ‘see’ the basic futility of their
hopes and dreams.
◦ The billboard shows how consumerism and materialism has taken the place of traditional
spiritual values.
Myrtle and George Wilson
The only impoverished
characters in the novel live
in the Valley of the Ashes.
Notably their home is made
of yellow brick. Again, the
symbolism of colour is both
complex and revealing.
- What do you think the
colour yellow could
symbolise?
Just like the yellow brick road in L Frank Baum's 1900
classic The Wizard of Oz, the façade of the Wilsons’
home is a symbol of false promise in the midst of despair.
Myrtle and
George
Wilson
We know Myrtle has aspirations beyond the ash heap –
despite the impossibility of any permanent match
between them, she sees Tom Buchanan has her ticket to
a lifelong party; by contrast, George is one of the ashgrey men, and his only source of joy is, ironically, the wife
who is cheating on him:
A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair
as it veiled everything in his vicinity – except his wife, who
moved close to Tom.
◦ Myrtle represents the idea of escape in the novel, but
like other characters, her dream is false and filled with
illusion. Both she and her ghost-like husband are
locked to the Valley of the Ashes by the very nature of
their impoverishment. Thus, the yellowness of their
home could also suggest decay and atrophy.
◦ In groups, identify the three stages of Myrtle’s
transformation. These are directly related to
her setting and her clothes.
Myrtle Wilson
Find quotes which show this transformation of Myrtle’s character
and remember to fully analyze what this represents
about her character.
“carried her flesh sensually”
“continually smouldering” “wet her lips”
“soft, course voice”
Descriptions become less flattering:
“rather wide hips” “bought cold cream, perfume”
“I want one of those dogs” – Becomes a consumer,
materialistic ironic as she is the one being bought.
“her personality has also undergone a change”
“intense vitality…converted his hauteur”
“violently affected” “high mincing shout”
◦ Myrtle’s transformation emphasises her desire to be accepted
into Tom’s world. She believes in illusion and in looking the
part, yet this existence is a façade.
◦ The irony is she metamorphoses into her interpretation of an
East Egger but she becomes more grotesque – until eventually
she is little more than a ridiculous parody of herself and
certainly no match for the prim and proper Daisy.
◦ Mrs Wilson … was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress
of cream coloured chiffon … with the influence of the dress, her
personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality
… was covered into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her
gestures, her assertions become more violently affected… and
as she expanded the room grew smaller around her, until she
seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the
smoky air.
Myrtle WilsonContinued
Daisy and
Myrtle
Whereas Daisy is presented as faintly
ephemeral, dressed in pale pastels with her
‘low, thrilling voice,’ Myrtle is charged with
sensual and verbal energy. When she comes
down the stairs, Nick notes her ‘immediate
perceptible vitality… as if her nerves were
continually smouldering.’
Unlike pure, delicate Daisy, Myrtle wears bold,
saturated colours to reveal her hot-blooded
temperament and her robust femininity. She is
straight forward, commanding and overtly
sexual, licking her lips at Tom as she
approaches him. It is only when she changed
her dress that her character alters as Nick
observes through a drunken surreal haze.
◦ The change of dress is symbolic of the
nature of falsity and pretence that
pervades the whole novel.
◦ Her movement from her real self
(represented by the full-blooded blue
of her previous dress) to her ‘desired’
self (seen in the pastel cream of a dress
which might be worn by Daisy) is
indicative of her inability to face the
truth about her life.
◦ She is pretending to be the one person
in the world who she cannot hope to
emulate – her lover's wife.
Myrtle’s
Transformation
The idea of falseness rings throughout this chapter. Find
as many examples as you can of this falseness and
explain what they tell you about the characters and
Fitzgerald’s overall impression of this type of society.
- Now try to find something that can be seen as “real”.
- Think about Tom’s response to Myrtle when she talks
about Daisy.
Artifice and
Reality - Theme
• Lie told by Myrtle about the reason Tom cannot divorce
Daisy.
• The abundance of alcohol serves as a reminder of the
characters need to fill their leisure time with artificial
stimulants.
• Myrtle’s discussion of her own marriage reveals her
own superficiality: the fact that she was appalled by
George borrowing a suit for the ceremony really only
tells us that she is the one who cannot see beyond
surface reality.
• Her husband ‘dumbly’ adores her, but his status in
society is the only thing that matters in her
materialististic, greedy world.
Artifice and
RealityContinued.
Reality
◦ The characters are forced out of their drunken stupor and back to harsh
reality with the sound of Myrtle’s nose being broken by Tom.
◦ This first sign of violence is an open admission of the aggressive
behaviour he has displayed throughout the novel so far. With one blow,
he signals the permanence of his marriage – the symbol, after all, of his
wealth and connection in society.
◦ The one thing in Tom's life that is ‘real’ is this marriage bond. Despite his
lack of fondness or love for Daisy, it is the one unbreakable chain in his
life. This is the harshness of the reality that Myrtle - and, in time - Gatsby
will have to face.