Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby: Character Thursday (64)

Being a rather outsider from Gatsby-Buchanans circle, Jordan Baker is one of the most interesting characters in this book—well, apart from Jay Gatsby, of course. Jordan is a professional golfer, and this makes her being in the circle of those glamorous wealthy people. She often attends Gatsby’s parties, and befriends with the Buchanans. But unlike Daisy Buchanan, she is not a kind of drama queen who is always fluttering, sighing and whispering. Jordan is firm, strong and self-esteemed (maybe her career makes her like that).

Her quality first appears when Nick arrives at Buchanans resident, where the wind blew up the white curtains, while Daisy and Jordan’s white dresses were fluttered and rippled by the breeze. I can imagine Daisy in this condition with her dreamy expression, while Jordan—through Nick’s eyes—was portrayed as “extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall.”

Later on it is also revealed through her relationship with Nick that Jordan has a tendency of cheating. That’s why she was attracted to Nick: “Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage.” So I guess, Jordan is only attracted to Nick because with him she doesn’t have to wear her masks all the time. She might be the kind of person who always seeks for acknowledgment from others, she needs to be accepted in the sophisticated circle of wealthy and famous people. I don’t think Jordan really falls in love with Nick, she just need someone with whom she can be herself. Maybe she is a bit tired of being hypocrisy; wearing ‘mask’ all the time is a tiring job, isn’t it?

Moreover, Jordan is selfish and indifferent. We can see this when she is driving with Nick—who criticizes her of being a danger for others with her careless style of driving. But she merely says that it’s not her business, and it seems never occur to her that her driving should relevant to others than herself. I guess that’s why Jordan—despite of being a bit uneasy with Myrtle accident—keep continuing her normal life after that. Maybe the need to emerge to a glamorous life makes Jordan abandoning her own conscience. And I think Nick is right by breaking her up, she shares the amoral qualities of Daisy and Tom.

That is my Character Thursday of this week, an analysis of book character of my choice, who is yours?... Just put your post URL in the linky below. Do you like to join us in discussing characters from books you read? See the details of Character Thursday first.

Romeo and Juliet [Play + Movie]

Let’s Read Play’s theme for this month is tragedy, and I have picked one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies of all time: Romeo and Juliet. Although I‘m not a fan of romance story, least of all teenagers romances, I braced myself to give a try on this particular play. Well, I must say that my instinct has never failed me before, and it doesn’t this time also. It turns out that I could not enjoy this play, and it didn’t move me like Julius Caesar did me, for instance.

First of all, I am annoyed by the harsh—and sometimes very vulgar too—humour Shakespeare put in this play. I know that somehow it is his style, but I think it has come at an annoying point this time. Maybe it’s because I have been expecting ‘Romeo and Juliet’ comes as a romantic yet tragic love story, that there would be flowery sentences and paragraphs. They do appear of course, but especially in the beginning, there are also harassing comments or insults from Romeo and Mercutio around sexual topics. And as this has happened in the very early Act, it diminished my mood (and respect) to read the rest.

What interesting me is the eternal hostility of two Houses in Verona: Montague and Capulet. The play can portray very well how each of the families took their hostility; how the youngsters especially, were eager to ignite strife whenever they met the enemies. It is in the situation that Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet found themselves in love. And apparently, the hostility of the two families could only be resolved by the two teenager’s sacrifice. It’s quite ironic, considering that these two youngsters were merely thinking about their passionate love, but from them the adults would have to learn much about the real meaning of ‘love’.

Considering that this is about teenagers’ love, the story is as ridiculous as you could have expected, but I think the plot is interesting; how the mistiming and misunderstanding caused the tragedy. It’s only proving how love can sometimes be blind for naïve (or foolish?) people. Three stars for this tragic play—which did not really moved me, honestly…

~~~~~~~

Right after finishing the play, I jumped to the movie adaptation. I picked Baz Luhrmann’s version, partly because that’s the only one I had (:D), and partly because I was curious to see the earlier collaboration of Baz Luhrmann and Leonardo diCaprio (before The Great Gatsby).

I’ve already known that the movie would be in modern settings, before I watched it, so I was a bit surprised to see that Luhrmann only alter the settings, but not the dialogues! The dialogues were really picked from the original play, and that makes the whole movie is really unique. Listening to those punk boys speak in Shakespearean language was weird but interesting.

Here Leonardo diCaprio is in his earliest career, and this movie shows distinctly the difference with his present acting. However, I think he plays Romeo quite convincingly as the waverer and sentimental young man. The rest of the stars are not very prominent, except for Harold Perrineau, Jr who plays as Mercutio, who is the most interesting character in this movie.

One of my favorite scenes is Juliet’s tomb—which in this case doesn’t look at all like a tomb. It is very eloquent and glamour (typical Baz Luhrmann, of course), and the scene of Romeo and Juliet in their last agony is superb! Only while watching Romeo drinks the poison not knowingly that Juliet is stirring beside him, and Romeo’s expression when he knows the truth, that I am really moved. So in this case, for me, the movie has enlightened the play rather than the other way round. 7 to 10 is my final rating for this adaptation.

~~~~~~~~

I read the ebook version from Feedbooks dot com

This book is counted for:

May theme of Let’s Read Plays: Shakespeare’s tragedy

5^th book for Back to the Classics 2013

11^th book for What’s in A Name Reading Challenge 2013

43^rd for The Classics Club

I watched the movie for Books Into Movies Monthly Meme #6

[Classics Movie] The Great Gatsby

I don’t know which one is the truest; rereading the book for the second time has given me an advantage to enjoy the movie, or watching the movie has intensified my emotion as well as my understanding of the book. I believe it’s more of the second than the first one. The film has vividly showing the real emotion of all scenes from the book, which makes it easier for me to (more) understanding the book. Overall, the latest 2013 Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby IS indeed Great!

Castings

I have no complaints for the main characters. First of all, Leonardo diCaprio is superb! He could perfectly transform into Jay Gatsby’s enigmatic character. Although his portion is perhaps three quarters of the whole film, I can feel the strong charisma of Gatsby distinguished from others. Gatsby as the glamour and lavish parties host; Gatsby as an awkward lover (who was between excited to reunite with his long-time lover and anxious that there would be anything wrong that could break his bubbles of hope); and Gatsby as a fragile man full of hope. And let’s not forget those ‘rare understanding smiles’ that Leo has presented dashingly while raising his glass: “He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.”

Carey Mulligan fits Daisy Buchanan’s character; she could represent the dreamy, spoilt and indifferent style of Daisy convincingly. Joel Edgerton is also good in performing the rough and brutal Tom Buchanan by his gesture and the way he speaks. Jordan Baker is the one who quite surprised me; Elizabeth Debicki performs beautifully as Jordan. Now I see why Nick is attracted to her. She is the most fasionable one here, and really...I love her stylish hats! 

I was first curious about how Amithab Bachchan would play as Meyer Wolfsheim. Apparently, he can perform quite convincingly, if you don’t take quite seriously of the fact that Wolfsheim is a Jewish, of course! :D

Story and Plot

Thank God Baz Luhrmann chose to stick mostly to the original story and plot of the book. And even if there are slight alterations here and there to make the movie smoother, I think they just make the story more convincing. In the scene of Gatsby’s murder, I know very well that—from the book original version—he was really alone at that time and no phone call was coming. However in the movie, a phone call comes when Gatsby is swimming, and when he is reaching his hand to pick the receiver, the deadly gunshot arrives. Both scenes emphasize both tragedy and irony of Gatsby’s death, but the movie version emphasizes them in a more dramatic way which suits well for a movie which gives Leo room to express his mixed emotion—from hope (of a call from Daisy); satisfaction (from thinking that it was from Daisy, while it’s in fact from Nick); to surprise, disbelief, disappointment, and maybe fear in few seconds before he finally collapsed to death. [Confession: my eyes were wet on this scene… :( ]

One particular scene has confirmed my suggestion; it’s when Nick is eavesdropping Tom and Daisy as Tom is convincing Daisy that everything is going to be alright, after the accident. This scene confirms my idea that Daisy has admitted to Tom that it was her who actually drove the car; and that’s why they suddenly flee from their mansion (and the butler’s lie to Nick seems to point out Daisy’s selfishness to only seek security on top of everything); a really brilliant alteration of the scene that’s just emphasizing the meaning.

Setting and Costumes

I think the costume designers have done a great job to put the 1920s fashion into the movie. I like Jordan Baker’s style the most from the women, and of course….Gatsby’s suit from the men (except the pink one!). And of course Gatsby’s mansion and all the parties are gorgeous and entertaining, but still, my favorite is the characters and their emotions.

So, is it surprising you that I am giving this 2013 version of The Great Gatsby movie adaptation a 9.5 of 10 rating, old sport? :) Oh, and I think the idea that Nick has first typed his original script’s title as “Gatsby” and then later on adding “The Great” in handwriting is just topping all my feelings after the movie ends. Gatsby is great, the book is great, and this movie is great! Well done, old sport! ;)

~~~~~~~~

I watched this for Books Into Movies Monthly Meme #5

The Great Gatsby [Final Review]

If there are books I would love to read over and over again, The Great Gatsby must be one of them. This was my second read and I gained much more than my first one, and I have a feeling I would still find more in the future reads. Reading The Great Gatsby is really like peeling an onion, you must peel layer by layer to get what is inside. This book is full of metaphors, and Fitzgerald does not always reveal everything straight forward; he likes to speak his ideas in broken sentences, challenging the readers to catch the hidden meanings. And that is why this book provides never-ending debates and discussions, which make me love it more.

As I have done many chapter posts and tasks for WEM, I won’t waste time by writing what Gatsby is about. In short, it’s about Gatsby’s false dream—how a poor man fights persistently to win his dream lover, becomes wealthy by disrespectable businesses and ready to snatch the woman from his husband; but after an accident that has killed a woman, he finds that she is only an empty idea, and that lavish prosperity in the end only leaves traces of moral corruption [taken from my first level inquiry post].

I have also peeled many aspect of the story in my three levels inquiries, that I have almost nothing left now to make a decent review (LOL). But instead, I have challenged myself earlier to ask one important question, which I also invited others with whom I read this along to answer.

Do you think Gatsby is really ‘Great’? If yes, why? If no, why did Fitzgerald put it in the title?

--My answer--

First I must think about the criteria of ‘Great’; what do people usually mean when they say that someone is great? Success would be the answer. Great people are they who succeed in their fields. Now let’s apply this to Gatsby—does he succeed? A big no; he worked hard to reach his dream, not knowing that it has vanished. It’s not only failure; I can say he’s pathetic. So Gatsby must be far away from being great—although in a way, I admire his discipline, focus, and persistency to reach his dream. If we want to label him as ‘Great’, he is certainly great in accomplishing a personal target. Nonetheless, he is failed in the end; and one’s greatness is always defined by the result, right? Yeah, we are result-based generation. I can talk about this forever, but for now, let’s get to the second part of the question.

If Gatsby is not great, why is the book given The Great Gatsby as its title? What did Fitzgerald want to say to us? It came to me that maybe Fitzgerald wanted to emphasize that our way of defining greatness has been wrong. Maybe one’s greatness should not be valued only from the visible quality of success; it is merely the outer aspect of men; our old concept of success. I think Fitzgerald wanted us to look deeper into the inside of humanity. From the beginning Nick has been writing about morality: “A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.” –(Chapter 1); so it makes sense that that is what Fitzgerald wanted to say to us through The Great Gatsby: morality. Morality is far more important than physical achievement.

American first dream was about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness [from Sparknotes]. However, the rise of stock market post-war had created a sudden euphoria, where people started to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. With that, unfortunately, morality started also to decay and corrupted. In Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald wanted to show two different things.

First, the empty pursuit of dream; in Gatsby, American people should see that their first original dream had been vanished, and replaced by the moral corruption (Daisy is no longer the fresh-innocent girl Gatsby used to know, she had been…you know what). Second, the good morality; although Gatsby gained his wealth in disrespectable ways, he still have pure conscience in him (he stood up to take the blame of Myrtle Wilson’s murder although he did not do it). Between the two, while the empty pursuit of dream won’t make one great, I believe the good morality will.

At the end I think, Fitzgerald wanted to say that it is great of Gatsby to do what he did at the end of the story. It is also what has made Nick complimenting him: “They’re a rotten crowd; you’re worth the whole damn bunch put together”.

But most of all, I think, The Great Gatsby itself is a great literary work by Fitzgerald; maybe not the greatest one, but obviously one of the greatest… ;)

Five whole stars for The Great Gatsby, a novel I will certainly read and read again in the future.

~~~~~~~

I read the Penguin Classics hardback edition

This book is counted for:

6^th book for Turn of The Century Salon

4^th book for Back to the Classics 2013

10^th book for What’s in A Name Reading Challenge 2013

43^rd book for The Classics Club

6^th book for The Well-Educated Mind Self-Project

Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby: Character Thursday (63)

Nick is the narrator of The Great Gatsby; he came from a conservative family in the West. His father has planted high morality and honour in him since he was very young, which Nick keeps dearly in his heart when he’s grown up. After the war, Nick leads to the East, studying at Yale, and gets a good carrier in bond in New York. But not after his summer in West Egg, that he seems to realize that his real talent might be in writing.

Nick is fascinated with Jay Gatsby, an enigmatic, wealthy young man who lives in a luxury mansion next door. It might be that Nick has been adoring Gatsby from the first moment he saw him, and his judgment towards Gatsby is more or less affected by the charisma Gatsby possesses; despite of the ‘reserving judgments’ quality Nick always admits proudly to hold.

I imagine Nick to be an innocent man who has been molded by his family to almost become a puritan. But his adventure in the East has given much more than his father ever taught him, I think. Nick came to West Egg with a concept of high morality (he even dreams of uniformity of human morale). Nonetheless, Nick is quickly fascinated by the wild parties held by Gatsby. Little by little he gets used to this new life style; he often has a relationship with Jordan Baker, one of the Buchanans’ friends. When Tom Buchanan takes him to see his mistress, Nick doesn’t seem to be able to refuse, and he’s kind of dragged by this new fascination; although he still feels uneasy with this vulgar affair (he feels that the Dr. T.J. Eckleburg billboard is following him with its gaze when he passes it in Tom’s car).

Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway

The longer he spends time with his new friends, his feeling is mingled between disgusting and fascinated. He helps Gatsby to arrange a meeting with Daisy (Tom’s wife), which means he is part of the cheating. However he begins to feel disgusted by Tom’s rough and brutal manner. Everything becomes clear for him after Myrtle’s accident takes place. Only then that Nick can finally make his fair judgment of them all. He can see now how the ‘Eastern’ (Tom, Daisy, Jordan) are lack of conscience, selfish and arrogant; and how Gatsby stood upon them all by his latest action towards the accident.

I’m glad that Nick breaks up with Jordan at last, for although she might not be as severe as Tom and Daisy, she is too indifferent to scold her friends’ actions, and just stays at their house that night after the accident, which means she more or less approves them.

The talks about whether Nick is a gay or bisexual is I think have been exaggerated. I don’t see anything wrong with him, and I think he builds a healthy relationship with Jordan, he’s attracted to her as a woman. The incident in McKee’s bedroom (which some indicate it a sign of Nick being gay) is nothing but a portrait of how Nick has been doubly dizzy by alcohol and the brutality he has just witnessed. It was when Nick is vaguely remembers the whole things, but McKee’s portfolio of the chaos has reminded him again.

That is my Character Thursday of this week, an analysis of book character of my choice, who is yours?... Just put your post URL in the linky below. Do you like to join us in discussing characters from books you read? See the details of Character Thursday first.

The Classics Spin #2

One of the most excited events in The Classics Club is back: Classics Spin! The participants are required to list their 20 to-read classics. The moderators will ‘spin’ the numbers, and whatever the chosen number would be, we are obliged to read the book we have listed under that number by June. As usual, it is between exciting and worrying, haha! And here are my 20 books, most of them are quite ‘light’, because I don’t want to be burden by the commitment.

5 from new authors:

1. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

2. Inferno – Dante Allighieri

3. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith

4. The Call of the Wild (& White Fang) – Jack London

5. The Trial – Franz Kafka

5 from plays:

6. An Ideal Husband – Oscar Wilde

7. A Woman of No Importance – Oscar Wilde

8. Richard III – William Shakespeare

9. Caesar and Cleopatra – George Bernard Shaw

10. Saint Joan – George Bernard Shaw

10 from books/short stories from my list:

11. Cinta Sejati (Guy de Maupassant’s short stories collection in Bahasa Indonesia)

12. The Canterville Ghost – Oscar Wilde

13. Greyfriars Bobby – Eleanor Atkinson

14. The Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling

15. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – F. Scott Fitzgerald

16. The Stranger – Albert Camus

17. Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson

18. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift

19. Siddharta – Hermann Hesse

20. Matilda – Roald Dahl

And now let me cross my fingers, hoping the… particular number would be picked by the moderators! :)

The Great Gatsby: Third Level Inquiry

This is the third and last level of inquiries (and the most difficult!) for WEM Project, following my first level and second level inquiry posts.

Do you sympathize with the characters? Which ones, and why?

The only one character I sympathize with is Jay Gatsby. As his father told Nick, Gatsby is a rare person; in his young age, he has been applying the very way of achieving success: focus and discipline. If only he did not attracted to Daisy, he might have paved his way to success more decently. If only he had not been obsessed to Daisy, he might have had a better life. I think Gatsby is genuinely an innocent and straight forward person, it’s so pity that he dreams of the wrong person, and be mastered by the wrong master.

What does the setting of the book tell you about the way human beings are shaped?

Emerging from World War I, America became the wealthiest country in the world in the 1920s, when people suddenly had money to spend, and stock market boomed. There’s also a revolution in the society when women take part in work force and started to feel the freedom. Then Jazz Age added in the euphoria; lavish parties like Gatsby’s and free sexuality became a new trend. After the depressing war, people wants to break free, they often do crazy things just to release the years of burden from the war. In times like that people pursue easy money and high pleasure; while morality and ethics are abandoned, let alone religious.

What exactly is the writer telling you?

Fitzgerald criticizes the wildness of the Jazz Age that led to moral decays. On the other hand, he also warns us to not falling into a false dream. Everything should be achieved with hard working, focus and discipline (like Gatsby did). Gatsby has done the later, but failed in the previous (false dream), and that’s how he ‘falls’. But above all, we must maintain our morality always in the right path; God never sleeps! (and in this aspect, Gatsby wins from the other).

In what sense is the book true?

All that Fitzgerald says in this book is the reflection of modern civilization. Where hedonistic begins to grow, there would be a moral decay. God, moral, conscience would be abandoned, and replaced by the new gods: money and pleasure; and these are very relevant in our today’s civilization.

~~~~~~~