native son and gatsby Flashcards
(34 cards)
Media influences on Native Son
‘It was when he read the newspapers or magazines, went to the movies… that he felt he wanted: to merge himself with others and be a part of this world’ i.e. knowing what is on the outside world makes him want it even more. It further exacerbates the gap between the ruling class and oppressed class. Teases him, showing him what he can’t have.
Media influences on Native Son
‘He paused and re-read the line ‘AUTHORITIES HINT SEX CRIME’. ‘Those words excluded him utterly from the world’. Bigger is two selves: the one the media presents and the one is really is. Yet, people only believe the media crafted persona. Media overrules his ability to have freedom of speech. Destructive force. Only heightens white paranoia due to Scottsboro trial.
Media influences on Native Son
P275: ‘{the} Banker’s wife dismissed the negro cook for fear she might poison her children’
Juxtaposition between Banker and Cook. Banker holds financial power and holds power of cook. Capitalist scheme.
Media influences on Native Son
The advertisement of Buckley: ‘huge colored poster… the poster showed a white finger’ Shows a finger pointing out straight, in South Chicago where the blacks live. Advertisement powerful in manipulating how people act. Accusative finger which almost pre-determines people to conform to their stereotype.
Warnes describes ‘the atmosphere of inevitability’
Media influences on The Great Gatsby
Opening of chapter 6- prior to Gatsby’s reconciliation with Daisy. ‘About this time an ambitious young reporter from NY arrived on morning at Gatsby’s door and asked him if he had anything to say’.
Society’s predatory nature. He is a victim of his dream. Life is not private. ‘Jay Gatsby’ is a construct of himself and media influences.
TGG- novel of production in NY as much as self- production.
Media influences on The Great Gatsby
Daisy to Gatsby Chapter 7 ‘You resemble the advertisement of a man’ i.e. Dr Eckleburg.
Gatsby may resemble the embodiment of economic success. But, this success is in another strata- i.e. the poster is in the valley of ashes. His success is less refined - bootlegging.
Media influences on The Great Gatsby
Wilson in Chapter 8 ‘I told her she might fool me but she can’t fool God’
He was reminded later ‘That’s an advertisement’
Lost generation - moral ambiguity. Loss of direction. Belief in God replaced by belief in consumerism.
Native Son: synopsis
Bigger Thomas is a poor, uneducated man in 1930’s Chicago. Having grown up under the climate of harsh racial prejudice, Bigger is burdened with a powerful conviction that he has no control over his life. He cannot aspire to anything other than menial, low wage labor.
Anger, fear and frustration define Bigger’s daily existence, as he is forced to hide behind a facade of toughness or risk succumbing to despair.
Wright forces us to enter into Bigger’s mind and understand the devastating effects of the social conditions in which he was raised. Bigger was not a born criminal. He is a ‘Native Son’ a product of American culture, violence and racism.
The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: The Wall Street Crash
The Wall Street Crash took place in 1929.
During 1920’s, American experienced an economic boom- governments adopted a Laissez Faire policy meaning businesses were free to expand.
Pursuit of dis-inhibited pleasure.
The Wall Street stock crashed and the world economy plunged into a Great depression.
People were in a panic to get rid of their stocks. Since everyone was selling and no one was buying, stock prices collapsed.
Badly shaking confidence in capitalism.
The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: The American Dream
Every man and woman shall, regardless of their birth, achieve what they’re able to. Everybody should be treated equally.
AD shaped by several collective values: individualism (moral worth of individual) , self - actualization (reaching one’s own potential) and self-reliance.
For those who did not prosper, it was not a dream that had betrayed them- but their faith in capitalism.
Pursuit ‘palpably available to everyone’ but was success?
The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: The Lost generation
Reckless pleasure seeking WW1- 1914 to 1918 hedonistic lifestyles - partying, drugs and alcohol. Many were disillusioned after the war. Moral ambiguity. Lives aimless with no purpose.
The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Racism
Tom Buchanan was a White Anglo Saxon Protestant- belief that white people are the superior race. Scientifically proven- other races are biologically inferior.
Fear of immigration in 1920’s- The Great Migration. Movement of 6 million AA’s from Southern US to the urban North. Occurred after the Civil War. Driven by unsatisfactory economic conditions. Harsh segregationist laws.
Conflict between North and South. North Opposed to slavery. Northern Abraham Lincoln became president. All of South’s wealth based on slavery - worked on plantations and cotton fields.
11 states in south decided to break away and have their own government and so Civil War declared. Lincoln declared emancipation - all slaves freed. 1865- South surrendered. Lead to abolition of slavery. Illegal for blacks to be denied votes or discriminated against.
The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Jim Crow laws
Introduced 1890- 1965
Despite new laws, blacks still seen as inferior and second-class.
Jim Crow laws enforced segregation. South- white superiority enforced and slavery culture remembered and embraced. Inter-marriage between black and whites illegal. Public places had separated parts for black and white.
The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: The Klu Klux Klan
It was virtually impossible for black AA to challenge segregation. To do so ran the serious risk of violence at the hands of white racists KKK. Its campaigns of hate and violence intensified: violence, beating, burning, branding, acid attacks and lynching rapidly increased.
Effective in limiting political power making it difficult for black population to vote.
The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Women
Emerging acceptance in NY that women could be sexually powerful and confident. The 1920’s saw a changing role for women. Sexually liberated. In 1920 women got the right to vote. An increase in educated and independent women post WW1- took on roles of women- respected and admired. However, for many the new woman was a disturbing and socially divisive construct that was bound to have mental and physical repercussions and most importantly affect fertility.
The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Prohibition
US put a constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages. Many believed alcohol was the cause of society’s sins- domestic violence, fighting and public damage. Believed importing, buying consuming alcohol was supporting brewers in Germany. Still a strong anti-Germany feeling.
Bars and clubs known as speakeasies secretly and illegally sold alcohol. Gangsters thrived- famous Al Capone - $60 million annually from bootleg operations.
Native Son context: Richard Wright’s personal life
Wright wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin prior to NS. He was unhappy at the reception it received. It evoked pity and sympathy- letting white reader’s believe they were not responsible for the situation.
Instead her wrote NS to encourage them to accept their complicity in the misery of the American underclass.
Bigger Thomas
Bigger 1: There was a boy who terrorized Wright and all the boys he played with. They never recovered their toys unless they flattered him and made him feel superior. He was happiest when he had someone cornered at this mercy.
Bigger 4: The Jim Crow laws of the South were not for him and he cursed and broke them. But he knew one day he would have to pay for his freedom.
The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Communism
The prominent leaders were opposed to racial segregation.
They considered discrimination of black workers to be an extreme form of capitalist exploitation.
Communism was based on Marxist ideology. Marxism believed that history was largely determined by struggle between the ruling classes and oppressed classes. Capitalism is dependent on racism as a source of profiteering.
Solution needs to be radical- Marxist revolution
The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: The Scottsboro trial
Famous episodes of legal injustice in Jim Crow South.
Nine young black men were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train. They were falsely convicted- despite prominent lawyers arguing that the accusations were false. 8 sentenced to death and the youngest sentenced to life imprisonment.
The CP started national protest and gained much respect. Eventually all 9 lives were saved. One of the proudest moments of American radicalism- successfully beat the Jim Crow legal system.
The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Generic elements of the Gothic novel
Setting in old-abandoned buildings. Darkness or shadow- to create sense of claustrophobia.
Women in distress- often left fainting terrified, screaming or sobbing. To appeal to pathos and sympathy of reader.
Women threatened by a powerful, tyrannical, impulsive male.
The Great Gatsby and Native Son Context: Modernism
Challenged and rejected established ideas
Saw human environment as unstable, threatening, lacking in absolute meaning.
Individual’s struggle in an incoherent world. City settings- vacillation between excitement and fears,
Alienation from the big city and its dominating culture. Protagonists often find themselves feeling lonely.
Lack of faith and morals.
The Great Gatsby context
Nick Carraway confesses what fascinates him about the NY is its mechanical vitality: ‘the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines give to the restless eye’.
‘constant flicker’ is oxymoronic. Became a key word for modernist writers. A powerful image of febrile superficiality.
NY represented a utopia were every type of dream and desire could become true.
Native Son: KEY QUOTES
‘Turn your heads so I can dress’
‘A huge black rat squealed’
‘The rat’s belly pulsed with fear’
‘If you wasn’t black and if you had some money, and if they’d let you go to that aviation school, you could fly a plane’.
‘He hated his family because he knew they were suffering and that he was powerless to help them’
‘he had transferred his fear of the whites to Gus’
‘He knew the moment he allowed what his life meant to enter into his consciousness, he would either kill himself, or someone else’.
‘He committed rape every time he looked into a white face’
‘Rape was what one felt when one’s back was against a wall and one had to strike out, whether one wanted to or not’- redefining rape. Its just a response. a reflex.
Buckley poster- as described in media
Newspapers
Native Son: Key quotes
Eager to prove their progressive ideals and racial tolerance, Mary and Jan force bigger to take them to a restaurant in the South side.
‘There’ll be no white and no black; there’ll be no rich and no poor’
‘You’ve read about the Scottsboro boys’
Mary’s murder gives Bigger a sense of identity and power he has never known
‘Now, who on earth would think that he, a black timid Negro boy would murder and burn a rich white girl and would wait for his breakfast like this. Elation filled him’.
‘Made him feel free for the first time in his life’.
Just as Bigger places Mary on her bed, Mary’s blind mother, Mrs Dalton, enters the bedroom. Though Mrs Dalton cannot see him, her ghostlike presence terrifies him. Worried that Mary, in her drunken condition, will reveal his presence he covers her face with a pillow and accidently smothers her to death.
‘A hysterical presence seized him… A white blur was standing by the door, silent, ghostlike.’
Gothic trope- white power all consuming, oppressive
