Hidden Messages?

Earlier this week we discussed the possible views that Fitzgerald could have been portraying with his novel, The Great Gatsby. The possible perspectives were African American, Feminist, Queer, and Psychoanalytic. Many of the proposed arguments that were supposed to support that viewpoint were very far-fetched to say the least. For example, Mr.McKee is described as "a pale, feminine man" (34) and a scene where "[Nick] was standing beside [Mr.Mckee's] bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underway, with a great portfolio in his hands" (42). At a glance it seems like nothing more than a simple description of Mr.McKee and an event that Nick vaguely remembers due to not being very drunk. However, if our brains are primed to hunt out the most obscure connections between what Fitzgerald is saying and what we want it to say, it can be easy to assume that Fitzgerald actually has hidden messages throughout the novel. This can be related to the crazed hidden messages that Rock n' Roll songs were thought to have when played backwards. Try it out yourself. The link is composed of a list of some "backmasked" songs. However, first, close your eyes when listening to see if you can piece together what the supposed message is. Then open your eyes and look at the video to see what the supposed message is and see if you can hear it then.
 
http://www.vh1.com/news/52612/15-songs-satanic-backwards-messages/

Most likely, you could not hear it the first time, but you could the second time. It shows that unless the brain is deliberately trying to find these messages, it will not find them. I believe that Fitzgerald didn't have any secret messages that he was trying to convey to his readers, but instead, it is just people who are deliberately trying to look for and make connections.

Protection through Discrimintion

At the end of the novel, The Great Gatsby, Tom and Daisy are protected from any actions they had performed earlier that would have caused them to be labeled as disreputable. Nick thought that "they were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures"( Fitzgerald 187), but he knew that nothing could be done because they could just "retreat back into their money or vast carelessness" (Fitzgerald 188). Tom and Daisy are shielded from the punishments of their actions simply because they are rich. If it were someone poor or of low status who was having an affair, he or she would have surely had their reputation slandered or even ended up dead. This clear example of discrimination can be compared to that of how white people are treated compared to other racial groups. In a study using FBI data, John Roman found that "in non-Stand Your Ground states, whites are 250 percent more likely to be found justified in killing a black person than a white person who kills another white person; in Stand Your Ground states, that number jumps to 354 percent" (Childress). The graph below also shows that blacks who kill whites have a much lower percentage of being found justifiable than a white person killing another white person in both Stand Your Ground and non Stand Your Ground states. A Stand Your Ground state is a state that has a law that doesn't require someone to run before fighting back.

Another example of this racial discrimination can be seen in the media. Often times when someone from a minority group, such as a Muslim, is found the be the cause of a shooting or other horrific event, they are portrayed in the media as a "terrorist" and that racial group gets ostracized. However if it is a white person who performs a similar crime, the media uses kinder words such as "troubled" or "disturbed". Similar to how Tom is protected because he was born into wealth and status, these people are protected simply because they were born white rather than something else.