Bonjour,
Finalement j’ai eu le temps aujourd’hui de retoucher le texte de ma colle d’anglais, ce qui a consisté en l’épuration de nombreuses erreurs, parfois même quelques horreurs, avant de la mettre en ligne. Ceux qui lisent suffisamment facilement l’anglais comprendront assez rapidement que ce texte n’est pas toujours très sérieux. C’est normal, il se trouve que mon professeur me laisse une bonne marge de “liberté d’expression”. Cependant n’allez pas croire que tout est faux et erroné. L’analyse est précise et rarement erronée (je vais préciser ce point). Simplement, je cherche les mots pour rendre ce texte aussi peu ennuyeux que possible, du moins j’essaye.
Pour en revenir à l’imprécision, elle concerne la deuxième partie de l’analyse sur le chien. En effet, j’arrive à dire que le chien serait une sorte de Jésus-Christ voyant les humains à travers des yeux blancs tels qu’ils sont et purgeant leur fautes. Cette interprétation se tient et j’espère l’avoir démontré cependant mon professeur d’anglais en a apporté une autre bien plus simple et certainement plus correcte. Pour lui, le chien serait à l’inverse de dieu une créature que l’on achète pour 10$ et que l’on peut jeter. Cette idée est en effet lumineuse mais n’explique que la scène de l’achat et pas la suite. À vrai dire, je vous laisse trancher et j’imagine que plusieurs interprétations sont possibles.
Introduction :
There is a beautiful book called Middlesex which was written by Jeffrey Eugenides. One of the main character was called “chapter eleven”. Today, we will see chapter two, which has a central place in the novel, a central place between chapter one and chapter three. In the novel, I put it in the pre-Gatsby chapter’s, because in these chapters, we didn’t see Gasbty and wait for the moment of meeting.
I will sum up this chapter for posterity :
Summarise :
Nick, the narrator is invited by Thomas Buchanan to meet his mistress. They went to a poor place between West Egg and New York to bring Myrtle Wilson, Tom’s mistress to the big apple. On the road, Myrtle wanted to buy a dog and Tom accepted. It cost 10 dollars and they finally arrived at Myrtle’s sister, Catherine McKee and her husband. They talked about futile things before drinking and after about Tom, Daisy, and Myrtle. The discussion became violent because alcohol brings truth. Finally, the narrator decided to go out.
I choose to work on god theme during this short presentation. Why ? Because he is dying and we should pay more attention to dying people. They are still alive and mobilises their last strength in a final effort. And god is someone who symbolises hope in our world, hope especially for our death. If he died, what about us ?
I think this chapter can be divided into three parts : god, dog, and OGD.
Development :
I°) God is in the place :
Shall I speak about the 1st part of the chapter ? We saw it in during the lesson and I don’t want to repeat myself. [Vu en classe]
First of all, Tom brings Nick in his mistress’s home. He wanted him to see her. Nick doesn’t want to go but Tom «insisted» : he accepted because he is weak and Tom is very impressive. I see Tom as a child : he wants something and can be very violent if someone refuses. He is very arrogant with Wilson : I think he believes in cast (like in India) : people are in cast and Tom is, of course, in the highest. He talked to Wilson as he thinks he is. On the other hand, Wilson is blind (like Nick) because he doesn’t understand what the situation is.
I said Wilson is blind like Nick. We saw Nick was blind during a lesson before and he may have found a solution : Doctor T.J. Ecklebug is an oculist and he can fix the eyes. Like a god can give back the sight. It is a Jesus’ miracle. The doctor is a kind of god, like the dog. Can we see a game of sonority between doc and dog ? I am not sure but if…
So, let’s go to more serious proofs : The doctor eyes : it’s a sign of the quest to find the other side of the egg. A sign from god? / In addition to this, we have the colour of eyes and the spectacles which evokes directly the Byzantine god.
There are colours of hell (grey) because of abandon. People on the 20th century abandoned god and American Dream when they fall in vacuity and capitalism. God is dying and we will all be ashes in hell when we will be dead.
An important point is we are in ashes now when we are in life because of consumer society and prohibition. Look at all the people in the book. Most of them live in the sin but they are unhappy. Fortunately, god sent them a way to escape.
II°) Dog is in the place :
After the meeting with Myrtle and her husband, Tom and his mistress led Nick to McKee’s house and Myrtle wanted to buy a dog. I believe it is important to mention the fact that «dog» contains the same letter (in a different order) as «god». Is the dog here the opposite of the god we saw during the previous paragraph ?
Fist of all, the choice of the race is certainly not a random choice : The dog is a Airedale. Note the fact there is «air» in this word : a planing dog like god which is very light.
My knowledge in dog is very superficial and I went to Wikipedia to complete it : I select the main characteristics which will help us :
=> This dog need two things : Authority and presence. We don’t see authority in this passage but I am sure there are no problem with Myrtle and especially Tom : I think they like to see people like … their dogs. That’s probably another reason to the dog’s presence.
About presence, I think we can say without too hesitation the purchase of the dog was a whim {caprice} and if I wanted to be precise I would say a women whim. So, we see it immediately after the purchase : The dog is alone and probably worried : We easily understand the dog will be alone all the time during his life, or probably worst : Aborted or dead because of lack {manque} of food.
So, we see in few lines dog’s entire life and destiny. Maybe we can see his life as a Jesus life : an innocent animal which was raised by a poor man and he is adopted by people who don’t understand him and will provoke his death. Was he sent by god to be sacrificial victim like Jesus to expiate the original failure ? In this case, we can say he was sent in the right place, around the sinners. Except Nick is different from these two sinners : he is weak whereas the two other are high: they made decisions but wrong decisions : Nick doesn’t and he is led by Tom. Is it a better choice ? I believe Fitzgerald is very pessimist in this vision but hopefully, we have the dog to lead us.
III°) OGD (Old Grand Dad) is in the place :
A medicinal whiskey during prohibition… and before medicinal too !
I think this part of the chapter is built on an opposition. An opposition between truth and lies but the rhythm of this part is not binary but ternary. So, we have three moments : totally clean, half-drunk, and totally drunk. The separation between these moments is the arrival of a bottle of whisky. At first, they didn’t drink , and after that the first bottle of whisky, and finally, the second one.
I told during my great summary of truth. Grand Dad helped me to find this french proverb : «la vérité est dans le vin» I don’t know if this sentence exists in English but for the greater good I will try to adapt it to our talking : truth come from Old Grand Dad. In the future, I think I will become a great publicist… So, let’s go to clean people.
Totally clean :
People are clean, they don’t drink and speaks about banalities «dress» etc. This passage in on the page 33 (héhé, 33, say 33, yes doctor)
Half-drunk :
The first bottle is asked by Tom. Did he know what it implies ? I don’t think he did because Tom is a liar, he didn’t tell his wife he had a liaison with Myrtle. He is jealous and provoked Gatsby’s death but with treachery.
The first bottle is the only moment when Nick accepted to speak during the conversion and it is monosyllable about Gatsby. I personally believe he spoke more than he wants to show us in the book. He just told us he was severely drunk : I think the whisky had a effect on him but he feels ashamed now because now Gatsby is dead and I think he told gossip on him because he didn’t know him and encouraged gossip because Nick is fundamentally curious.
Myrtle became violent when they spoke about her husband. She showed us the bad aspect of her personality.
Totally drunk :
After the second bottle of Whisky, the catharsis become more clear (yes, we are in theater, I hope you saw it because of the quasi-absence of description), M. McKee is asleep : his main default is revealed : laziness, one of the seven deadly sins.
Mrs McKee and Tom spoke about banalities : it shows they are superficial but when Myrtle became hysterical (her sin is childhood : she progressively regresses in this chapter : she was a woman with her husband and the little girl who wants a dog, and finally the baby who is crying because no one took care of her : It is like another Fitzgerald’s story I read during my so short holiday {stop for a while} and I have it today : The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Tom becomes violent, as usual but physically yet.
Nick lied as usual and forgot to tell us what is his sin but the dog and his, I quote «blank eyes» showed everything but unfortunately we cannot know what the dog is thinking because we don’t speak dog’s language. {madly voice} But god in sky knows what his messenger saw and I believe the sentence will be on time {/}
Conclusion :
I employed the word of catharsis. This catharsis is necessary in this chapter because Nick has to be virgin before going into Gatsby’s home to be initiated. But this story is another story, the story of a black mass… A story the dog doesn’t want to listen because it led to death…
Si j’ai attendu autant avant de publier ce texte, c’est tout simplement que des élèves continuaient à passer en colle sur ce chapitre.
Je vais voir si je rédige quelque chose sur la journée de la jupe, beaucoup de choses ont déjà été dites (et très bien d’ailleurs).
Florent
Mots-clefs : anglais, chapitre deux, chapter two, colle, english version, great gatsby
