What is the foul dust that floated in the wake of his dreams?

As I write the module on The Great Gatsby, one of my concerns is how to deal with the issue of literary devices.  I don’t want the students to be intimidated by “hidden meanings.”  I don’t want them to go figure hunting as if they are bird watchers logging sightings of rare specimens.  However, I do want them to be able to interpret the novel, to appreciate the language, and not to be put off by Fitzgerald’s indirect ways.  My first move in this direction was the introduction for students which I posted earlier.

In the section below I am trying to explain how symbols, metaphors, similes, and irony work.  Many of the definitions I found on the web were too complex or confusing, even contradictory.  Others went too deep into semiotics or linguistics, attempting to describe cognitive processes or to create a host of types and sub-types.  I just want students to have a basic working understanding of figurative language so that they can read the novel with pleasure and understanding.  I want to empower them rather than intimidate them.

Please give feedback in the comments.

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Although reading literature is not like an Easter egg hunt in which the reader is looking for hidden meanings buried behind symbols and metaphors, such devices are part of the novel and do have meaning. For example, automobiles are common in this novel. At this time, the automobile is a fairly recent introduction into American culture. Traffic lights to control intersections were introduced around the time the novel was written. In the novel, automobiles are meticulously described. Characters drive them, buy them, sell them, repair them, crash them, and sometimes the wheels fall off. People are killed by them. Is the automobile a symbol of some aspect of American culture? Is steering a car a metaphor for a new kind of American life? It is up to you, the reader, to decide. Maybe a car is just a car. Maybe it is more. Symbols take on their meaning from context and from the evolving value that they have for the characters and the reader. It is never a simple matter of “Symbol X equals Meaning Y.”

Let’s say that the automobile is a symbol of American technological progress. What is implied if the wheels fall off? What is implied if the automobile kills someone?

Some definitions:

A symbol is something concrete (like the automobile) that represents or stands for an abstract idea (such as progress). Symbols are usually related to major themes in the work and may reoccur several times. The symbol does not necessarily resemble the symbolized idea or share any of its qualities. For example, the American flag is a symbol of the United States, but it does not look like the country. The stars on the flag may symbolize the individual states that are the current components of the union and the stripes may symbolize the original states that joined at the beginning, but the states are not like stars or stripes in any way.

A metaphor causes us to see one thing in terms of something else. On page 2, Nick Carraway talks about “the foul dust” that “floated in the wake of Gatsby’s dreams.” There are two metaphors here. First, the dust is not literally dust, but at this point we don’t know exactly what it is. We will find out what dreams Gatsby has and what the foul consequences are as we continue reading. Second, the dust floats in the “wake” of Gatsby’s dreams. As a boat travels through the water it creates a turbulent track behind it which is called the “wake.” So Gatsby’s dreams are being compared to a boat that leaves foul dust floating behind it. But wait a minute! “Wake” is also another word for funeral. Could that be what it means here? It seems unlikely because the word “floating” is associated with water, which triggers the association with a boat. Note that these are not “hidden meanings.” The metaphors are just part of the way that the sentence creates meaning.

A simile is a type of metaphor that uses “like” or “as” or other comparison words to connect the ideas. The most famous simile ever is probably by the poet, Robert Burns, who wrote, “My love is like a red, red rose,” comparing a woman to a flower. In The Great Gatsby, when Nick is criticizing Jordan’s driving he says, to the reader, not to Jordan, “I am slow thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires” (58). This statement compares his “interior rules” to the “brakes” on an automobile. Similes such as this are very common in fiction.

Irony is also common in this novel. The word “irony” comes from a Greek word that means to pretend. There are many types of irony, but in all types the surface meaning is different, often the opposite, of what is intended, creating a humorous effect. For example, if a person walking in pouring rain meets another person and says, “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” that would be an ironic statement. Another common form of irony is understatement. Say a woman who is very afraid of spiders finds a spider in her sink, rolls up a magazine and in a panic hits the spider 20 times. Her roommate says, “Do you think that’s enough?” In Gatsby, irony often takes the form of exaggeration, such as when Nick arrives at Daisy’s house and she says, “I’m paralyzed with happiness” (8).

You will find many examples of these and other literary devices in the novel. Take note of these, discuss them with your classmates, and think about how they influence your reading of the novel.

It's a common literary device to describe something twice, but more descriptively the second time around. It helps build and graduate emphasis, making the sentence feel like a sort of verbal crescendo.

I saw him running, racing around the track with utmost determination, and instantly fell in love.

In this case both running and racing around the track with utmost determination describe the same thing and serve the same grammatical function in the sentence, but the latter carries more pathos and feels stronger to the reader. If you were reading it aloud, you'd likely put more emphasis on that part of the sentence than on just running.

It's the same with your sentence - what preyed on Gatsby and what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams refer to the same thing, but the repetition makes the sentence flow better. What might be a little confusing is the slightly archaic structure of the second clause (what + noun + verb) - it's not used often these days, but it could be rewritten as the foul dust which floated... .

"No— Gatsby turned out all right in the end. It is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men." When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote these words in The Great Gatsby in 1925, he perfectly described the human struggle of the time. This was, by no means, accidental--for Fitzgerald wrote meticulously and very rarely did he leave a line unrevised. No— Fitzgerald knew what he was doing; he was, in two sentences, criticizing American society like no one else had. Oh!, and what that "foul dust" turned out to be: the foundation of our morality, our greatest aspiration and our heaviest of fetters, the American Dream. It is…show more content…
Like many others, Gatsby has fallen victim to the American Dream, the idea that he will have all he has ever wanted only after acquiring vaults of riches and elegance and beauty. He cannot have Daisy a poor man, no, he must be rich; one can only have what one desires after amassing great wealth. But it is this dream that preys on Gatsby; in the end, he becomes obsessed by the means to impress Daisy and he becomes materialistic and empty. Gatsby, the greatest of men, the most devoted lover, the all-too-pathetic Don Quixote, has fallen prey to this foul dust, it has asphyxiated his very being and it has killed him. The American Dream, in essence, is but a faulty perception of the world. It attempts to find felicity in all that is gilt. And guilty is a society that bases happiness on something as worthless as gold; for what does the warm kiss of light on the skin and the taste of water cost man? It is this theme of misconceptions and blindness that recurs through Fitzgerald's work. It stares at us, scrutinizes us, like the gigantic, blue, spectacled and myopic eyes of Dr. Eckleburg. Fitzgerald gives us Dr. Eckleburg to accentuate America's blindness. America is not only blind, but also near-sighted; America lives for today, for pleasure and prodigality. She cannot

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Foreshadowing is a significant technique in The Great Gatsby. From the book’s opening pages, Fitzgerald hints at the book’s tragic end, with the mysterious reference to the “foul dust that floated in the wake of (Gatsby’s) dreams.” Fitzgerald also employs false foreshadowing, setting up expectations for one thing to happen, such as saying “Gatsby turned out all right at the end,” then reversing it. Throughout the novel, foreshadowing enforces the sense of tragic inevitability to events, as though all the characters are doomed to play out their fates. The use of foreshadowing heightens the sense that no character can escape his or her predetermined role in life.

Daisy’s unattainability

The first time we (and Nick) see Gatsby, he is standing with his arms outstretched, “trembling,” reaching for the green light, which Fitzgerald describes as insubstantial – it is “minute and far away,” and “might have been the end of a dock.” In this way, he suggests that Gatsby’s quest is toward something ephemeral. When Nick looks again, Gatsby has disappeared into the “unquiet darkness” – foreshadowing his disappearance into death at the end of the book. The inaccessibility of the green light tells us to expect a narrative in which the object of desire will never be obtained. Despite being reunited with Daisy, Gatsby is unable to fully attain her, just as the green light will never come closer to his grasp.

Tom’s relationship with Myrtle

Another subtle instance of foreshadowing comes when Tom takes Nick to Myrtle’s apartment and the reader comes to understand Tom’s attachment to Daisy. After Myrtle enrages Tom by repeating Daisy’s name, Tom hits her and breaks her nose. This attack reveals Tom’s brutal nature and pinpoints the relationship between Myrtle and Tom as a stressor for the story. When Myrtle’s sister tells Nick that Daisy won’t divorce Tom because she’s Catholic, Nick is “shocked at the elaborateness of the lie,” suggesting Daisy and Tom are more enmeshed than Myrtle knows. This revelation foreshadows Daisy’s later refusal to say she never loved Tom. The passage also sets up the scene after Myrtle is killed, when Nick sees Daisy and Tom together and remarks on the “unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the couple.” Daisy’s manslaughter of Myrtle is the resolution of the foreshadowing of both violence and the strength of the bond between Tom and Daisy in the party scene. The surprising element is that Daisy, not Tom, kills Myrtle, which reverses our expectations. In this way, Fitzgerald manipulates foreshadowing in order to surprise the reader.

Gatsby’s fate

In a more misleading instance of foreshadowing, Nick implies that Gatsby will have a happy ending; only after the reader has finished the book does the true meaning of Nick’s words become clear. In the opening pages Nick says that “Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.” The reader may take the first proclamation as proof that Gatsby survives the story or ends up with Daisy, but in fact Gatsby dies at the end of the novel. The red herring increases the reader’s surprise when this occurs. Upon re-reading the passage, we understand another meaning of the phrase, which is that Gatsby turns out to be a hero rather than a villain of the story. In the second part of the quotation Nick tells us that the story will end sorrowfully and will have a lasting negative impact on him; this also turns out to be true.

Myrtle killed by a car

Myrtle’s death in a hit-and-run car accident is both directly and indirectly foreshadowed. Automobiles are a preoccupation of the novel, with many references to cars and driving. Early in the book, Nick leaves Gatsby’s party and sees a car in a ditch, “violently shorn of one wheel,” an image echoed later by the sight of Myrtle's “left breast swinging loose like a flap” after she is hit by the car. Next, Jordan nearly runs over a workman with her car, then tells Nick she’s not concerned about being a careless driver because “it takes two to make an accident.” These scenes foreshadow the scene when Daisy hits Myrtle, who has run out into the road – an accident caused by both Daisy and Myrtle’s carelessness. Direct foreshadowing appears near the end of the book, when Nick and Tom and Jordan leave New York. Nick has just realized it’s his birthday; he is thirty, and the years ahead of him promise only “a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.” Nick is suddenly aware of his own mortality, so when he says, “we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight,” the sentence can be read as a general reference to mortality. But in fact the line is a specific foreshadowing of Myrtle’s death, which will happen soon down the road.