How Is Jordan Baker Portrayed In The Great Gatsby

of his lover, allows us to feel sympathy for him. By omitting this sequence, Tom’s depth or complexity of character can be seen as diminished. Lastly Nick’s character is distorted in the film. In the text we learn that Nick is careless and self-interested through his brief relationship with Jordan Baker – which is purposefully omitted from the film. He treats her as an experiement- a means of entertainment - and gives Jordan the false illusion that her affinity is reciprocated. This is carelessness is most evident when he abruptly ends the relationship. He states ‘I do not know who hung up first… but I know that I did not care’ while Jordan’s heart is shattered.

However the film adaptation can be alluring due to a few notable, successful

Fitzgerald deliberately chose African- African Jazz street music, which we now know as Jazz, as a symbol of rebellion and defiance. Today a modern audience would see it as a an antique of an older generation. Thus Luhrmann uses hip-hop as a modern substitute for what Jazz symbolized in the 1920s. The blend of the two genres - which are complemented by revving engines, three-dimensional effects and high velocity tracking shots - effectively displays the raucous, liquor-filled raves which made a grand point of defying the Prohibition. In addition to this, Luhrmann capitalizes on the biting commentary on power, crime and corruption by adding new scenes and sequences that further express this aspect, thereby modernizing and reinterpreting

Fitzgerald intended to write Nick and Gatsby as projections of himself and thus these changes would be praised by the author himself. The film’s focus on alcohol and the identification of Nick as the author of The Great Gatsby whisper echoes Fitzgerald’s personal experiences. In the film, Nick functions as an intradiegetic narrator and we are informed that he is the author of The Great Gatsby. The text gives us some indication of this, for example when Nick states that he is“reading over what [he has] written so far” but these references are scarce. The film however makes this connection apparent with multiple flash forwards of Nick using his writing as a form of therapeutic reflection while he tries to recover from his addiction. In the final scenes, the film presents Nick as the author of The Great Gatsby thereby linking the persona of Nick to Fitzgerald himself. Moreover, both Nick and Fitzgerald were Minnesota-bred sons of middle class families and ventured east after World War I for opportunities in the bond business and writing, respectively. Most notably, both characters suffered from a debilitating dose of morbid alcoholism, which is a strengthened symbol in the film as opposed to the text. This negative view on alcohol is a rather prominent theme of the film, as it is one of the first topics brought up by Nick as he tells us ‘back then, all of us drank too much.