von Peter Griffith
Vor einhundert Jahren erschien F. Scott Fitzgeralds Roman „The Great Gatsby“. Seitdem ist es eines der beliebtesten amerikanischen Bücher geblieben – die Verkörperung des „Amerikanischen Traums“ und des „Jazz-Zeitalters“.
In der New Yorker High Society taucht plötzlich ein gewisser Jay Gatsby auf. Niemand kennt die Wahrheit über seine Vergangenheit oder die Quelle seines enormen Reichtums. Auf seinem Anwesen auf Long Island veranstaltet er legendäre Partys, zu denen die Elite New Yorks unbedingt eingeladen werden möchte.
Doch all das inszeniert Gatsby nur für einen einzigen Gast: Daisy Buchanan, seine Jugendliebe und das Ziel all seiner Sehnsüchte.
Daisy ist inzwischen mit Tom Buchanan verheiratet, der wiederum eine Affäre mit Myrtle Wilson hat. Myrtle träumt davon, ihr Leben als Ehefrau des Tankstellenbesitzers George gegen die glitzernde Welt der Reichen einzutauschen. Als Nick Carraway, Daisys Cousin, Gatsbys neuer Nachbar wird, ergeben sich neue Chancen, Daisy endlich wiederzusehen.
Fotos von 'The Great Gatsby'
Textauszug aus 'The Great Gatsby'
| Tom: | Self-control! I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well if that’s the idea you can count me out. Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white. |
| Jordan: | We’re all white here. |
| Tom: | I know I’m not very popular. I don’t give big parties. I suppose you’ve got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any friends, in the modern world. |
| Gatsby: | I’ve got something to tell you, old sport |
| Daisy: | Please don’t. Please let’s all go home. Why don’t we all go home? |
| Jordan: | That’s a good idea. Come on Tom. Nobody wants a drink. |
| Tom: | I want to know what Mr Gatsby has to tell me. |
| Gatsby: | Your wife doesn’t love you. She’s never loved you. She loves me. |
| Tom: | You must be crazy. |
| Gatsby: | She never loved you, do you hear? She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved anyone except me! |
| Tom: | Sit down Daisy. What’s been going on? I want to hear all about it. |
| Gatsby: | I told you what’s been going on. Going for five years – and you didn’t know. |
| Tom: | You’ve been seeing this fellow for five years? |
| Gatsby: | Not seeing. No, we couldn’t meet. But both of us loved each other all the time, old sport, and you didn’t know. I used to laugh sometimes – to think that you didn’t know. |
| Tom: | Oh – that’s all. You’re crazy! I can’t speak about what happened five years ago, because I didn’t know Daisy then – and I’ll be damned if I see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back door. But all the rest of that’s a God damned lie. Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now. |
Hörbeispiele aus 'The Great Gatsby'
| Nick: | My father once gave me some very useful advice.“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone”, he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had”. I’d been trying to figure out the meaning of my father’s advice ever since. That was before I came East, before I found myself swept into the reckless, shimmering world of 1922—an age of jazz and gin, of fortunes made overnight and squandered by dawn. The Great War had ended, leaving men restless and hungry for something more. Prohibition made liquor illegal, but that only made it flow faster, gilding the nights with easy money and empty promises. This is a story about a whole crowd of people who had many more “advantages” than I ever had. Let us meet some of them. |
| (Enter Jordan) | |
| Jordan: | First, this is the story of Daisy – a girl who was endowed with the advantage of quite exceptional beauty. |
| (Enter Daisy. Nick transforms on stage so as to become Tom) | |
| Jordan: | And it’s a story about Tom, a star professional footballer who had the good fortune to be a millionaire and the good fortune to be married to Daisy. |
| (Tom does some fitness exercises, then pulls Daisy off the stage; Myrtle enters and does a few dance steps and exits) | |
| Jordan: | It’s also a story about Myrtle, Tom’s lover and about George Wilson, |
| (Enter Wilson - and exits) | |
| Jordan: | Myrtle’s long - suffering husband. |
| (Enter Jordan - She demonstrates some golf swings) | |
| Jordan: | And it’s a story about me – Jordan Baker, the champion golfer who knew all about how to cheat, both on the golf course and off. |
| (Enter Gatsby) | |
| Nick: | But above all it’s a story about Gatsby, the man who gave his name to this book – the self-made millionaire, who represented everything for which I have a deep hate. Well, OK 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 showed me the depths to which humanity can sink. Yes, all of these were people who – as my father would say - haven’t had the “advantages” that I have had. All these beautiful people, rotten to the core. |