Blog # 5: Jordan Baker: Foul Dust
Body Bio: Jordan Baker: Foul Dust
Thesis: Jordan Baker is an anchorless, amoral, superficial woman who feeds off, embodies, and expels the foul dust that corrupts the upper class social sphere.
Anchorless: anchor with a broken chain
Amoral: stepping on a cross
Superficial: thought bubble, social ladder, climbing, trying to get to the top
Feeds off foul dust: grabbing it with both hands
Embodies foul dust: foul dust all over her
Expels foul dust: outlined with foul dust, and foul dust coming out of her mouth
Significant Happenings:
1) first time Nick sees Jordan, seems to be floating, anchorless, also, holds head high
2) Bad Driver
3) Last Scene, Baker is in a big chair with her head held high, doesn’t really care about what Nick is telling her about
4) A party scene, Nick says she carries herself jauntily
5) At some party scene, with rich people, showing that she is trying to be part of the upper class
Visual Symbols: foul dust, colors of shirt and pants: yellow=corrupt, social ladder, depictions of scenes in the book, anchor and broken chain, stepping on cross
Quotations: Minimum of Three
1) Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. (14)
2) Seemed to have mastered a certain hardy skepticism (15)
3) Critical unpleasant story (18)
4) Leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden (42)
5) This is much too polite for me (45)
6) Urban distaste for the concrete (49)
7) There was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings (50)
8) This clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal skepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm (79)
9) Her wan, scornful mouth smiled (80)
10) “there’s something very sensuous about it—overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands” (125)
11) begun to balance an invisible but absorbing object on the tip of her chin (134)
12) too wise (135)
13) uncertainty of her own movements between hotels and clubs and private houses (155)
14) she lay perfectly still, listening, in a big chair (177)
15) chin raised a little jauntily (177)
16) engaged to another man (177)
17) “I don’t give a damn about you” (177)
18) “You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess” (177)
unashamed
hardy skepticism
unpleasant
contemptuous
“This is much too polite for me”
urban distaste
jauntiness about her movements
clean, hard, limited
dealt in universal skepticism
leaned back jauntily
wan, scornful mouth
too wise
uncertainty of her own movements between hotels and clubs and private houses
she lay perfectly still
chin raised a little jauntily
engaged to another man
“ I don’t give a damn about you”
“It was careless of me to make such a wrong guess”
