The green light and the weather channel

Part I of my comparative analysis of the novel, The Great Gatsby and the Korean television series ‘The Glory’.

Catalyst for Project

I am a latecomer to the world of KDrama, but it did not take long – episode 2 of my first, ‘She’ll Never Know’ – for me to appreciate some elements generally missing from other subsets of drama, notable a complexity of character development and a fondness for convoluted plots which often defy the expectations of the genre. Many of these series deserve better than being dismissed as ‘merely’ KDrama. ‘The Glory’ is one example.

April 2025 marks the 100^th anniversary of the publication of F Scott Fitzgerald’s third but best-known novel, The Great Gatsby. It has been represented on film at least four times, on stage as a play, an opera, a musical and a ballet, as well as on television screens multiple times. To many, a characteristic of a text worthy of the label ‘literature’ is its ability to withstand detailed analysis, and the opportunity it offers its consumers to glean wisdom or insight from total engagement with the text itself. 

Once I started to see the parallels between these two very different texts, the sheer number seemed beyond coincidental, and once seen they cannot be un-seen. These parallels form the basis of this project. It is my contention that this sort of analysis enhances our understanding of and appreciation for each text. An exploration of the context of a text is also useful; texts offer – at times unintentionally – a commentary or critique of the society from whence they came. 

Method

1. The two texts

The Great Gatsby is an exploration of the American Dream and its cost. Gatsby, driven by a longing for Daisy Buchanan and a place in her world, manufactures a façade of wealth and power then challenges Tom Buchanan for Daisy’s heart. Tom is a philandering wastrel but has a solid foundation of extraordinary wealth and genuine social power, and [spoilers] he ruthlessly ends Gatsby’s dreams.

The Glory is a 16-episode series released in 2024. It follows the fight for and [spoilers] achievement of revenge by Moon Dong-eun. She was a witness to and victim of violent bullying by five fellow students in the equivalent to Year 11 of high school. 18 years later, she infiltrates their worlds, discovers their secrets, blackmails them, sets them against each other until finally they are all destroyed – imprisoned, badly injured or killed.

• The character ‘sets’

The structure chosen for this analysis is to compare and contrast five pairs or sets of characters. Each set will be analysed in a separate post.

1. The men who possess both extreme wealth and established social power: Tom Buchanan and Ha Do-yeong
2. The hopeful frauds whose money and power are illegitimate and thus tenuous: Jay Gatsby and Jeon Jae-jun
3. The cool observers who sit in judgement: Nick Carraway and Moon Dong-eun
4. The women who married their way into the elite worlds: Daisy Buchanan and Park Yeon-jin
5. The desperate losers who unhappily and resentfully languish on the bottom of the socio-economic pyramids of the texts: Myrtle and George Wilson, Son Myeong-o, Choi Hye-jeong and Lee Seok-jae

A note on Korean names: the first name is the surname or family name, the following two are the given names. Thus the main character in ‘The Glory’ is referred to as Moon Dong-eun or Dong-eun.

General Comments

THEMATIC SIMILARITIES:

Both texts foreground the enormous gap between the extremely wealthy and everyone else. The theme of movement between social classes is another point in common. As the flight attendant Choi Hye-jeong snobbishly explains to the driver Son Myeong-o, “the one place in the world where you can clearly find classes [is] the inside of a plane. First, business, economy. The only thing dividing them is a curtain, but nobody can cross it… Stay behind the fucking curtain.” (episode 3). In The Great Gatsby this gulf is also insurmountable, much to the chagrin of Gatsby and the despair of Myrtle Wilson. 

A significant point of difference is that The Great Gatsby challenges extreme wealth, while The Glory privileges it. In the television series the elites are held up as role models, yet Fitzgerald invites his readers to think critically about the unfairness of these social divisions.  Therefore readers, along with Nick Carraway, side with Jay Gatsby who personifies tenuous wealth and status and represents movement between classes, while viewers of ‘The Glory’ are encouraged to approve of the actions of Ha Do-yeong, who represents old, established money and power, and personifies an elite sanitized from contact with other classes.

STYLISTIC SIMILARITIES or NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES: 

1. Multiple POVs

Both texts use multiple points of view, particularly when describing or revealing dramatic events. In ‘The Glory’ a key incident is the murder of Son Myeong-o. In episode 10 viewers see Myeong-o’s conversation with Park Yeon-jin and his ‘death’ from Yeon-jin’s perspective: her initial shock as she changes clothes, flees the scene then rings her friend the police chief. This reinforces the viewers’ understanding that Yeon-jin is solely responsible for Myeong-o’s death. It isn’t until the final episode that viewers witness Myeong-o’s death from the view of Kim Gyeong-ran, who is in fact his real killer. 

The Great Gatsby too offers points of views other than the narrator’s. In chapter 4 there is an extended section in Jordan Baker’s voice, witnessing in first person Daisy’s pre-wedding jitters (pp.72-76). 

George Wilson’s movements on the day of his suicide “were afterward traced” (p.152) by police and witnesses who are described as “boys who had seen a man ‘acting sort of crazy’, and motorists” (p.152). In the opening of chapter 9 there are references to Wilson being a “madman [which] set the key for the newspaper reports” and “testimony at the inquest” (p.155)  which gives an alternate interpretation of Wilson’s behaviour, coloured by Catherine’s loyal dishonesty to protect the reputation of her dead sister, and thus lays the entire blame for the deaths of Wilson and Gatsby at George Wilson’s feet. This technique gives readers an impression of a web of lies being generated to protect the wealthy at the cost of those ‘beneath’ them. 

• Non-Linear Narratives:

Both texts feature disrupted narrative lines which result in multiple versions of key events gradually being combined until a complete picture is revealed. In ‘The Glory’ this allows for viewers to be given only part of the story at a time, deepening tension and allowing for cliff-hangers at the end of episodes, as well as enabling creators to develop character depth, thus keeping viewers interested and invested in the drama. The ‘truth’ is only discovered when all points of views are exposed, building tension towards the final climactic reveal. 

The best example of this is the death of Yoon So-hee, the first known victim of the five school bullies. Viewers see many versions of her death. In episode 9, we see Yeon-jin playing with a lighter and the material on So-hee’s clothing catching fire; later in the same episode, So-hee is pushed by Yeon-jin and falls backwards off the rooftop. In episode 12 her body is shown lying in the snow. It isn’t until episode 14 that the lead-up to the death is revealed, in a flashback to an evening when So-hee is seen wearing clothes similar to the ones Yeon-jin is wearing – filmed by Sa-ra who 18 years later will leak it to the press. The narrative then jumps back to the night of So-hee’s death, when Yeon-jin is slapping So-hee on a rooftop, insisting she strip naked immediately. Later in that same episode, viewers see the victim’s covered body in the snow as police find the lighter, which in 18 years will be tested for DNA. Also in episode14 we return to the confrontation between the bully and her victim, when So-hee tells Yeon-jin “I’m not afraid of you anymore.” It is at this point that the focus shifts to Dong-eun, who hears the body fall then hears Yeon-jin’s distinctive phone tone. In the following episode Yeon-jin explains to her husband that the death of So-hee was an accident as “she slipped” (ep15). It is only at this point that viewers have a complete picture of what occurred that night.

In The Great Gatsby disrupted narrative lines complicate readers’ understanding of major events, with multiple versions gradually added until a complete picture is revealed. The deaths of Myrtle and of Gatsby are prime examples. The hit and run death of Myrtle Wilson is first hinted at when Nick notes that “we drove on toward death” (p.129). The next sentence refers to “the inquest” of either Myrtle, George or Gatsby. The narrative then shift back to the beginning of the day of the first death and Michaelis’ interactions with a jealous and suspicious George. After a gap of a few hours, it is “a little after seven” (p.130) when Myrtle frees herself from the room George had locked her in, then challenges her “dirty little coward” of a husband. In this, the first telling of the tale, readers are told “a moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting – before he [i.e. Michaelis] could move from his door the business was over” (p.130). On the following page Myrtle’s dreadful injuries are described. It isn’t until page 137 that Gatsby is able to describe events from his perspective, which is when Nick guesses that it was Daisy who was driving the vehicle at the time.

In chapter 8 Gatsby’s murder takes place, and again the narrative takes a non-linear form. Nick and Gatsby say their final goodbyes on page 146, Jay to make use of his pool and Nick to go to work. By noon Nick is in the city, unable to phone through to Gatsby (p.148).  Fitzgerald has Nick helpfully noting that “Now I want to go back a little and tell what happened at the garage after we left there the night before” on page 148. The events leading up to George Wilson’s murder of Gatsby and his suicide are then described chronologically.  On page 153 readers are told it is “two o’clock” in the afternoon, when Gatsby heads to his pool; while his butler waits for a phone call “until four o’clock – until long after there was anyone to give it to if it came”. On page 154 Nick finds the bodies of both Gatsby and Wilson. It isn’t until page 169 – in the final few pages of the novel – readers learn how Wilson knew to target Gatsby, when Tom defiantly says to Nick, “I told him the truth” (p.169). Skilful use of disrupted narrative lines can increase tension and deepen readers’ engagement.