An Analysis of ‘The Great Gatsby’, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
This is an essay I wrote a couple of years ago. The Great Gatsby remains, to this day, my favourite novel (even enough to warrant a tattoo of a quotation on my right arse cheek — don’t ask.) I hope you enjoy.
Set in 1920’s America, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tragic novel The Great Gatsby follows the journey of Jay Gatsby as he yearns to once again capture the heart of his long lost love, Daisy Buchanan. Having sacrificed five years of his life in the aim of winning Daisy back, it is clear from the outset that Gatsby is a hopeless romantic, which ultimately leads to the deterioration of his relationship with Daisy and tragically leads to his demise. Gatsby, a man from a humble background, is the embodiment of the novel’s theme — the American Dream — as he strives to impress Daisy with his self-made wealth. Through the use of narrative style and diction, we as readers can only watch in anticipation as Gatsby’s idealism and romanticism bring about the destruction of his relationship with Daisy and his own tragic downfall.
Fitzgerald makes us aware of the lengths Gatsby has and will go to in order to attract Daisy’s attention, which will ultimately lead to the corrosion of their relationship. From his stately mansion to his illegal bootlegging of prohibited alcohol, Gatsby’s entire life is one massive façade built up in a bid to secure Daisy’s heart. It seems there are no lengths he will not go to in order to recapture his sweetheart. Preoccupied with his futile attempts to meet Daisy, Gatsby even throws lavish parties in the hope that Daisy may be intrigued enough to stop by. Despite the efforts Gatsby goes to in his romantic quest, the reader cannot help but pity a man who has given up everything to achieve his goal. It becomes apparent that Gatsby has had to completely reinvent himself:
“His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people — his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God… So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.”
Indeed, it is deeply saddening to discover that Gatsby has felt it necessary to abandon his old self and even deny his real parents. It becomes necessary for the reader to acknowledge that Gatsby feels a deep seated inadequacy in himself. Originating from the West, and from a remarkably modest upbringing, Gatsby’s lowly financial status in the past was not good enough to entice Daisy into marriage. Fitzgerald’s repetition of ‘conception’ and ‘invent(ed)’ highlight the idea that the version of Gatsby to whom we are presented is no more than a projection, a carefully chosen persona and a fraud. However, we do not hold this against Gatsby thanks to Nick Carraway’s bias narration. Instead, we merely feel sympathy for a man who has done all he can to sin the heart of his true love. Gatsby’s new image overcompensates for his old self, as he now feels like ‘…a son of God’, suggesting he imagines himself other worldly and endowed with supernatural powers — but despite this façade, Daisy cannot truly forget the penniless man he once was, and this adds to the destruction of their relationship.
As well as Gatsby’s false persona, another flaw of his which brings about the corrosion of his relationship with Daisy is his idealism and his inability to face reality. Gatsby is fundamentally a dreamer. Although this could be interpreted as a positive character trait, in Gatsby’s case it is a weakness as he struggles to let go of his unrealistic dreams. Gatsby has had five long years to build up a perfect memory of Daisy. As is the tendency with memories, he recalls Daisy in an idealistic fashion — unsurprisingly, as a result of Gatsby’s unrealistic expectations, Daisy fails to match up to his hopes:
“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams — not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything.”
Fitzgerald leaves no doubt in the reader’s mind that this disappointment is not the fault of Daisy, but rather the inevitable shattering of Gatsby’s ‘illusion’. In the final, short, repetitive sentence above we understand that Gatsby’s dream will never be realised, even if he himself does not. Gatsby has imagined a whole life with Daisy — marriage, even children perhaps — so he struggles to come to terms with the fact that Daisy has moved on. When Gatsby ‘rather feebly’ asks of Daisy’s daughter, he talks in a bemused manner. Indeed, Gatsby has not factored in the idea of Daisy having moved on, let alone her having children with another man. As with many of the characters in The Great Gatsby, the protagonist is dissatisfied and disillusioned with what he discovers, and this brings about the destruction of his relationship with Daisy.
Gatsby’s idealism often leaves him clinging to the past for dreams of the future, and his refusal to accept that Daisy has moved on from their time in Louisville adds to the decay of his relationship with Daisy. The significance of the past is clarified in the conclusion of the novel:
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning — So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Nick returns to the significance of the past to dreams of the future, here represented by the green light. He focusses on the struggle of human beings to achieve their goals by both transcending and re-creating the past. Yet humans prove themselves unable to move beyond the past: in the metaphoric language used here, the current draws them backward as they row toward the green light. While they never lose their optimism, they expend all of their energy in pursuit of a goal that moves further and further away. This metaphor characterises both Gatsby and the American Dream itself, and as Gatsby is still beating on against the current, we find Daisy having moved on from their 1917 affair in Louisville, which ultimately brings about the deterioration of their relationship.
Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. Just as Americans have given America meaning through their dreams for their own lives, Gatsby instils Daisy with a kind of idealised perfection which she neither deserves nor possesses. Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American Dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its own object. Like 1920’s Americans in general, Gatsby longs to recreate a vanished past — his time in Louisville with Daisy — but is incapable of doing so. When his dream — and his relationship with Daisy — crumbles, all that is left for him to do is die, his life is meaningless, which helps the reader to understand the theme of the American Dream. Without the materialism of 1920’s Americans — often embodied by Daisy — the dream itself, would die.
