Impersonality in The Great Gatsby
Most important line in the novel: “In any case…it was just personal.”
James Gatz loses the world of the “personal” when he becomes Jay Gatsby and
springs “from his Platonic conception of himself.” He is a product of philosophical
idealism. That’s why the story can’t be merely a critique of a “meretricious”
American dream, but as a critique of dreams more generally, which always involve
alternations between the seductive (dream-state) and the pathetic (reality), which is
precisely the reaction that we have to Gatsby as readers.
“temporarily”! in page 2, “closed out” interest…(Nick returns to dream-state as
protector of Gatsby’s dream)
Gatsby’s vitality is “the colossal vitality of his illusion” (that’s why he’s “cold” [vs.
Tom’s “hot”], he’s dead to the world of the personal), which is where Myrtle Wilson
comes into play: her “vitality” is rooted in her “sensuous” flesh (at the bottom of the
same page, there’s mention of her nerves giving root to her vitality). Structurally
Gatsby and Myrtle are parallel: both attempt to ascend to the upper class by using
one side of the Tom-Daisy couple as a platform. That is why Nick can say that
“Gatsby turned out all right in the end”. Because he is the preserver of Gatsby’s
dream. Gatz dies but Gatsby survives (precisely in the following narrative), and
Gatsby does not “close out [Nick’s] interest in the abortive sorrows and shortwinded elations” of men because Gatsby is a representative of pure dream, and Nick
(retreating back to the Midwest goes back to Idealism—retreats from experience).
There are structural similarities that compare Gatsby to Myrtle (take the fact that
Gatsby looks down on his parties while Myrtle looks to the pages of the Town Tattle
to determine if they have “made it” and the fact that Gatsby and Myrtle both have
this dream of degraded French aristocracy—Gatsby’s “Hotel de Ville” and Myrtle’s
“Versailles”). But Myrtle exists on the personal level while Gatsby exists on the level
of ideas. Hence Myrtle is deeply hurt and offended by the presence of Daisy. When
this happens Tom breaks her nose (involves her body) and she bleeds into the copy
of the Town Tattle, desperate to preserve the tapestry scenes of Versailles. Just like
when she bleeds into the ash of the Valley of Ashes—the idea is that her blood is
inherently commingled with a social order that is static. But Gatsby represents
something different. There would never be a description of his “left breast” torn off
by the person that he was trying to displace. It is even significant that Daisy kills
Myrtle (personal) whereas Tom has Wilson kill Gatz/sby (impersonal). He is
disembodied compared to Myrtle but also as compared to Tom (who, as we
mentioned earlier was “hot” and also has this “cruel” football body). Gatsby is
disembodied by his house, his car, his florid shirts, above all, by his story and the
trinkets and labels (Oxford, Montenegro, etc.). But back to the point of comparison
with Myrtle, the predicate of “personal” in Gatsby’s statement to Nick, is “love.”
Ultimately “love” requires the “personal” and that is precisely where Gatsby’s
Manichean split is problematic. Myrtle is doomed by a lack of ambition. She doesn’t
think “love” is required to win Tom and thus social status (Meyer Wolfsheim is even
more exemplary: he turns out all right because he desires money and no social
status). Gatsby is doomed by an excess of ambition. His ideal of love is cosmic rather
than personal. It is such that he can’t fill his ideal of love with a self capable of
performing the “personal” tasks of intimacy. This is part of the title: where is the self
in Gatsby? [“The Great Houdini” etc.?]


So this seems a critique of Idealism generally. Or if not a critique, at least a
lament over the punitive aspect of dreams and dreaming.
The “past” that we are “borne back” into is history/material.
It may be that Gatsby needs Daisy precisely the dreamworld is empty and is
Hegelian in that one needs another in order to achieve self-recognition. But
dreamworlds are infinitely particular (Except that Gatsby’s is hackneyed,
according to Nick). So Daisy can’t enter the dreamworld through the
particular. Because Gatsby is not a person and doesn’t have any
particularities.
Nick Carraway get’s “carr”-ied “away” by Gatsby’s dream. Hence the erasure
of the chalk with the brick on the final page.