The Massachusetts Review, Inc.
The Greatness of "Gatsby"
Author(s): Charles Thomas Samuels
Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Autumn, 1966), pp. 783-794
Published by: The Massachusetts Review, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25087514
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Thomas
Charles
Great
The
Fitzgerald,
and
a sort
of
wrote
Mencken
began.
he complained
in which
. . ." In
anecdote.
was
excellence
Gatsby's
carping
of "Gatsby"
Greatness
The
the
Samuels
seen, but soon
immediately
"a most
that "the central
a characteristic
of
blend
to
letter"
enthusiastic
story was
trivial
temer
modesty,
ity, and odd spelling, Fitzgerald
replied: "Without making any invidious
and
A
between
Class C, if my novel is an anecdote
Class
comparisons
so isThe Brothers Karamazoff."
Nevertheless,
point and agreed that it
Fitzgerald
granted Mencken's
to becloud the relationship between Gatsby
and
had been a mistake
reunion
Yet
Fitz
death.
time
of
their
until
the
from
Gatsby's
Daisy
that relationship
gerald's error was his triumph. Had he dramatized
could be no fulfillment of
he would have been validating a sham. There
shows all that happens or could have
Gatsby's tragic dream. Fitzgerald
happened: Daisy joyfully crying into Gatsby's shirts; Gatsby realizing, at
failure in
last, that her siren's voice was merely full of money; Daisy's
and
the hotel room and in the accident; Myrtle's
body
mangled
Gatsby's
of a cluster
on
Fitzgerald
has
balance
the
of
his
gave
poor
from
its "accidental
always
Fitzgerald's
son of a
has
bitch."
than
course"
their
his
of
appraisal
and Dorothy
grave
sounded
However
is not
the work
fiasco?perhaps
more
critics
marred
clared at Gatsby's
over
turned
float,
the
by
"touch
leaves."
a flat
in
the
some
the
chorus
the man's
thought.
de
Owl-eyes
of
im
such
so affectingly
work,
as we
and
What
Parker
note
great
so
great
due,
work.
repeated
"the
praise:
a
life was
we
Can
ignore
as he admitted.
the life in the writing?
is Gatsby,
Surely Fitzgerald
What
else isNick but a shield against the blinding rays of too easy, too
If Fitzgerald was, in the words of an early and
complete resemblance?
sensitive critic, "the Authority
of Failure," can he ever have succeeded?
Isn't
there
some
softness
at
the heart
of his
masterpiece
in his life?the
the glaring sentimentalism
notoriously,
wife? Could so bad a risk be a great writer?
just
as
liquor,
there
was,
the mad
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The Massachusetts
We
not
have
been
to
willing
Review
leave
his
life
alone.
current
The
monu
ment
in Fitzgerald
studies, The Far Side of Paradisey contains page
after page of Scott and Zelda in Paris and New York but
only eight on
art
the
in Gats
therapy.
sees
It
by.
The
novel's
as
Nick
a
structural
to
is reduced
meaning
device
a neat
an
and
author's
between
dichotomy
are told that the book's relevance was limited
We
by
total
to romantic ideals and that the
commitment
Fitzgerald's
Eyes of
are merely an accidental
Dr. Eckleburg
gift from Max Perkins' pre
East
and West.
mature
dust
Since
tween East
criticism
that
and West
of
scholarship.
has
shot nearer
criticism
life
most
at
seems,
last,
is a
book
successful
the mark.
neat
the
and
recognized;
has been qualified
of American
Fitzgerald's
uses
the
biography,
at least,
been,
has
importance
are
Such
jacket.
Mizener's
so that the novel's
clear.
We
Nick's
be
dichotomy
profound
to
need
now
show
novel.
great
2
Its fundamental achievement
is a triumph of language.
I do not speak merely of the "flowers,"
the famous passages: Nick's
of
the
toward
description
green light on Daisy's dock,
Gatsby yearning
remark
that
the
love
Buchanans'
is
Gatsby's
"only personal," the book's
last page. Throughout,
The Great Gatsby has the precision and splendor
of
a
lyric
poem,
Fitzgerald's
itself.
yet
other
This
Among
celebration
things,
of
literary
achievement?its
great
Nick. With
management
concentration
of
effect.
he
describes
the
critics
have
is?as
persona
than
that:
art
Gatsby
is inseparable
of point
he
is a character
Nick
more
describes
act
been
engaged
from
of
obtained more
and
than
the
the
its
power
novel's
the
triumphs.
celebrate
of
art.
second
creation
of
than objectivity
and
view,
the
experience
of
consequences
seeing?a
in a
significant
of
language
is about
Great
his persona, Fitzgerald
he witnesses;
The
is to have made
in this novel
The
one
is merely
prose
well-wrought
distinction
character,
telling
but he
which
about
it.
is more
action.
iswriting a book. He is recording Gatsby's experience ; in the act
of recording Gatsby's experience he discovers himself.
his prose has all along been creating for us Gatsby's
"ro
Though
mantic readiness," almost until the very end Nick insists that he deplores
is not a reasoned judgment.
Gatsby's "appalling sentimentality." This
Nick disapproves because he cannot yet affirm. He is a Jamesian specta
ill-suited to profound engagement
of life.
tor, a fastidious intelligence
But writing does profoundly engage life. In writing about Gatsby, Nick
alters his attitude toward his subject and ultimately toward his own life.
Nick
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The Greatness
of "Gatsby
As his book nears completion his identification with Gatsby grows. His
final affirmation is his sympathetic understanding
of Gatsby and the book
which gives his sympathy form: both are a celebration of life; each is
a gift of
language. This refinement on James's use of the persona might
be
cause
the
first
of Eliot's
which
advance
assertion
that
the American
Great
The
novel
had
made
Gatsby
since
the
represented
James.
In Nick's opening words we find an uncompleted
personality. There
are contradictions and perplexities which (when we first read the
passage)
are easily ignored, because of the characteristic suavity of his prose. He
begins the chronicle, whose purpose is an act of judgment and whose
title is an evaluation, by declaring an inclination "to reserve all judg
ments." The words are scarcely digested when we find him judging:
to detect
to this
is quick
and attach
itself
mind
quality
it appears
in a normal
and so it came
that
about
person,
a
accused
of being
because
I was
lege I was
unjustly
politician,
privy
men.
secret griefs
of wild,
unknown
The
abnormal
when
ance]
tone
The
combination
is unmistakable?a
of
moral
censure,
[toler
in col
to
the
self-pro
tectiveness, and final saving sympathy that marks Nick as an outsider
who is nonetheless drawn to the life he is afraid to enter. So when he
tells us a little later in the passage that "Reserving
is a
judgments
matter
of infinite hope," we know that this and not the noblesse
oblige he earlier advanced explains his fear of judging. Nick cannot help
judging, but he fears a world in which he is constantly beset by objects
worthy of rejection. He is "a little afraid of missing something" ; that is
why
he
the
hears
in Daisy's
promise
voice,
entertains
half-heartedly
the
idea of loving Jordan Baker, and becomes involved with
the infinite
who represented everything
for which
hope of Jay Gatsby?"Gatsby,
[Nick had] an unaffected scorn."
When
Nick
that
Gatsby
chantment
begins
the book he feels the same ambivalence
characterizes
his
attitude
toward
life:
a
simultaneous
toward
en
and revulsion which
places him "within and without." When
he has finished, he has become united with Gatsby,
and he judges
to
he
has
admire
;
something
Gatsby great. Finally
contemplating Gatsby
redeems him from the "foul dust [which had] temporarily closed out
[his] interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded dations of men."
The economy with which Fitzgerald presents those sorrows and short
winded
Great
dations
Gatsby
symbols while
is another
of the book's major achievements.
In The
to develop a story by means
contrived
of
Fitzgerald
at the same time investing those symbols with vivid
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The Massachusetts
actuality.
the wild
seems
thing
in the book
Everything
to
mansion
to
is symbolic,
aimless
and
so "true
Review
life"
gives
continue
critics
ersatz
from Gatsby's
he
which
parties
some
that
there,
to
see
every
yet
that novel
is about the
primarily as a recreation of the 20's. The Great Gatsby
or that The
is about whaling
20's only in the sense that Moby Dick
the liveliness of Fitz
Scarlet Letter is about Puritan Boston. Comparing
book
with
better
Hawthorne's
with
Melville's
or,
still,
gerald's
(which
resembles
its
structure
dramatic
tight
and
a
have
you
concentration),
good indication of the peculiar distinction in Fitzgerald's work.
Of the novel's symbols, only the setting exists without
regard to
to
The
Great
verisimilitude, purely
project meaning.
Gatsby has four
and their ultra-tradi
locales: East Egg, home of the rich Buchanans
tional Georgian Colonial mansion; West
Egg where the once-rich and
the parvenus live and where Gatsby
apes the splendor of the Old
the
of
the
and New York, where Nick
wasteland
man;
World;
average
are
at
the
East and West
Trust."
labors, ironically,
"Probity
Egg
at
flat
"crushed
the
contact
and dreamer which
of
"universe
end";
ineffable
when
of
collision
dream
tries to establish
Gatsby
the
through
gaudiness"
the
represent
they
is dramatized
crass
materials
the
of
his
real
is a valley of ashes in which George Wilson
wasteland
dis
penses gasoline to the irresponsible drivers from East and West
Egg,
eventually yielding his wife to their casual lust and cowardly violence.
a sterile, immoral
world
represents
iconographically
Fitzgerald's
society. Over this world brood the blind eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg:
world. The
the sign
for an oculist's
a blindness
can
which
to which
cheat.
value
They
are
a
These
monstrous
eyes
the
eyes
as Wilson
of God,
of
promise
light on her dock, which
are
Like
corrected.
attached,
sign
false
never
was
which
be
be
might
not
the
vertisement?like
green
business
never
Daisy's
of
the
opened,
symbol
in the book
other
objects
are
a
of Dr.
Eckleburg
thinks,
but
only
voice,
moneyed
an
ad
or
the
is invisible in the mist.
the
novel's
major
symbol.
The
book's
chief
are blind, and they behave blindly. Gatsby
does not see
and
thinks
vicious
she
will
reward her
Daisy, deluded,
Daisy's
emptiness,
an
to
he
from
her
tries
lover until
force
affirmation she is
gold-hatted
characters
too weak
movement"
to make. Tom
he
breaks
is blind to his hypocrisy;
Myrtle's
nose
for
daring
with
to mention
"a short deft
the
name
she is helping him to deceive. Before her death, Myrtle
for
mistakes Jordan for Daisy. Just as she had always mistaken Tom
salvation from the ash-heap, she blindly rushes for his car in her need
to escape her lately informed husband, and is struck down. Moreover,
of the wife
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The Greatness
of "Gatsby"
Daisy is driving the car ; and the man with her isGatsby, not Tom. The
final act of blindness is specifically associated with Dr. Eckleburg's
eyes.
sees them as a sign of righteous judgment and righteously pro
Wilson
is
ceeds to work God's judgment on earth. He kills Gatsby, but Gatsby
the
man.
wrong
the
In
whole
novel,
sees.
Nick
only
And
his
vision
comes slowly, in the act of writing the book.
the book is, as I have said, an act of judgment.
The act of writing
Nick wants to know why Gatsby "turned out all right in the end,"
despite all the phoniness and crime which fill his story, and why Gatsby
was the only one who turned out all right. For, in writing
about the
near
of
and
the
Nick
discovers
others,
despair.
ubiquity
folly
of life
The
novel's people are exemplary types of the debasement
the
inner
and
lack
which is Fitzgerald's
subject. Daisy, Tom,
Jordan
resources
to
what
enjoy
their
can
wealth
them.
give
the
show
They
life palls.
the pinnacle,
dream. At
peculiar folly of the American
to
seems
sees
be
her
she
first
unreal.
When
Nick
is
almost
floating
Daisy
inmidair. Her famous protestation of grief ("I'm sophisticated. God, I'm
is accompanied
sophisticated")
an
by
"absolute
smirk."
Her
extravagant
love for Gatsby is a sham, less real than the unhappy but fleshly bond
with Tom which finally turns them into "conspirators." Her beauty is a
snare. Like Tom's physical prowess, it neither pleases her nor insures her
and both for "stale
forsakes Daisy for Myrtle
pleasure in others. Tom
ideas."
Jordan's
act
balancing
is a
like
trick;
her
precarious lie. They are all rich and beautiful?and
and Gatsby.
toward them are Myrtle
Yearning
desires
gleaming
"the
youth
. . . above
and
the
mystery
hot
that
wealth
struggles
of
sporting
unhappy.
Like Gatsby, Myrtle
imprisons
the
a
reputation,
poor."
and
. .
preserves.
Unlike
him,
her
"panting vitality" iswholly physical, merely pathetic; whereas Gatsby's
ismaimed and victimized by Daisy's
quest is spiritual and tragic. Myrtle
selfish fear of injury (Daisy could have crashed into another car but, at
the last minute,
loses heart and runs Myrtle
down) ; Gatsby's death is
and he suffers voluntarily.
but the final stage of disillusionment,
Gatsby
is, of
course,
one
of
the major
achievements
I have
been
not
see little of him and scarcely ever hear him speak, his
ing. Although
presence is continually with us; and he exists, as characters in fiction
seldom do, as a life force. He recalls the everlasting yea of Carlyle, as
well as the metaphysical rebellion of Camus. His "heightened sensitivity to
the promise of life" is but one half of his energy; the other being a pas
we
sionate denial of life's limitations. Gatsby's devotion to Daisy is an im
on the human condition. His passion would defy time and
plicit assault
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The Massachusetts
to make
decay
His
present.
the
glorious
is
passion
Review
moment
first
of wonder,
even
supra-sexual,
which
is past,
In
super-personal.
eternally
famous
his
to Nick about Daisy's
love for Tom,
he is making
two asser
tions: that the "things between Daisy and Tom
Tom
[which
insists]
he'll never know" are merely mundane
and that the Daisy which he
loves is not the Daisy which Tom
had carried down from the Punch
Bowl but the Daisy who "blossomed for him like a flower," incarnating
his dream, the moment he kissed her. Gatsby's love for life is finally an
indictment of the life he loves. Life does not reward such devotion, nor,
for that reason, does it deserve it. Gatsby is great for having paid life the
compliment of believing its promise.
When
Hamlet
dies amidst the carnage of his bloody quest for
justice, he takes with him the promise that seeming will coincide with
remark
and
that man
the hope
being
remnant
of the universe.
When
can
a
strike
Ahab
blow
for
a victim
dies
truth
to his
a
save
and
own
harpoon,
he kills the promise that man may know his life and the hope that
knowledge will absolve him. When
Gatsby dies, more innocently than
a
he lacks utterly
their taste for
"criminal,"
they (since, though
he
destruction),
certainly
precious,
can ever
that desire
be
more
promise
inclusive
more
and
poignant
perhaps
the
theirs:
kills
Gatsby
than
that
which
more
promise
gratified.
to the story of Gatsby
In addition
America
a
kills
story
and
suggests
and Daisy
which
and
finds
adum
tale: a
of the
bration in Nick's
last words, The Great Gatsby
tells another
tale of the blindness of desire and of the rock-like indifference
universe.
formerly
which
lives
Nothing
expressed
animates
to
up
your
by Fitzgerald's
Fitzgerald's
of
image
it. This
In
masterpiece.
the
romantic
agony,
is the major
beloved Keats,
uneven
of
the parable
its marvelous
novel
theme
im
which
clearly articulated what had al
mediately
preceded Gatsbyy Fitzgerald
ways been his tragic sense of life. The epigraph to The Beautiful and the
"written" by its hero, dourly observes that "the Victor belongs
Damnedy
to the spoils." Midway
in the fable which exemplifies this sad moral,
its
author,
. . . desire
room.
It
to grasp
you've
just
stops
it?but
got
the
cries
Patch,
Anthony
cheats
It's
you.
and
gilds
we
when
some
inconsequential
do
out:
like
a sunbeam
here
skipping
object,
inconsequential
moves
on
the sunbeam
part,
but
the
glitter
and
and we
there
poor
to
something
that made
you
about
fools
else,
want
it
gone.
Anthony's
Great
Gatsbyys
observation
characters
is the donn?e
respond
in
one
of Fitzgerald's
of
three
ways
fiction.
to
this
a
try
and
The
un
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is
The Greatness
fortunate
truth.
The
of "Gatsby9
Buchanans
and
avoid
Jordan
attachments
deep
(Daisy thinks to make Nick fall in love with Jordan by accidentally
locking them in linen closets), and drift "unrestfully wherever
people
rich together." Wilson
and Nick
escape the
played polo and were
phantom of desire by not desiring. Myrtle,
stupidly, and Gatsby,
grandly,
modus
take
life's
gambit,
of these
all
vwendiy
are
people
and
cheated,
are
unhappy.
Whatever
destroyed.
their
is a tragedy of the moral sense. Moby Dick
Hamlet
is a tragedy of
the intelligence. The Great Gatsby is a tragedy of the will.
the barrenness
Intensity of will makes Gatsby a great man. Despite
of his beginnings, despite the evil world of Dan Cody which was his
first reward, despite Daisy's
selfish denial and final treason, Gatsby
believes in the promise of life. He will believe?this
is his tragedy and vin
that life cannot repay his devotion.
his knowledge
dication?despite
a
that
is
knows
desire
cheat, yet he persists in his aspirations?
Gatsby
I do not think that this fact has been properly appreciated.
In the
forms a
passage which ends the sixth chapter and which
magnificent
climactic stage in Nick's
of Gatsby,
Nick
comprehension
growing
first kisses the girl of his dreams.
imagines the scene in which Gatsby
The
and
night is suitably bathed in moonlight.
(In The Beautiful
Damned
concludes
Fitzgerald
desire by remarking
the bad complexion
drowsy
The
street.").
passion. There
equinox
that
with
the blocks
entire
seems
universe
is "a stir and bustle
its
of
"
sidewalks
the trees?he
place above
he could
suck on the pap
could
nature
the
of
life,
to
down
gulp
Gatsby
a ladder
it, if he
the
in
participate
the stars;"
Then
formed
really
climb
to
among
excitement."
mysterious
the
on
rumination
Anthony's
of
how "the moon, at its perennial labor of covering
of the world,
showered its illicit honey over the
climbed
Gatsby's
is the
there
imagines
and mounted
alone,
and
milk
incomparable
to a secret
once
there
of wonder.
If Gatsby
remained unattached,
if he had not grown up to adult
he
have
the
could
sexuality,
gained
mystical ecstasy which his imagina
tion sought. "He knew that when he kissed [Daisy],
and forever wed
his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never
this knowledge, Gatsby
romp again like the mind of God." Despite
chooses life. He hesitates, "listening
for a moment
longer to the
that
tuning-fork
innocent,
pre-sexual,
contact with
Like God,
had
struck
a
upon
other-worldliness
star."
he
Finally,
which
alone
renounces
brings
the
one
in
ideality to marry the temporal, perishable, sexual world.
he renounces unlimited promise for love of humanity. He
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The Massachusetts
the
permits
"milk
comprehends
When
he
become
time
arm
Gatsby's,
through
book's
of wonder
the clock
she
purchased
since
the
Nick
page,
machine.
only for her,
in
"an
down. When
enchantment
to
desire
Gatsby's
reached
has
is running
loses
he
Moreover,
responsive
But
the
from
ashes.
second
wonderfully
source
and
of knowledge.
clock.
the
pitch of intensity,"
conceivable
her
to
is weaned
cash,
which Gatsby
machine?a
return
and
sex,
the
On
a
he
of
in the fullness
subsequent
to a
seismograph,
another
moment
that
the world
comes to the mansion
Daisy
confound
into
ordeal.
Gatsby
has
puts
ismade
his
from
born
and
choice
Gatsby's
compares
and
incarnation,
of wonder"
Review
of
Daisy
distance,
and Nick notes that her green light is no longer a star to Gatsby but
the novel, Nick hears
merely "a green light on a dock." Throughout
in
it
that
full only of money.
is
realizes
promise
Daisy's voice; Gatsby
he
and
knows
the
is
his fervent pas
desperate game
playing,
Gatsby
is elegant, a
sion is controlled by form (for all his vulgarity, Gatsby
in a
figure
He
ritual).
in short,
represents,
a
formed
to
attempt
reality, to wrest for the will a hitherto impossible victory. Gatsby
a kind of artist; but whereas Nick works with words, Gatsby
with
is the more
life. Life
reorder
is also
works
recalcitrant.
a special discipline, Gatsby ignores what he knows in order
Through
to pursue his quest. Only
before he dies can he understand
that "he
"
at
then
he
had lost the old warm world;
will
look
the
sky "through
only
a rose is and how
frightening leaves" and see "what a grotesque thing
raw
the
was
sunlight
upon
the
created
scarcely
grass."
the greater discipline of art, Nick
is able to see the real
Through
can
see Gatsby's
the
of
and
affirm
life.
He
landscape
glory
vulgarity
as well
as
his
Words
greatness.
save
Nick
from
Gatsby's
catastrophe
but Gatsby gives Nick
for they hold life at bay and permit contemplation,
a life worth celebrating
in language and therefore the will to write as
well as the will to live.
I started. Nick. Nick and Gatsby.
Which
brings me back where
are
the
Their
novel's
follow Nick's
subject.
relationship. We
They
in
development
the
is
novel?Gatsby
static?and
we
reach
the
first
the first chapter,
stage in his growth when he meets Gatsby. Writing
Nick is still a divided, deluded man. He writes not out of knowledge pos
sessed,
This,
conclusions
more
even
reached,
than
the
but
superb
in an
attempt
prose,
gives
to know
the
book
and
its air
to
of
conclude.
happen
ing now. Though Nick tells us he reserves judgments, though he brags
about his tolerance, he is quickly revolted by Tom
Buchanan.
Before
Tom
even
speaks,
Nick
recalls
that
"there
were
men
at New
Haven
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The Greatness
of "Gatsby"
Nick comes ultimately to un
had hated [Tom's]
guts." Though
he
is
moral
derstand Daisy's
initially taken in. He sees her in
squalor,
who
ity
to
take
is naive.
He
pretension
in
he
but
sincerity,
ask him
the
a
from
The
to
of
of
change
sophistication
flee
from
His
house,
reaction
nest
her
to
East
its middle
can
he
that,
seeing
attain
with
hauteur"
"impressive
After
in arms,
and
baby
to Buchanan's
steril
class
scenes of ladies swinging
tapestried with
Versailles,
costume).
he came
the
love
Tom's
furniture
(Myrtle's
gardens
from
away
wants
run
Tom.
to
her
expects
her
has
begun
which
results
drunk.
get
only
to
produce
inner
in
Nick meets Gatsby,
everything changes. Gatsby
deadening. When
volves him in fife. Gatsby wins his admiration. Gatsby dies, and Nick lives.
is contrasted with Daisy. Daisy's voice is cal
From the first, Gatsby
culated to make you lean toward her. Her grief is "a trick of some sort
to
a
exact
emotion."
contributory
world
external
the whole
an irresistible prejudice
is, Gatsby nevertheless brings
He fails with Daisy; but, by
bringing life to Nick. When
with
the womb
of his
purposeless
Gatsby
an
for
instant,
to
"faced?or
seemed
then
concentrated
and
face?
on
you
in your favor." Totally
self-absorbed as he
life to others. He is the incarnating God.
the way and without plan, he succeeds in
once Gatsby
is "delivered
from
[to Nick]
Nick
splendor,"
finds
a raison
acetre.
he had been denying life.
Nick had not been reserving judgment;
He came East to flee home and the girl who was to help him settle
to find
bored him. Unable
down there. After the war, the Mid-West
a place where he belongs, he comes East to find a new life, but finds
a wasteland.
only
at
ably,
the
end
Gatsby
of the
saves
book
But
before
I am
desires,
back
novel,
acceptance Nick
Nick
slow-thinking
that
and I knew
withdrawal,
cynical
once more;
home
a characteristic
and
full
first
I had
of
interior
the truth.
ex
Baker,
Jordan
bit of self-justification:
rules
to get
myself
because
to accept
enables Nick
courts
suit
and,
not
has to tell himself
half-heartedly
his indecisiveness with
plaining
...
that final
the
from
goes
it is home. Gatsby
home is better but because
his own imperfect life.
Throughout
him
Nick
that
act
definitely
as brakes
out
of
that
on
my
tangle
home.
when Jordan calls Nick after Myrtle's
death, he refuses to
However,
see her because he is more interested in Gatsby than in the woman he
thinks he might love. Before the end of the book Jordan tells Nick that
he never loved her and that his whole treatment of her had been, de
spite
his protestations,
dishonest.
Tauntingly,
she
accuses
him
:
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The Massachusetts
Review
. . I
an honest,
rather
you were
thought
straightforward
secret
your
pride."
"I'm
too old
"I'm
five
thirty,"
years
[Nick
replies]
call it honor."
".
I
person.
thought
it was
to
lie
to
and
myself
is the measure of Nick's growth. Discovering
in the act of
Gatsby
about
him, Nick discovers that he had deluded himself, that he
writing
had been dishonest, and that he had better go back and start all over.
Like everything
else in this great novel, Nick's
is
spiritual growth
rather
than
In
the
discussed.
the
last chapter
symbolically represented
the
stages in his identification with Gatsby are clearly depicted. After
murder, Nick stands by Gatsby simply because "no one else was inter
This
I mean,
ested?interested,
some
has
everyone
with
vague
that
at
right
intense
the
But
to which
interest
personal
end."
when
the
refuse
others
to come
to Gatsby's
scornful
funeral, Nick begins to feel "defiance,
between
Gatsby and me against them all." When
solidarity
Gatsby's
father arrives, Nick admits that he and Gatsby "were close friends." In
the famous last scene Nick affirms Gatsby's greatness by seeing him as
the prototype
This
more
of
the
than
beautiful
who
dreamers
been
has
the new
established
shows the greatness
famous passage
world.
of Gatsby.
It is richer
and
remarked.
were
now
closed
and there were
any
hardly
across
of a ferryboat
And
the Sound.
moving
glow
rose higher
to melt
the inessential
houses
away until
began
gradu
aware
I became
of
once
the old
that flowered
island here
for Dutch
of
Most
the
lights
except
as the moon
ally
sailors'
trees
to the
ment
made
last and
must
breast
green
of
for
way
Gatsby's
all human
of
greatest
have
held
into an aesthetic
pelled
to face for the last time
ity for wonder.
as I
And
places
shadowy,
fresh,
eyes?a
that had
man
shore
big
the
his
breath
the
new
house,
world.
had
once
Its
vanished
pandered
for a transitory
of this continent,
presence
nor desired,
neither
understood
dreams;
in the
he
contemplation
in history
with
something
commensurate
the
trees,
in whispers
mo
enchanted
to his
com
face
capac
on
the old,
of
unknown
I thought
world,
brooding
out the green
he first picked
light at the end of Daisy's
a
come
to this blue
must
and his dream
have
lawn,
long way
so close that he could
to grasp
not
seemed
fail
it.
He
did
know
that it
hardly
was
somewhere
back
in that vast
behind
the
him,
already
obscurity
beyond
on under
of the republic
the dark fields
rolled
the night.
city, where
sat
wonder
Gatsby's
had
dock. He
there
when
believed
Gatsby
us.
recedes
before
run faster,
stretch
So we beat on,
in
the
It eluded
out
boats
our
green
us
arms
against
the orgiastic
future
that
light,
but that's no matter?tomorrow
then,
. . .And
one fine
farther.
morning?
back ceaselessly
the current,
borne
year
by
we
year
will
into
the
past.
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The Greatness
final vision carefully parallels his other sympathetic vision of
in chapter six. Taken
combine all of
together they figuratively
Nick's
Gatsby
the
of "Gatsby
novel's
themes.
Gatsby
and
pass
Daisy
beyond
the
trees
into
a moon
sees through the "inessential"
lit scene where wonder
lurked ; Nick
world of Long Island to the trees which were cleared away to make a
place for that world. Like Gatsby who saw "the secret place above the
trees" where he could suck the pap of life, Nick sees the "green breast
to the Dutch
of the world" which "pandered in whispers"
sailors who
sailed to find the promised land of America. But Nick also sees that the
promised land had been a cheat. Its greenness became Daisy's green
light ; not the fecund green of the forest but the green of machines and
the money which buys them. Like the sailors, Gatsby tried to return to
the
source
of
life,
to
imbibe
at
wonder
its breast.
man
But
time
ages,
the secret place above the
goes on, and life is a slow dying. Renouncing
but daisies die. When
trees, Gatsby embraces the flower Daisy;
Gatsby
the sailors took the new world
loved Daisy he lost his dream; when
they began the degradation of America's promise; when God saw what
he had incarnated he went back to Heaven
leaving only a blind sign of
the business he would not now open. The past is our future. We
have
come to the end of possibility.
3
The theme of Fitzgerald's
novel ismore inclusive and more shocking
than we have known. Its subject is atrophy; the wasting
away of the
self as one grows into the world of sex and money and time ; the wasting
as
of America
away
it grows
from
to civilization,
wilderness
of
the
uni
verse as it grows by its impossible plan.
the novel reflects the disillusionment
and the failure of
Humanly,
so marked a feature of man's lot.
which
dreams
is
Culturally,
youthful
it dramatizes,
perhaps
more
cogently
than
any
other
American
novel,
the cause and cost of America's
identification with eternal beginnings.
the
it
suggests
Cosmically,
apocalyptic vision with which we have be
come
familiar
in
our
literature,
our
intellectuals,
and
our
to have painted
It is the novel's greatest achievement
ture with the brightest of colors. Never
has the dying
sweetly
or
so
newspapers.
this bleak pic
swan sung so
surely.
What
gives the book its vitality, these words about death which are
not dead (surely, in our time, at once the greatest and the most diffi
cult of literary effects) ? First, there is the style. In it, everything
is
to
be
sheer
a
refusal
sheer
about
by
audacity,
heightened;
tight-lipped
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The Massachusetts
sets
that
world
the
death
there
Then
edge
a gorgeous
is more
into
agony
who
is Nick,
the
Hemingway,
(what
brave,
is able to color the face of death,
to do), Fitzgerald
lacked the courage
to turn
on
teeth
one's
Review
dance.
than
a
just
clever
of
manipulation
we finish the last page we have no certainty that
point of view. When
Nick will escape the blind desire which drives the others, but we are sure
that he has, at least, seen life and glory. And that, surely, is no small
us
has made
for he
achievement,
see
it too.
there is the incredible tightness in plotting, characterization
Finally,
is one of
and detail. In Joyce's sense of the word, The Great Gatsby
the
novels
few
nuance,
; the
couch
stationary
are
there
scenes,
of meaning,
concentration
few
Jordan
and Daisy
overturned
auto
in one's memory:
long
In
language.
to
there are few books in any language with which
it. In haunting
compare
a
in our
written
and effect,
works
literary
the air on
through
floating
with
Owl-Eyes
so
live
which
climbing
slowly
out to proclaim that he does not know how it happened, that he doesn't
drive, and that he wasn't trying to drive; the director endlessly bending
to kiss the starlet at Gatsby's party, thrilling Daisy with arrested sexu
shirts; the scene in the hotel room
ality; Daisy crying into Gatsby's
where Daisy can only say that she "loved [Gatsby] too."
indeed
life,
Fitzgerald's
we
know
left
he
and
mad,
one
author
drank
unfinished,
of
equal
of
quantities
not very
gifts.
His
work
by
was
now,
liquor.
interesting
was
and
novel,
was the "authority
gent, too often frivolous. He
a
so
not
small
after all,
portion of reality. When
his
about
The
subject,
he
Great Gatsby
had
the
craft
is a novel
he
Moreover,
fragmentary,
to make
for which
a
He
wasteful.
in the pages of Esquire.
up in the full glare of publicity
cracked
His wife went
died
more
young,
trash
than
and
any
self-indul
frequently
of failure"; but that is,
he had learned enough
masterpiece
of
a writer might
it.
give his life.
794
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