Great Gatsby Exegesis
I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. 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 – a phrase which, if it means anything, means just
that – and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, meretricious
beauty. 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. (Fitzgerald 98)
In his portrayal of Gatsby’s past, Fitzgerald uses diction to demonstrate the embracement of
individualism by American society during the 1920’s. Since individualism was the dominant
ideology of the 1920’s, Americans have always embraced the idea that individuals, not entities,
had the ultimate authority in deciding America’s course.
Since the responsibility for
determining one’s life lay with the individual, he had the opportunity to engage in any activity
he saw fit in order to become the person he wanted to be. For James Gatz, forming a new
identity was his brand of individuality. "To spring" and "conception" suggest that Gatsby
"created" himself, that he "conceived" an image of himself according to his Platonic ideal.
Fitzgerald complicates the issue since he doesn’t write that Gatsby sprang from a Platonic
conception of himself, but "from his Platonic conception of himself", as if this Platonic
conception, whatever it may be, belonged to Gatsby and we could somehow read Gatsby’s
mind and know exactly what it means for him. Gatsby concocted an idea to reinvent himself
and was able to, not because his of secretive nature but because American society embraced
individualism. The imaginative life is an integral part of the American spirit. Moreover, the
American imagination, as part of a greater individualistic ideal, is proleptic. Gatsby reinvents
himself with the notion that he will reap benefits in the future; thus, he knew the lifestyle he
wanted to lead and followed what he thought was the appropriate course. "Platonic
conception" is a strange formulation since on one hand, a "conception" is something which is
conceived, such as an embryo or a fetus, through sexual intercourse, while on the other hand
"Platonic" can suggest Platonic love, a kind of love in which sexual intercourse is absent. In this
sense, "Platonic conception" could suggest that Gatsby created himself anew ("sprang from")
according to an ideal scheme or plan of action ("Platonic conception"), but that he also wanted
a kind of love in which sexual attraction was present, a love in which pregnancy ("conception")
was possible through sexual intercourse. Part of Gatsby’s individualism is based on an
imaginative conception that he could recreate himself in order to attain money, status and
Daisy Buchanan’s love. Whatever that Platonic conception meant to James Gatz, from the ashes
of that young boy Jay Gatsby came into existence.