An American Trajedy: The Great Gatsby

In The Great Gatsby, what does F. Scott Fitzgerald suggest about the state of the American Dream, the people who pursue it, and the impact of that pursuit through his depiction of Jay Gatsby and the people in Gatsby’s life? Include specific examples, quotations, and supporting details from the novel in your response. Do not merely summarize the story.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is not a love story with a happily ever after. This is a novel written like an American fable; the moral leaving one hard hit. Until the last page turned, Gatsby was all-in to get the unavailable girl, like a 1920s American people all-in to grab unobtainable happiness. Could one argue then that Gatsby is the perfect metaphorical mirror not just for a lost generation, but for a 21st century one as well? Like a present day American voyeur weeping through a window—one of the “privileged (glimpsing) into the human heart”—I was right with Gatsby as I read his story. But sadly, in the paraphrased words of the eternal Nick Carraway, our host and main character who leads readers through the saga of Jay and Daisy, one could sum up this novel thus: while you can’t go back, sometimes you can’t find a way to go forward either. One could argue that predicament faces America even today.

Nick mused in one telling paragraph that Gatsby, “talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.” Outside of Nick’s opinion, it remains open to debate if Gatsby was really attempting to recover something lost due to confusion. It could have been that Gatsby genuinely gave his gentle heart away, and coming from meager means he learned early how to fight hard to be reunited with it. This is similar to how Americans talk about their own past; always longing for that time when they remember being happy. But like Nick, one might question if they ever were happy when one honestly recounts history. Could this book be a long soliloquy detailing American disappointment? Consider how Gatsby describes himself as he optimistically waits for Daisy to decide to be with him.

"'I wouldn't ask too much of her,' I ventured. 'You can't repeat the past.'

'Can't repeat the past?' he cried incredulously. 'Why, of course you can!'

He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.

'I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before,' he said, nodding determindly. 'She'l see.'"

As one turns the pages, one realizes that Gatsby is a metaphor for America in the 1920s. Here is a country that had weathered a world war without benefit of antibiotics, or leaders who knew how to make the pain stop. Gatsby, like America, lacked the guidance of parents or the wherewithal to make his own sadness disappear. Instead, he was forced to run with thieves to make his mark in the world, and he longed for love he couldn’t have but was ready to take by force if necessary. Could it not be said that world leaders stole from America her innocence in World War 1? As she unwillingly took her place in a war-torn world under God’s sad eyes, did America lose herself? A metaphor about God’s sad eyes watching the decay of quintessential American communities is even presented by Fitzgerald as poetic evidence. Note how Doctor T.J Eckleburg’s eyes (symbolism of God’s eyes) follow the main characters as they traverse through the decaying and hidden part of a world they prefer to slum in at best, and avoid at worst.

“We were all irritable now with the fading ale and, aware of it, we drove for a while in silence. Then as Doctor T. J. Eckleburg's faded eyes came into sight down the road, I remembered Gatsby's caution about gasoline….That locality was always vaguely disquieting, even in the broad glare of afternoon, and now I turned my head as though I had been warned of something behind. Over the ashheaps the giant eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg kept their vigil…”

Even Gatsby’s description of his own story in his own words could be compared to scrappy America from birth to present as she loses herself in a fight for happiness. First Gatsby says about himself to Nick,

…“I’ll tell you God’s truth.” His right hand suddenly ordered divine retribution to stand by. “I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West — all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition.”

Could one not say that the Puritans who came to the United States, many on the wealthier side of the economic tree, were educated in Britain? The comparison does not stop there. Gatsby later gives us more to his story which could also be a comparison to American industry.

"I thought you inherited your money."

"I did, old sport," he said automatically, "but I lost most of it in the big panic – the panic of the war."

I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what business he was in he answered, "That's my affair," before he realized that it wasn't the appropriate reply.

"Oh, I've been in several things," he corrected himself. "I was in the drug business and then I was in the oil business. But I'm not in either one now.”

America has been in both the oil and drug business. But now, with coming expansion of the military industrial complex, it appears American’s favorite and best industry is waging war. For Gatsby, he will soon forget his other interests as he pursues (waging war to get) Daisy to the exclusion of all other activities. He fires his servants, and could be said to neglect his business interests so consumed is he with acquiring his lost love.

Perhaps the most tragic comparison to make between Gatsby and America is the potential foreshadowing of America’s future. Consider the following quote:

“No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o'clock – until long after there was any one to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.”

Has America lived too long with a single dream? Will America stay up late wanting, only to be disappointed for wishing for something it can’t have instead of working for something within reach? Like Gatsby, will America be dead before she knows what could have been a good life? Fortunately for the world, America’s story is still writing itself. There’s a chance.