“…the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of the American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon.”

Gatsby_Original jacket

Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby – a short, finely-wrought novel – as a demonstration of his talent. Now considered a success in this respect (among many!), it however received a lukewarm welcome upon publication.Wide success would not come to it until after Fitzgerald death, in December 1940.

The narrator of the story, Nick Carraway, is a well-born, well-bred young man come to New York to learn a trade. While Nick ostensibly tells the story of his neighbor Gatsby, he also shares how the experience helped him realize what his values truly are, and how to live accordingly.

Shortly after arriving to New York, Nick renews his acquaintance with his cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom. Both appear to be rather vapid characters. While affectionate and charming, Daisy appears to be self-absorbed and superficial; as for Tom, the fabulous wealth and physical talents hide an egocentric brute who cheats on his wife and doesn’t even bother to hide it. He doesn’t treat his mistress Myrtle Wilson any better, lying to her, even beating her up when drunk. Nick also gets to know his neighbor, the parvenu Jay Gatsby, who gives decadent parties in his gaudy property, with the local gentry in full attendance, trading rumors about their host past, in which he successively appears a murderer, a spy or a bootlegger.

As Nick gets to know Gatsby, however, he realizes that the man is fundamentally naive. Gatsby reminded me a little of Pip (from Great Expectations), a child from a humble family with the ambition to become a gentleman for the love of an idolized lady, in Gatsby’s case Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby lives in an illusion, and tries to weave his own with a sort of earnest dishonnesty: he is a liar, let there be no doubt about it, but a core of truth subsist in all his stories (for instance, he lets other thinks of him as “an Oxford man” by telling them he “went to Oxford” – for five months, as a veteran, not as part of a rich kids’ education as is implied). Similarly, the accusions of having made his money in a dubious manner are true – but certainly not the murder rumors, and one can legitimately wonder if he even realizes that his business dealings are shoddy.

In contrast, the wealthy set he admires keep very little illusions, whether about themselves or about the world. This constrains them to a sort of impotence (while Gatsby truly loves and builds his fortune, they are idle, bored and superficial), but also endows them with power to destroy other people’s dreams. When Tom realizes that his wife is becoming enamored with Gatsby, he promptly shatters his reputation. True to her shallowness, Daisy deserts her lover, and when in her emotion she runs over Tom’s mistress, she flees the scene.  Tom demonstrates his amorality again by blaming the accident on Gatsby, leading to his assassination by Myrtle’s husband. The Buchanans will not even attend the burial Nick organizes for his friend. The young man, his eyes open to the corruption of the East Coast, then decides to return to the Midwest.

Beyond the denunciation of the corruptive power of money, Fitzgerald asks some powerful question about the fundamental myths on which American society is built. It might seem at times as if he is denouncing the “Jazz Age” as a corruption, with the East Coast as its epicenter. However, other details (such as the quote I choose, or the fact that he concludes “I see that this is a story of the West after all – Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I were all Westerners…“) indicate that the issue might have deeper roots into the American psyche, in the thirst for freedom and material ease of its first pioneers. Nick does not return only to “the West”, he returns to his West, “not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth“, a place which is also a time of his life, that of childhood with its hopes, its illusions and its lofty goals. Gatsby was not wrong because of his striving, but rather because of what he strived for. Fitzgerald, with his fascination for rich girls, fancy living and his habit of writing for material gain rather than for his art, fought the same battle in much of his personal life. The Great Gatsby is all the more moving for giving us insight into its author’s inner life.