Starling Larkwhisk answers “My teacher keeps on insisting that Jay...”

Aldwin Aguilar asked this question about The Great Gatsby:

My teacher keeps on insisting that Jay Gatsby is black. Is he?

Starling Larkwhisk Hi Aldwin - I suspect your teacher does not mean this literally, or, if your teacher does mean it literally, then s/he has been confused by some of th…moreHi Aldwin - I suspect your teacher does not mean this literally, or, if your teacher does mean it literally, then s/he has been confused by some of the scholarship written on Gatsby. I'm a university teacher, and I've read plenty of scholarship that talks about how Gatsby is "symbolically" black/aligned with black people and other marginalized groups - for instance there's an article by Meredith Goldsmith that talks about how there are analogies between his efforts to pass himself off as a man of "breeding" and stories of racial "passing." But certainly nothing in the novel says he "is" black or even that he is Jewish (which some have inferred from his association with Meyer Wolfshiem and/or from his name being Gatz originally, which is ambiguously European). In Tom's mind, Gatsby's audacity as "pretender" and the breakdown of the establishment the idea of him winning Daisy represents is *Analogous* to intermarriage between the races, not an example of it. There's also the key encounter when Gatsby and Nick drive past a limo with black passengers and a white chauffeur, where Nick himself draws an analogy between this inversion of traditional racial hierarchies and the fact of Gatsby's rise ("Anything can happen... Even Gatsby." So in short, I think your teacher is either speaking metaphorically or, if literally, that s/he has misunderstood the scholarship or taken the analogies too literally. Which is not to say that the novel categorically excludes the possibility your teacher suggests... as others' answers have noted.(less)

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The Great Gatsby

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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