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Aldwin Aguilar asked this question about The Great Gatsby:
My teacher keeps on insisting that Jay Gatsby is black. Is he?
Adam This possibility is interesting to think about once you have read the book a couple too many times. (I also like to wonder about about how gay was Nic…moreThis possibility is interesting to think about once you have read the book a couple too many times. (I also like to wonder about about how gay was Nick?) Of course Jay Gatsby is deliberately shrouded in mystery and wild rumors chase him all over. However early on Nick covers his backstory from North Dakota to the southern banks of Lake Superior (that's Duluth, northern Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan). Even now that area is mostly northern European blonde people with very few blacks at all. Also when Henry Gatz shows up his color and ancestry are not mentioned while other minor characters are usually described in fairly stark racial/nationalistic terms. So the case is still open, but that would be a glaring omission on Fitzgerald's part. Thus far this makes it improbable but not impossible that he is black. Then near the end Tom Buchanan also digs into Gatsby's past and proceeds to air his dirty laundry with his usual ham handed gusto. Now Tom is a horribly crude man and like so many of his type he is a deeply racist man in a sharply racist time. How would Tom not mention Gatsby's racial make-up? The book is love story with much to say about underlying class distinctions but I don't think Fitzgerald was ready to take that kind of stance head on. Still fun to think about the possibility and talk it over, no?(less)
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The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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