What concept is behind the Great Gatsby?

[Maryam]

The Great Gatsby is a great novel .At the begining, it looks like the other love stories that just focus on the quality of the relationship between a couple ,but at the end we see that it is not as simple as it seemed.When we reach to the end of the story and we understand that the story is about the American dream, and we take a look at the whole picture again, we see how Fitzgerald spreaded this idea in different detailed parts of the story artistically.We readers feel pity for Gatsby at the end of the story ,specially when he is waiting outside for his dream ,Daisy to come out ,and when not many people show up in his funeral, while in the bigger picture it looks like the life story of most of us.We all have a dream, to get as much as we could of this world and working so hard toward that and when we are almost there,we face the death and after awhile of our death every body forgets us and nothing changes ,as if we did not exist.

[Monty J]

Maryam wrote: "We all have a dream, to get as much as we could of this world and working so hard toward that and when we are almost there,we face the death and after awhile of our death every body forgets us and nothing changes, as if we did not exist."

This may have been Gatsby's dream, but not mine, nor the religious people I know. For us, life is a gift, breath by breath, and it's about how much we give, not take.

I think Fitzgerald wanted us to see that Gatsby epitomizes a wrong-headed approach to life. Gatsby was all for Gatsby, never for others except when it would gain him something, like the woman whose dress he replaced. He used Nick to get to Daisy and tried to recruit Nick to sell illicit worthless bonds. He held lavish parties, not to attract Daisy, but to lure affluent people brought in to liquor them up as targets for his bond sales team. Like a spider, he set a trap for the unwary to exploit them.

Gatsy was willing to destroy Daisy's marriage to have her for himself, with no concern about the happiness of her small daughter.

These facts are supported in the book. The claim that the parties were "solely to attract Daisy" is a fabrication by Yale professor Harold Bloom, who, incidentally, receives payments on the side from a private equity firm, Veronis Suhler Stevenson through Infobase Publishing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infobas.... Bloom can hardly be considered unbiased.


Gatsby sabotaged his dream by being corrupt, for Daisy rejected him when she learned he was a criminal. People didn't come to his funeral because they didn't respect him (or love him, on Daisy's part.) He had given them nothing therefore he was owed nothing.

Gatsby said every Allied country gave him a medal, but he had only the one from Montenegro that he could have picked up in a pawn shop and had engraved. The Oxford photo could also have been faked. No one corroborated his war heroism. He lied about his identity--his name and his family wealth. To fortify the facade that he was "an Oxford man," Gatsby stocked an extensive library with books he hadn't read.

How can we believe anything Gatsby says when he sells illicit bonds for a living? He's a con artist, indisputably proven when Nick takes the phone call (p.166) from Slagle about Parke, one of the sales team, getting picked up. But Nick is blind to this evidence of Gatsby's corruption because of his fondness for the man in the pink suit with a closet of colorful shirts and ties.

On what grounds should the reader allow him/erself to be swayed by Nick's bias?

Gatsby consorts with criminal Wolfshiem, who rigged the 1919 World Series and consorts with mobsters who deal in gunplay in the streets of New York. Wolfsheim, who "made him," won't come to Gatsby's funeral most likely for fear the FBI will link him to the bond scam through Gatsby's sales cohort, Slagle. The heat is on. Parke's just been thrown in the clink.

The novel is a web of corruption/death/carelessness, prominently symbolized by the valley of ashes--mentioned eight times--and "the foul dust that followed in Gatsby's wake" (p.1.) Myrtle, whose death leads to Gatsby's death, gets killed in the valley of ashes.

Gatsby's dark side was unmasked for Daisy, Nick, Jordan and the reader when he reacted to Tom's interrogation with a look "...as if he had 'killed a man'" (p.134.)

Myrtle's nose and a woman's arm get broken due to Tom's carelessness. Tom's infidelity results in Myrtle's death. Myrtle's breast gets mutilated and two cars have amputated wheels due to carelessness. Jordan lies and cheats and drives carelessly, ripping the button off a bystander's coat. Tom represents legitimate wealth. Gatsby represents illegitimate wealth. Both end up hurting people.


The unwitting reader feels pity toward Gatsby because clueless Nick does. The readers are put on notice on page two of Nick's bias/fondness ("there was something gorgeous about him") toward Gatsby. He's unreliable in all things Gatsby because of his prejudice in Gatsby's favor.

The concept is to be wary of wealthy people. They don't care about anyone but themselves and may steal from you.

[Karen]

Monty wrote;
"This may have been Gatsby's dream, but not mine, nor the religious people I know. For us, life is a gift, breath by breath, and it's about how much we give, not take."

Atheists like myself and others feel also that life is a gift- though not from god, and giving is a humanist quality all caring people share.
I don't think Nick was clueless- that's what makes him interesting!

[Geoffrey]

I will refine your penultimate sentence, Monty. Be wary of the undue adulation that the public worships at the altar of wealth.

[Monty J]

Geoffrey wrote: "I will refine your penultimate sentence, Monty. Be wary of the undue adulation that the public worships at the altar of wealth."

Yes, that is more accurate. By making Nick so adulatory of Gatsby and apathetic, if not blind, to his corruption, Fitzgerald made it clear that we the readers must be wary of our national proclivity toward trusting people who seem to be "successful," particularly when ostentation is present.

"Flash, cash and trash" is a Southern maxim that holds truth.

[Monty J]

Karen wrote: "...I don't think Nick was clueless."

Perhaps there's a better word that "clueless," but I can't imagine how else to classify Nick's comment during the tour of Gatsby's place with Daisy after their rendezvous/reunion at Nick's. (ch. 5, p.93) Nick, narrating:

I was going to ask to see the rubies when the phone rang, and Gatsby took up the receiver.

This statement reveals that Nick actually believed Gatsby's hilarious biography about being born into wealth and touring Europe in search of jewels.

It was like two grown-ups driving down the road and suddenly ones says "Let's play Make-Believe, old sport. I'll be the rich prince, and you can get girls for me." The Oxford photo and the Montenegro medal were all it took to convince Nick, like a child on a playground, without a word of corroboration from a trustworthy source (don't you dare mention Wolfsheim), to swallow Gatsby's line of bull.

Throw me a word, if not gullible, what is it?

And what possible motive, short of comic relief, could Fitzgerald have for including this curious bit of inner monologue except characterization, to further cement Nick's gullibility concerning Gatsby?

[Geoffrey]

I find Nick´s behaviour confusing. I don´t know how gullible he is considering that at one point when Jay waxes eloquent about his travels in Europe, casting about for rubies and other gems, he almost chortles. Is Nick gullible? To an extent but I believe he´s being mockingly ironic.

I see that Nick´s not as much as a naif but simply doesn´t have much of a moral compass, which would appropriately put him in this cast of immoral miscreants. His profession is that of a bond bailsman, yet he doesn´t even think of telling the authorities of the impending scam.

In such a context, we understand his willingness to leave his profession at the novel´s end considering his abject passivity or tolerance of the scam. A man more dedicated to that financial profession would be more likely to be disturbed by the shenanigans of Wolfsheim´s high flung scam.

Frankly, he didn´t give a damn about the cheating ways of his peers, but was only angry about the lack of respect for the dead. He doesn´t even get worked up about Myrtle´s unfortunate death. What a friggin skunk of a jerk. He´s as bad as Jay.

We could argue that aside from his latent homosexual feelings for that gorgeous hunk of malehood, Nick´s bias in favor of Jay rests on the successful upward mobility of our hero. Nick comes from a socio-economic class a few steps down the ladder from Daisy, Jordan and Tom and so it comes as a welcome to Nick in his middle class roots. Jay has beaten the parasitic deadbeats with inborn silver spoons at their own game of accrued wealth, yet the landed gentry refuse to acknowledge the talents of this upstart.

As Nick said, ¨you´re worth more than the lot of them¨.

[Karen]

Monty wrote;
"Perhaps there's a better word that "clueless," but I can't imagine how else to classify Nick's comment during the tour of Gatsby's place with Daisy after their rendezvous/reunion at Nick's. (ch. 5, p.93) Nick, narrating:
"I was going to ask to see the rubies when the phone rang, and Gatsby took up the receiver."
This statement reveals that Nick actually believed Gatsby's hilarious biography about being born into wealth and touring Europe in search of jewels."

I thought this statement may have meant that Nick was not sure if Gatsby was telling the truth about the rubies, because Nick was not fully trustful of Gatsby, but he was still captivated by him. His captivation carried more weight as we know and the suspicion Nick had was fleeting; he could dismiss it. This is what I loved about this story- their odd relationship.

[Monty J]

Geoffrey wrote: "...he almost chortles."

Yes, he does, yet in the next breath he reverses himself as Gatsby flashes the photo and medal and Nick says, (Ch. IV, p.54)

Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with their crimson-lighted depts, the gnawings of his broken heart.

Nick's bought the bull.


"...I believe he´s being mockingly ironic."

Good point. But the vast preponderance of evidence favors that Nick is fascinated, charmed by Gatsby's charisma, his yen for Daisy and his hypo-manic drive for success, but hates what he stands for, the "foul dust" of his corruption.

If Nick were being sarcastic (above), Fitzgerald needed to provide some clue. He takes pains below to be clear about his confusion over Gatsby (Ch. VI, p.101.) Nick, narrating, after Gatsby tells about Dan Cody:

He told me all this very much later, but I've put it all down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumors about his antecedents, which weren't even faintly true. Moreover, he told me at a time of confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and nothing about him.

I am beginning to appreciate the genius of Fitzgerald's "modified first-person" point of view. The narration is first-person, past-tense, looking back from a two year remove. Just like a memoirist, he can compress time and reveal information as it is relevant rather than linearly.

[Geoffrey]

Despite my boredom with so much of the novel, I have learned to appreciate this book much more than initially. It´s a hard nut to swallow and much more complex than originally surmised. I still have several problems with it as I have outlined in much earlier posts. There are weak passages that needed to be tightened up and hackneyed truisms passed off as pearls of wisdom. I have always suspected SF of being superficial and pretentious but....who knows? The character of Nick certainly is, but how close can we identify his character with the writer´s?

[Monty J]

Geoffrey wrote: "...how close can we identify his character with the writer´s?"

I just read an essay by Milton R. Stern, where this issue is covered in some length titled, "The American Dream and Fitzgerald's romantic Excesses."

Here are a few relevant quotes from it:

"For all the similarities between Fitzgerald's life and Gatsby's, the novel is hardly a point-by-point recapitulation of history. The amazing pool of source materials in Fitzgerald's life for the fiction he wrote, and the countless and obvious parallels between the two, have misled some readers into reading the fiction as autobiography. But those who have reacted against misreadings occasioned by the parallels...often react too strongly when they discount considerations of such relationships as a critical mistake. For Fitzgerald's fiction is autobiographical in the deepest sense, a sense that goes beyond facts. It is the autobiography of Fitzgerald's imagination, of his own ecstatic impulses and his imaginative reaction to the exciting American promise of life, whether in St. Paul society, at Princeton, in the expatriate's Europe, ...or in the ever-beckoning glamour of New York. As Harry Levin has pointed out, the history of the realistic novel shows that fiction tends toward autobiography. Because the realistic novel attempts to create a sense of "what it's really like," it will necessarily depend upon details that evoke that sense... .

...The American autobiographical memory since the Civil war generally has been stocked with revelations of the extent to which American life falls short of the transcendent vision. A sense of cheat and defeat is particularly characteristic of the fiction of Norris and Dreiser, a school or realism that early struck Fitzgerald as an example of what courageous, serious fiction should be."


Nick and Gatsby are explorations of different facets of Fitzgerald and Daisy has elements Fitzgerald's experiences with Genevra King and Zelda Sayre. Jordan is a replica of a woman golfer he knew. The novel's almost a roman a clef.

[Karen]

Monty, Nick has bought the bull- a little. Part of him has not but that's okay with him.

[Monty J]

Geoffrey wrote: "I have always suspected SF of being superficial and pretentious."

Fitz was spoiled by a wealthy mother and grandmother and in his twenties when he wrote his first three novels. Considering the superficial crowd he ran with, these qualities are not surprising.

What is surprising is how someone with those handicaps would have the insight and grit to portray the social critique present inThe Great Gatsby. What galls me is the way it's been downplayed in film and academia.


Fitzgerald was much more mature when he wrote a revealing letter to Scotty, his 17-year-old daughter:

When I was your age I lived with a great dream. The dream grew and I learned how to speak of it and make people listen. Then the dream divided one day when I decided to marry your mother after all, even though I knew she was spoiled and meant no good to me. I was sorry immediately that I married her, but, being patient in those days, I made the best of it and got to love her in another way. You came along and for a long time we made quite a lot of happiness out of our lives. But I was a man divided--she wanted me to work too much for her [the magazine fiction, the jazzy need for money and a hot-cat life] and not enough for my dream.

We must remember who Zelda was [spoiled, mentally ill] and, whether or not Fitzgerald's judgment is fair, how he may have been influenced by her, even after she was institutionalized.

Fitzgerald didn't go to war like Hemingway or become a seaman like Eugene O'Neill. His living/work environment provided a limited resource of writing material.

[Carla]

Gatsby is a treaty on whether the American Dream is possible...if the Dream is defined as the belief that the U.S. offers the opportunity to achieve personal goals through hard work and persistence, then can it be achieved? Fitzgerald says no. The corruption of the post World War I society make material success the goal but it shouldn't be..then or now. Gatsby sells out his goals to tie his future with Daisy and the world she represents, but he doesn't work for it. He becomes a criminal and he never really had a chance to find happiness with her. She wanted her life shaped and he just couldn't provide for her. She marries Tom after a night of drunken regrets "without so much as a shiver."

Start with the obvious themes and motifs. Don't let yourself get caught up in the small details or controversial interpretations. Gatsby is the most commonly read book in American high schools because the theme let's students explore those same questions in today's world.

[Geoffrey]

He doesn´t sell out his goals but his soul. He works for it but it is not honest work.

She wanted to remain in the social milieu she was born to and Jay did not fit in with her goals. No she cries while reading jay´ś letter and is torn apart at the wedding because her heart is with Jay. This is Wuthering Heights redux.

[Feliks]

Agree with #14, Carla. Anyone who reads this novel with an abacus, a chalkboard, a scorecard, or a calculator is willfully, deliberately missing the point. Poring over each line as if the intent if each punctuation mark is a line of DNA and we are human spectrometers. Bah. It's little better than palm reading.

If ya want a 'who did what to whom' novel then why not read something like...'In Cold Blood'? Plenty of material there for morality-mongers to grind their molars over. This is a novel about the biggest questions in life, not the smallest.

Destiny, fate, souls, certainly dreams, certainly hearts. Not piddling little misdemeanors like...Gatsby piling his breadcrumbs at table, into little mounds. Oh, the barbarian! Oh, the blackguard! Commonsense, PLEASE. Let's remember this is not nonfiction. Why are we talking about fictional crimes committed by make-believe characters as if they really happened? As if we're guilty? We're not. No one in America is 'at fault' for discerning this tale as a romance. You don't watch an opera with a police inspector at your side. How many sailors did Ahab kill? What's to be done about it? NOTHING. Its fantasy!

American capitalist history is filled with scads of true-life corruption stories which make such exercises in niggling-at-novels, preposterous. No one is 'ignoring' Gatsby's profession, it simply doesn't matter. We picked the book up to read a compelling love story, not to sit on a jury. Stop the madness.

[Monty J]

Feliks wrote: "Why are we talking about fictional crimes committed by make-believe characters as if they really happened?."

Because that's what Fitzgerald wrote, as you will recall from my "Gasby's Crininality" topic:

E. Nick intercepts a telephone call from Chicago intended for Gatsby about someone named Parke getting apprehended. (Ch. IX, p. 166) Nick, narrating:
...Long Distance said Chicago was calling...the connection came through as a man's voice, very thin and far away.
"This is Slagle speaking..."
"Yes?" The name was unfamiliar.
"Hell of a note, isn't it? Get my wire?"
"There haven't been any wires."
"Young Parke's in trouble," he said rapidly. "They picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New York giving 'em the numbers just five minutes before. What d'you know about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns---"
"Hello?!" I interrupted breathlessly. "Look here--this isn't Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby's dead."
The proof that Gatsby is a kingpin in a scam to sell stolen or counterfeit bonds is right here. 

Fitzgerald didn't write this for no reason.


Feliks wrote: "No one is 'ignoring' Gatsby's profession, it simply doesn't matter."

On the contrary. Gatsby's corruption is the key to the novel. It's why Daisy rejected him. Gatsby's corruption is why he was killed. Gatsby's corruption is what destroyed his dream. Gatsby's corruption is why his funeral was ignored in droves.

He could have been truly great, but he chose the wrong path and paid the ultimate price.

Indeed, corruption is what the valley of ashes represents, and the dozens of poetic references to ashes throughout the novel.

I bought a book for my grand kids for Christmas that comes with two stuffed dolls, a princess and a frog .Unzip the frog and turn it inside out and it becomes a prince. This is Gatsby--part frog and part prince. Except Gatsby turns into a frog after Daisy kisses him, not the other way around.

[Feliks]

Gatsby's corruption has nothing to do with the novel. Period. Never been established; never been substantiated; never even been contemplated, except by lunatics.

If the OP has hung around the thread she created, that's unfortunate. Because she'll find it hard to obtain a valid answer to her musings.

The new order. Apparently you just can't ask anything Gatsby-related on Goodreads from now on, without it being skewed by obsessive, paranoid, religious, zanies.

"Why are we talking about fictional crimes committed by make-believe characters as if they really happened?."
Because that's what Fitzgerald wrote,

Yet it is still FICTION which he wrote. Moreover, he did not write it with morality in mind (not a shred of real proof exists for such a notion). Furthermore, the novel was wildly re-framed by his editor, his wife..even the title he chose was dropped. It's hardly his writing or his morality; even if he attended church every morning after one of his benders. Just not present in the text; except in the case of willful mis-reading.

[Monty J]

Feliks wrote: "...he did not write it with morality in mind (not a shred of real proof exists for such a notion)"

Uh, what about...

[Nick narrating]"When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever;I wanted no more riotous excursions with priviliged glimpses into the human heart."Chapter 1, p.2

Nah, morality wasn't even mentioned in the book. The characters didn't commit adultery. Gatsby didn't sell illicit bonds. The word "bonds" isn't even in the book. Right, Feliks?

Feliks wrote: "...except in the case of willful mis-reading. "

Yeah, yours. As cited above.

[Feliks]

Pathetic. More cherrypicking? Selectively ignoring the first and last paragraphs in the book itself, instead searching desperately through the fog of Nick's vague musings?

Cherrypicking through a novel; (aka, 'small sample size'). Is that the extend of your acumen? And your technique? Using word-search in your digital version of the book? This is what gives you your soapbox? You find the word 'moral' listed in the book one time, and --without context--that's all you need to make a case? Not to mention doing not even causal research on bond scams in general...oh, my god. Where is your family? Why don't they take care of you in your infirmity?

Look old man. Gramps. I hate to disrespect my elders but you've become laughingstock. Get a real degree, first of all. Or go into Bible Studies. Just stop trying to make up for your career in 'finance'. Stop making us pay for your bourgeois, middle-American, guilt.

[Feliks]

Monty J wrote: "On the contrary. Gatsby's corruption is the key to the novel. It's why Daisy rejected him. ..."

Completely unsupported. To do this--to make an exception from his standard writing method--specifically to call out Gatsby as a villain-- Fitzgerald would have had to divert from the tragic form altogether. The whole structure of the book. Yeah, sure. He would really do that, he would really engage in this suburban mentality of yours. He would abandon the novelistic form which he chose throughout his career? Are you completely insane? Oh sure, Scott agrees to re-title his novel 'Great' Gatsby, at the same time he wants people to see Gatsby as a felon? Yeah ri-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ight!!

It's an idiotic interpretation. Gatsby was rejected by dint of his class difference with Daisy. This is manifest in every phase of the plot. The whole underpinning of how and why the story was written, refers to Greek tragedy. Not Texas Instruments tragedy. Scott Fitzgerald always re-worked ancient Greek myths as his basic working method. You've even admitted this.

To write in this mode, you do it consistently. Not piecemeal. That's what makes it happen. To write a novel in this style, Scott wouldn't make an exception for any jackass, picayune, faux-moral quandary of junk bonds. No author would. The very notion is clownish.

Never would have guessed I'd ever see such lunacy on this site. No matter. Go right ahead, preach this BS around here and I will wring you out like yesterday's Bounty. Any post of yours I don't spot immediately, someone will alert me to. You are 'done' on this site, as far as credibility. I'll talk to Penn State if I have to.

Monty J wrote: "Gatsby's corruption is why he was killed..."

Not in the slightest. You can't identify not one single link between a 'murder for money' vs a 'murder for love', in this story. George Wilson was a jealous husband. He didn't even know what a bond was. Had nothing to do with Gatsby's murder whatsoever. Go to bed, Granpa Walton.

Monty J wrote: "Gatsby's corruption is what destroyed his dream. Gatsby's corruption is why his funeral was ignored in droves...."

This wouldn't even be the conclusion of a community college freshman. Why would the libertine, corrupt, illicit, partying, loose-living citizens of New York in the 1920s react in horror at the discovery that a wealthy socialite was 'disreputable'? Your theory makes ZERO sense.

Monty J wrote: "He could have been truly great, but he chose the wrong path and paid the ultimate price...."

Totally wrong. He achieved glory, by staying true to his dream. What kind of moron doesn't see the romance which forms the structure and theme of this novel?

Look. Whether in history or in literature, Jesus Christ is the only figure who 'pays the ultimate price'. This is because he is the only man who willingly accepts death for the sake of the rest of us. There is no way Jay Gatsby fits that role. Your deductions are flat-out incompetent. Scott Fitzgerald did not write a 'Jesus motif' story here, and even if he did, it no Jesus would be condemned for bond sales!

Monty J wrote: "Indeed, corruption is what the valley of ashes represents, and the dozens of poetic references to ashes throughout the novel..."

Yeah. This is where you take your detour into utter stupidity. Monunental ass-backwardness. Gee, let's count up the number of times the word 'ashes' is mentioned in 'The Great Gatsby'. Awk!

Oh well. Agree to disagree. This can go on indefinitely. I'll rebutt any post you care to make. I got a lot more years to live than you. You will never get the reputation you crave around here, not while I'm around.

And yes, I will ramp up my invective to match yours. You are the one who had the onus on him, to make a supported case--and in despair, you went to the gutter instead. I'll respond in kind.

[Monty J]

Feliks wrote: " Gatsby was rejected by dint of his class difference with Daisy."

In your prep school head maybe, but you can't prove it from the book.

You're on the moon again, Stephen Glass.

You can't show us anywhere in the novel where this is supported. Not one single shred of evidence from the text.