Examine the contradictions in The Great Gatsby, including its narrative

Examine the contradictions in The Great Gatsby, including its narrative

styles.

The novel moves on two levels: Fitzgerald makes you see the magic and

romance of Gatsby's vision of ideal love, dazzling the eye with

wealth; yet, at the same time, the narrator pulls us down to earth

revealing the immorality, waste and corruption of those who surround

Gatsby and cause his death.

Examine the contradictions in The Great Gatsby, including its

narrative styles.

One of Fitzgerald's main aims is to show the reader that the world he

illustrates in The Great Gatsby includes both dazzling wealth and

corruption, both of which are evident in American society of the

1920s. These work in parallel and come together as part of the same

society: the wealthy upper class. Straight away we see this as being a

contradiction, as the glittering surface impression of these wealthy

people conceals their true nature as an immoral, careless and

unsympathetic society.

This novel clearly does move on two levels. The author enables us to

look into the different worlds of money and romance (and whether or

not they can exist together), as it is not only a story of superficial

richness, but also of lost love and the use of wealth to regain it.

These themes alone are a contrast, as money is a matter of the mind

and love a matter of the heart.

Although Fitzgerald glamorises the lifestyles of the rich minority, he

also asks us to question how attractive money really is, by conveying

to us the destruction and unhappiness that huge wealth can cause

underneath its dazzling exterior.

We are led through the various events of the novel by our narrator,

Nick Carraway, who is also Gatsby's neighbour. Nick, despite being

surrounded by e...

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...atsby's eventual death.

Daisy, by killing a woman in Gatsby's car, represents the fact that

unmaterialistic people are often downtrodden by the wealthy. The rich

themselves believe that money can buy them everything, including, as

in Daisy's case, a guilt-free conscience.

An underlying contradiction of the novel is that Gatsby's rich guests

all thought that happiness rested in money, but the truth was that it

does not, and never will. For Gatsby, the source of his happiness

rested in love, and whilst the rich minority took everything,

including love, for granted, Gatsby never did, and it proved to be his

demise. The novel's biggest contradiction shows that although love is

the source of life, in this instance it has killed a man in his quest

to find it.

Kate Cockburn

Bibliography: 'The Great Gatsby', F.Scott Fitzgerald (Penguin Modern

Classics).