It seems hard to believe in our period, when a three-decade lurch to the political Right has anathematized the word, but F. Scott Fitzgerald once, rather fashionably, believed himself to be a socialist. Some years before, he had also, less fashionably, tried hard to think himself a Catholic. While one hardly associates the characteristic setting of Fitzgerald's novels, his chosen kingdom of the sybaritic fabulous, with either proletarian solidarity or priestly devotions, it will be the argument of this essay that a tension between Left and religiose perspectives structures the very heart of the vision of The Great Gatsby. For while Gatsby offers a detailed social picture of the stresses of an advanced capitalist culture in the early 1920s, it simultaneously encodes its American experience, at key structural moments, within the mitigating precepts of a mystic Western dualism. Attempting both a sustained close reading of the novel, and the relocation of that reading within wider philosophic and political contexts, this essay will therefore consider the impact of a broad mystical strain of Western thought upon Fitzgerald's political analysis. For while it is a commonplace that Fitzgerald was fascinated, throughout his life, with what is variously conceived as the "ideal," "the Dream," "inspiration," the "visionary," or "Desire," a tradition with which this essay opens, the political uses of the ideal have largely escaped notice. Fitzgerald's excitably visionary sensibility, nourished in high school years by Catholic mysticism, fashioned him into a superbly perceptive critic of the appropriation of human need of the ideal by developments in American capitalism in the 1920s. In response to economic crisis in the early years of this decade, the national advertising media developed and promoted a new cult of glamour, seeking through its allure to create a mass consumer market and revivify the foundering work ethic. Fitzgerald's entrancement by the suggestive power of beauty sensitized him both to the spell and the mendacity of that mass promise: to the cruel contradiction between the fostered impulse of ecstatic outreach and the terminal drudgery in which the many were entrapped, a drudgery ideologically occluded by the national imagery of a "vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty" allotted the glamorous few. It sensitized him, too, to the crunch choice, in a polarized yet paralyzed legitimate economy, between poverty and crime.
Gatsby makes many mistakes throughout the novel, all of which Fitzgerald uses these blunders as a part of his thematic deconstruction of the American Dream. However, Fitzgerald does not write Gatsby as a bad person whom embodies all that is wrong with western capitalism. Instead, Fitzgerald portrays Gatsby as a good man who was victim of the qualities ingrained in him by an imperfect ideological system. It is this distinction which makes Fitzgerald’s argument all the more potent, and his audience’s ability to mourn Gatsby as a tragic figure all the more important. Whereas Fitzgerald’s opinion of Gatsby may otherwise have been misconstrued as a negative one, the scene of Gatsby’s funeral clearly conveys the character of Gatsby as a tragic and sorrowful one.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views- F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. Print.
The Great Gatsby displays how the time of the 1920s brought people to believe that wealth and material goods were the most important things in life, and that separation of the social classes was a necessary need. Fitzgerald’s choice to expose the 1920s for the corrupt time that it really was is what makes him one of the greatest authors of his time, and has people still reading one of his greatest novels, The Great Gatsby, decades
Through the use of symbolism and critique, F. Scott Fitzgerald is able to elucidate the lifestyles and dreams of variously natured people of the 1920s in his novel, The Great Gatsby. He uses specific characters to signify diverse groups of people, each with their own version of the “American Dream.” Mostly all of the poor dream of transforming from “rags to riches”, while some members of the upper class use other people as their motivators. In any case, no matter how obsessed someone may be about their “American Dream”, Fitzgerald reasons that they are all implausible to attain.
Posnock, Ross. "'A New World, Material Without Being Real': Fitzgerald's Critique of Capitalism in The Great Gatsby." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 201-13.
Fitzgerald uses his work to provide a social commentary on the nature of America and the condition of the American Dream as it pertains to society in the 1920’s. By using characters like Nick as outsiders to the Eastern world of wealth and sophistication, he is able to provide readers a glimpse into the glamorous life that the Buchanans lead, yet also reveal their faults. The inclusion of Gatsby also aids in the creation of the image of the American Dream as one grounded in lies and infidelity. Where some may see the promise of America to be the ability to gain a large estate on Long Island, Fitzgerald shows that this is not enough, that the true dream is the ability to not care about the messes one makes, and to be able to leave them to someone else to be cleaned up.
...der an intense image of the pretence that he believed the upper-class felt during the 1920s. In literature, the rose is usually a symbol of beauty and love, however Fitzgerald makes the comment that in reality, the 1920s are not entirely the wonderful era they are portrayed to be. While the issue of materialism is still very relevant in a modern-day context, the force behind it is quite different. Materialism is less a result of society’s search for love and happiness in an unethical culture, rather, high wages and relatively inexpensive commodities mean that modern, upper-class society obliges to the world of consumerism simply because it can.
Bewley, Marius. "Scott Fitzgerald's Criticism of America." Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Great Gatsby. Ed. Ernest Lockridge. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. 37-53.
During the 1920s, America was experiencing dynamic changes. “Between 1921 and 1924 the country’s gross national product jumped from $69 billion to $93 billion while aggregate wages rose from roughly $36.4 billion to $51.5 billion…America was rich, and it showed” (Zeitz). The facts mentioned allow the researcher to comprehend the amount of wealth that America had undergone during that period and how it might have affected the writing of the novel. In the book, careless consumerism is evident and the wealthy are exposed as cruel and repelling people. Fitzgerald’s experience with going from wealthy to bankrupt influenced his writing in that he emphasized on the unfair separation of the low and high class. In many of his works, Fitzgerald associated money to life and strength. Mizener writes, “Somewhere very deep in his imagination that complicated tangle of feelings he had about the rich interlocked with his feelings about the delight of vitality and the horror of its exhaustion” (Mizener 275). Mizener examined Fitzgerald’s true fascination with wealth and fame as well as his simultaneous disgust with its evilness. One striking difference between Gatsby and Fitzgerald is that Fitzgerald was an alcoholic while Gatsby was always sober. “While Gatsby and Fitzgerald share a love for leisure, schmoozing and socializing, Gatsby is far from participating in the drunken sprees of his guests” (Perosa 64). Some may argue that Fitzgerald purposely made Gatsby a nondrinker as if he wished it upon
The Great Gatsby is an American novel of hope and longing, and is one of the very few novels in which “American history finds its figurative form (Churchwell 292).” Gatsby’s “greatness” involves his idealism and optimism for the world, making him a dreamer of sorts. Yet, although the foreground of Fitzgerald’s novel is packed with the sophisticated lives of the rich and the vibrant colors of the Jazz Age, the background consists of the Meyer Wolfsheims, the Rosy Rosenthals, the Al Capones, and others in the vicious hunt for money and the easy life. Both worlds share the universal desire for the right “business gonnegtion,” and where the two worlds meet at the borders, these “gonnegtions” are continually negotiated and followed (James E. Miller). Gatsby was a character meant to fall at the hands of the man meant to be a reality check to the disillusions of the era.
In the past century in America, one of the decades that has stood out most as a time of change is the 1920s. In a post-war economic boom, the decade was a time of cultural and societal change. Among the parties and the more relaxed way of life, Americans experienced new wealth and luxury. Capturing the essence of the Roaring Twenties is a daunting task, especially because of the many different factors contributing to the decade’s fame. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald managed to capture and define the spirit of the 1920s through his novel. In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the characters and events of the novel manifest the trademark qualities of America in the 1920s.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the most compelling twentieth century writers, (Curnutt, 2004). The year 1925 marks the year of the publication of Fitzgerald’s most credited novel, The Great Gatsby (Bruccoli, 1985). With its critiques of materialism, love and the American Dream (Berman, 1996), this dramatic idyllic novel, (Harvey, 1957), although poorly received at first, is now highly regarded as Fitzgerald’s finest work (Rohrkemper, 1985) and is his publisher, Scribner 's most popular title, (Donahue, 2013). The novel achieved it’s status as one of the most influential novels in American history around the nineteen fifties and sixties, over ten years after Fitzgerald 's passing, (Ibid, 1985)
What is real? In a modernist point of view the world shouldn't be called reality. But if the world isn't reality what is it then? What is reality in modernism? Modernism is a rejection of realism, which believed that science will save the world and where notion of science and social determinism is idealized. In modernism, science explains everything, which took away all the power of God, He became useless. In a way, life had lost its mystery, man, not God, could rule the world. Irving Howe, a literary critic, once talked about modernism as an "unyielding rage against the existing order". (Van Dusen, 1998) Nevertheless, modernism is also an era of disappointment; people are preoccupied with the meaning and the purpose of existence. They are in search of new values and in something new. Modernism first took place in the Jazz age and/or the roaring twenties; this period was all about prohibition and intolerance, flappers, gangsters, and crime. In 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment made it illegal to manufacture or sell alcohol. This helped to create a network of criminal organization in the trade of illegal alcohol. Moreover, in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment gave the women the right to vote, which is what probably helped alter the traditional moral and social standards dramatically; women began to assert new freedoms such as going out with no chaperon, wearing less constrictive clothing, and smoking in public. During that time, a circle of writers was formed "The lost generation". They moved to more culturally vibrant cities of Europe, especially Paris, after World War I. "These writers, looking for freedom of thought and action, changed the face of modern writing. Realistic and rebellious, they wrote what they wanted and fought censorship for profanity and sexuality. They incorporated Freudian ideas into their characters and styles." (Whitley, 2002) These authors wrote about what they wanted and talk openly about sexuality. They created a type of literature appropriate to what they thought was the modern life, after World War I. They used new techniques and addressed new subjects in reaction to the changes of the early twentieth century.
Posnock, Ross. " 'A New World, Without Being Real': Fitzgerald's Critique of Capitalism in The Great Gatsby." Critical Essays on Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: GK Hall and Co., 1984. 201-213.
Bewley, Marius. "Scott Fitzgerald's Criticism of America." Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Great Gatsby. Ed. Ernest Lockridge. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. 37-53.