There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.
It only takes me about five pages to remember why The Great Gatsby is so timeless. “This is a valley of ashes.” Whether one’s drowned in a crowd of overwhelmingly wealthy aristocrats or poor students in the mid-nineteen-twenties or the turn of the twentieth century, the depths of a collective group are pretty shallow. Fitzgerald reminds us that for every single contemplative, intelligent person there are myriads of superficial ones sucking them dry. Similarly, whether in a feudal society (which Fitzgerald recalls in the “feudal silhouette” of Gatsby’s mansion, 96) or at the height of American capitalism, only two things matter: money and status, whether in the form of gold or material possessions.
The characters, so materially successful, fail miserably with the communication of feelings and ideas. The tense scene between Daisy and Gatsby at Nick’s house illustrates their incompetence at elucidating their feelings–something far more real than their possessions, in which they have no problem finding immediate value and gratification. They confront each other with “counterfeit ease” and have to stabilize themselves “physically” or hide among shadows in order to conceal a mental instability (92). In Nick’s discomfort, he has to flee outside to escape the restraints of society represented by his own house. Similarly, nothing ever sparks between Jordan and Nick because their relationship is characterized by this sort of impotency that lies in her scorn of his comparative poverty—her “urban distaste for the concrete” (54)—and his revulsion towards her jaunty but dishonest personality.
But equally important as (and in relationship with) his critique of the social system is his critique of capitalism, or perhaps more specifically the American Dream. The story of the “Great” Gatsby is not merely a tragic love story, but the collapse of the American man. In the third to last paragraph of the novel, Nick recalls the “old island here that flowered once for the Dutch sailor’s eyes–a fresh green breast of the new world” (189): the land of abundant resources that represented a new, untapped potential for wealth. He immediately follows up with the image of “its vanished trees…that made way for Gatsby’s house.” He shows how the forces of man, his power lying in control of material possessions, have run over nature–including, but not limited to, love. “He must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream…A new world, material without being real” (169)–and it is at this point Gatsby dies. Gatsby must die at the height of his material success, as the most powerful and wealthy character in the novel. If he doesn’t die directly from capitalism, it is all the social implications and roads he must take to attain this that bring him to his death.
Fitzgerald’s play with natural light versus electricity shows people’s struggles to command their own world, their own sources of light. Yet when they do, such as when Gatsby shuts himself away from the storm during his joyful reunion with Daisy, it is because the characters are either consciously or unconsciously protecting themselves from some harsh reality. Similarly, he plays with light and darkness: characters shun themselves from the exterior–especially natural light–while seeming to find “enlightenment” in the darkness.
Only Carraway realizes how indefinite are the figures and objects in the shadows. And the most intangible figure of all, the one to whom we are introduced as “a figure [that] had emerged from the shadow of [his] mansion” (25), is Gatsby himself, and “the colossal vitality of his illusion” (101). We all live in Nick’s–or Gatsby’s–world, but we all occupy different characters.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
***I don’t do The Great Gatsby any justice, especially when compared to the numerous poignant reviews that already exist. But I’ve resolved to post some of my book review assignments to encourage myself to go back and improve them.)
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