The Great Gatsby is an American classic. Even more remarkable is the fact that F. Scott Fitzgerald managed it in a mere short story. He did it in a short story. In essence, Fitzgerald wrote a Great American Story. Fitzgerald managed to weave together characters from different perspectives and create the story structure that may have been the basis of 20th Century America.
We will start with the endpoints of the novel, as they are the key to understanding the structure. The structure is the most important thing about the story. Nick starts the book telling us a tale about someone he met while traveling to the east. Nick tells us that he returned home to the Midwest at the end.
The story frame reveals two important points. The first is Nick, who is the main character. Fitzgerald employs the third-person storyteller. This will allow you to see how Gatsby affects Nick’s life. Nick never goes west. He is more inclined to go east.
This is why it’s so crucial to the American novel, and all American storytelling. We must look at American history in its fundamental movements. It is this movement that: “Go west, young man. Go west.”This movement helped define America’s character. In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner wrote an essay entitled, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,”One of the greatest essays of all time in history.
Frontier Hypothesis stated:
o Frontier was where civilization and savagery met.
o The land changed the immigrant from an American to a European when he faced the harsh, free land.
o With the westward movement of the frontier, the country became more American and less English.
o It promoted democracy. Living on the frontier means that central authority is no longer necessary. This allows the individual to take charge of his life.
Is it possible to see how the west frontier and move west influenced American identity?
American pioneers created an American that was self-centered and individualistic. They valued personal freedom more than anything else, as well as strength, curiosity, practicality, creativity, and exuberance.
Turner said it all. “America has been another name for opportunity.”Turner’s essay ended with one crucial point.
After 400 years of existence, the frontier was finally destroyed in 1890. Thus ended America’s first period of great history.
If Turner is correct, then the closing of the frontier signifies a profound shift in America’s character. The frontier has lost its power. The Great Gatsby is published in 1925. It has been 35 years since the end of the frontier. Seven years ago, we were fought in the Great War against corrupt European powers that fled America to make it possible. The America of 1925 is calling for us to go east, young man.
The American great myth, in other words, is not the Western. It’s instead the “Eastern.”Nick is exactly this: He starts in the Midwest, solid and nothing fake, then he goes east to make more money, selling bonds. Nick sets out to become a millionaire in America’s great city of business. Gatsby is the exact same eastern mover: He’s a Midwesterner, who moves east and finds his fortune.
Gatsby has the opportunity to make a change in his life and pursue this American dream when Dan Cody arrives. Nick believes Cody is ” — the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of American life, brought back to the eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon.”
Cody’s surname takes us back in time to Buffalo Bill Cody who was a legend of the American West. Ironically, Buffalo Bill was the man most responsible not only for closing the west but for making it a story that would be remembered and enjoyed by Easterners from their homes.
A form of the “Eastern”This is the story of a gangster. In the gangster story, instead of becoming a person of substance by confronting the land on the frontier, the immigrant enters the world of the city, of façades, of extreme differences of wealth and power. His greed for power and wealth corrupts the gangster heroine. Three movies were made in the 1930s to capture the gangster tale: “Public Enemy,” “Little Caesar,” “Scarface.”The Great Gatsby had a profound influence on them all. “Scarface”Direct steals can even be made, such as the scene with the shirts and the sign.
Fitzgerald inserts another structure within the Eastern story structure: a simple love story. Gatsby is after Daisy. Fitzgerald transforms Daisy from the symbol of American promise into a human representation of it by placing Daisy’s love story in the Eastern framework of pursuing American success in the capital. Love is also twisted and destroyed.
Fitzgerald creates all his characters’ variants on the same theme by creating a very neat, concise story structure. This technique allows Fitzgerald to convey the Great American Story in a succinct way.
Nick, Nick’s main character is strong, solid and full of morals. According to Nick, “I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules.”Everybody suspects that he or she is guilty of one of the cardinal virtues. I’m one of few people I know who is honest.” Fitzgerald contrasts solid Nick with Gatsby: fake, hollow, immoral and illegal. But Gatsby has one saving grace; he’s going after the ideal of true love.
Nick says of Gatsby, “His smile was understandable. It was more than that. [the smile]I could assure you it gave exactly the impression you desired. At that exact moment it disappeared – as I looked at an elegant, young, roughneck about thirty who had intricate formalities of speech but was not absurd.”
Gatsby tells Nick: “I was born to wealthy parents in the Middle West. They are all now dead. My family brought me up in America, but I went to Oxford because my ancestors were educated there many years ago.”
“Which part of the Middle West is it?” I inquired casually.
“San Francisco.”
Gatsby continues: “Then I lived in Paris, Venice and Rome like a young Rajah – I collected jewels chiefly of rubies and hunted big game. I did not want anyone to believe I was a nobody.” Adding to this sense of Gatsby as a fake, Fitzgerald has everyone create rumors and false images of him. Myrtle’s sister says of Gatsby, “He is a niece or nephew of Kaiser Wilhelm. It’s from this source that all his income comes.”
At one of his parties a woman says, “Someone told me that he had once killed a man.” Another replies, “He was also a German spy during World War II.” Tied in with the hollow characters and the rumors is everyone’s desire for status. Status is value bestowed in the eyes of others. By definition it is not substantial.
Status is a form of keeping score of success: I’m better because those people are worse. Mrs. McKee says, “I was close to marrying a small kike, who had been after me for many years. I was aware he was not up to my standards.” Myrtle, talking about her husband, says, “He seemed to be a good teacher about breeding but was unable to touch my shoes.”
One of the techniques that Fitzgerald uses is to slowly let out the real information of Gatsby’s past throughout the entire book. This has an important thematic effect. As the story unfolds, and we see who Gatsby really is, we find out that this story is larger than one man trying to win another man’s wife.
Gatsby and Nick are both trying to accomplish the great American project of remaking yourself. America is the land of the eternal clean slate. When you have no past, you can be anything you say you are. This gives you total freedom, but if it is based on deception, it can crumble quickly.
Nick says, “Jay Gatsby was actually born out of his platonic vision of himself. The truth was that he was a son to God, which is a term that, if anything, implies just this. He must also be concerned with His Father’s business: the care of vulgar and simple beauty. He invented Jay Gatsby, the kind that any seventeen-year old boy could imagine. And he was loyal to his conception until the very end.”
The ultimate expression of a land of total opportunism is the gangster. The ethic of the gangster is that the goal is everything. What you do to get it is nothing. Gatsby’s business associate is Meyer Wolfsheim, rumored to be the man who fixed the 1919 World Series. When asked about this, Gatsby says, “He saw it as an opportunity.” What about the character who is the object of Gatsby’s quest, his grail? Daisy is literally the dream girl. In fact she is the American dream girl.
Daisy is pretty, airy, childlike, charming, and full of money. But she is also completely hollow, and in her case, unlike Gatsby, she has no saving grace. She is cowardly and careless. When we first meet her, Nick says about her and Jordan, “Both young women slowly rose to the surface — excitement was in their air! [Daisy’s]Voice — A promise — That there would be gay and exciting things in the hour ahead” When Daisy speaks she says things like: “Is it a habit to look for the longest day and then get distracted? It is always the longest day in the year that I miss, so I watch it.”
Like David Copperfield’s child bride, she holds her little finger up for everyone to see and says, “You can see it! Look!” Later, when describing Daisy’s voice, Nick says, “Her voice is indiscreet — it’s full of” – I hesitated.”Gatsby said, “Her voice is full of money.”
Jordan, Nick’s girlfriend is an adaptation of Daisy. It also serves as a hint at her future actions. Nick has wondered from the start what Jordan is hiding. Nick recalls reading a newspaper article that Jordan used to move her golf ball in order to conceal a lie she told in a tournament.
Jordan then drives and almost runs into someone. Although she is careless, it doesn’t matter to her. Nick confronts her about it and she responds that it is up to others to stop her from getting in her way. Fitzgerald’s description of Gatsby’s party is another way to tell The Great American Story. Because everyone is false, inflated and unsubstantial, they are an excellent microcosm of Fitzgerald’s novel.
Fitzgerald shifts to the present tense. You can see how Fitzgerald describes the party in present tense. This is to indicate swelling and falling, and that nothing is permanent. “Laughter is easier minute by minute — The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group, and then, excited by triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.”
Un guest confirmed that Gatsby’s book collection is real. He adds, ” — they have pages and everything — It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism!”
Most of the guest aren’t invited, and many don’t know their host. Fitzgerald is known for his unique way of expressing the Eastern culture and these events. He names each guest. These names are better than any Dickens has ever come up with. You can see how Fitzgerald lists fancy names, then goes on to the hard truth about who or what they are.
“From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and a man named Bunsen, whom I knew at Yale, and Doctor Webster Civet, who was drowned last summer up in Maine. And the Hornbeams and the Willie Voltaires — From farther out on the Island came the Cheadles and the O.R.P. Schraeders, and the Stonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia, and the Fishguards and the Ripley Snells. Snell was there three days before he went to the penitentiary, so drunk on the gravel drive that Mrs. Ulysses Swett’s automobile ran over his right hand.”
Prior to the ending of the novel the totality of all of these events is only a few pompous parties, and an unrequited relationship. The moral implications of these actions are revealed beneath the surface. This leads to disillusionment, destruction and despair.
This moral explosion was triggered by Gatsby’s fight with Tom over Daisy. It is clear that Daisy, when she’s forced to make a choice, acts as a coward. Even though Tom is racist, bully and cheating on Daisy, she refuses to go. Next, she murders Myrtle after a car accident in which she was hit and run. Gatsby takes the blame.
Gatsby then takes another fall when Tom informs Wilson who owns the car. Gatsby is killed. They leave the town together, showing once more how cowardly they are.
Nick said, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness — and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
The book’s key word is “careless”. When flightiness and false values are combined with moral force to become destructive, it is called careless. Nick is the hero of this story, and he makes a decision to make a change. He said, “That’s my middle West…I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters…After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that — So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.”
Nick doesn’t look flashy, rich, or famous at the end. He is genuine. He is the only person who, when all else fails, acts morally and decently. This is because he has made many moral decisions. Gatsby hears nothing but the following: “‘They’re a rotten crowd. You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’ I’ve always been glad I said that.”After he stops seeing Jordan, he ties the knot with her. Gatsby’s death is his responsibility and he attends. He finally goes home.
Not only does the novel end with Nick’s changes, but America’s as well. Fitzgerald here uses Utopia as a technique. This refers to the ending of an Utopian moment. Utopia, the essence of America, is crucial. This is where there’s a clear slate and you can combine great wealth with lofty ideals. It is a Utopian world where all things seem possible, and everything can be expected.
Fitzgerald imagines utopias. Utopia can be described as a great summer filled with parties on the beach. Utopia means falling in love and finding the perfect girl. Utopia would be the man who can pull himself up by his bootstraps to make it big and become a millionaire. There’s always an issue with utopias. These are often fake or temporary. Always, the end result is disappointment.
The same thing happens in Gatsby. There are many phony hustlers at the summer party, and they take money and pleasure from the host. A perfect girl will be a hollow woman who is unable to take the pressure off when it’s down. He is illegally making his fortune.
Gatsby is thrown out of his world when Daisy runs back to Tom. Nick says ” — he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.”The murder took place just a moment later.
In perhaps the most poignant page of American literature, Fitzgerald ends the story by describing the nation’s lost promise. Three hundred years ago, the spiritual ideal we had started with has become a mere matter of material desire. However, he says that America has lost its party. The Republic’s fields, or the land is what really matters. An individual of character such as Nick is the real value.
” — as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world…for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
“– [Gatsby’s]It must have been so close to him that he couldn’t help but grasp the idea. It wasn’t there yet, somewhere behind him in that vast, obscurity outside the city, as the republic’s dark, irrational fields continued to roll on beneath the darkness.
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run fast, stretch out our arms farther — And one fine morning —
“”So we beat boats against the current and borne back inexorably into the past.”
This is the end of a Great American Story.