Gatsby Themes

TASK 1: Each person on your table is responsible for constructing a reading around one of the thematic topics provided. You have 10 minutes to write a topic sentence/thesis for a paragraph, before you share it with your group (on GC).

Major Themes in The Great Gatsby

The Roaring Twenties

F. Scott Fitzgerald coined the term "Jazz Age" to describe the decade of decadence and prosperity that America enjoyed in the 1920s, which was also known as the Roaring Twenties. After World War I ended in 1918, the United States and much of the rest of the world experienced an enormous economic expansion. The surging economy turned the 1920s into a time of easy money, hard drinking (despite the Prohibition amendment to the Constitution), and lavish parties. Though the 1920s were a time of great optimism, Fitzgerald portrays the much bleaker side of the revelry by focusing on its indulgence, hypocrisy, shallow recklessness, and its perilous—even fatal—consequences.

Related Works:

Satyricon, by Petronius.

"The Waste Land", by T. S. Eliot

The American Dream

Gatsby’s meteoric rise to exorbitant wealth epitomises the rags-to-riches American Dream, but his life falls apart in the end, showing the futility of having such a dream in the first place. The American Dream—that hard work can lead one from rags to riches—has been a core facet of American identity since its inception. Settlers came west to America from Europe seeking wealth and freedom. The pioneers headed west for the same reason. The Great Gatsby shows the tide turning east, as hordes flock to New York City seeking stock market fortunes. The Great Gatsby portrays this shift as a symbol of the American Dream's corruption. It's no longer a vision of building a life; it's just about getting rich. Fitzgerald's book mirrors the headiness, ambition, despair, and disillusionment of America in the 1920s: its ideals lost behind the trappings of class and material success.

Examples of the American Dream gone awry are plentiful in The Great Gatsby: Meyer Wolfsheim's enterprising ways to make money are criminal; Jordan Baker's attempts at sporting fame lead her to cheating; and the Buchanans' thirst for the good life victimises others to the point of murder. Only Gatsby, who was relatively unselfish in his life, and whose primary flaw was a naive idealism, could be construed as fulfilling the author's vision of the American Dream. Throughout the novel are many references to his tendency to dream, but in fact, his world rests insecurely on a fairy's wing. On the flip side of the American Dream, then, is a naivety and a susceptibility to evil and poor-intentioned people.

Gatsby symbolises both the corrupted Dream and the original uncorrupted Dream. He sees wealth as the solution to his problems, pursues money via shady schemes, and reinvents himself so much that he becomes hollow, disconnected from his past. Yet Gatsby's corrupt dream of wealth is motivated by an incorruptible love for Daisy. Gatsby's failure does not prove the folly of the American Dream—rather it proves the folly of short-cutting that dream by allowing corruption and materialism to prevail over hard work, integrity, and real love. And the dream of love that remains at Gatsby's core condemns nearly every other character in the novel, all of whom are empty beyond just their lust for money.

Related Works:

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

My Ántonia, by Willa Cather

Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller

Satyricon, by Petronius.

Class and Wealth

Fitzgerald’s novel examines the shallowness of the upper class as they become increasingly consumed by their decadent lifestyle. It also shows the difficulty of achieving upward social mobility, even among the wealthy. The Great Gatsby portrays three different social classes: "old money" (Tom and Daisy Buchanan); "new money" (Gatsby); and a class that might be called "no money" (George and Myrtle Wilson). "Old money" families have fortunes dating from the 19th century or before, have built up powerful and influential social connections, and tend to hide their wealth and superiority behind a veneer of civility. The "new money" class made their fortunes in the 1920s boom and therefore have no social connections and tend to overcompensate for this lack with lavish displays of wealth.

The Great Gatsby shows the newly developing class rivalry between "old" and "new" money in the struggle between Gatsby and Tom over Daisy. As usual, the "no money" class gets overlooked by the struggle at the top, leaving middle and lower class people like George Wilson forgotten or ignored.

Related Works:

The Outsiders, by S. E. Hinton

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

The Past

Gatsby is determined to relive his past with Daisy, which hazards a warning from Nick Carraway, who tells him that doing so is impossible. Nick and Gatsby are continually troubled by time—the past haunts Gatsby and the future weighs down on Nick. When Nick tells Gatsby that you can't repeat the past, Gatsby says "Why of course you can!" Gatsby has dedicated his entire life to recapturing a golden, perfect past with Daisy. Gatsby believes that money can recreate the past. Fitzgerald describes Gatsby as "overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves." But Gatsby mixes up "youth and mystery" with history; he thinks a single glorious month of love with Daisy can compete with the years and experiences she has shared with Tom. Just as "new money" is money without social connection, Gatsby's connection to Daisy exists outside of history.

Nick's fear of the future foreshadows the economic bust that plunged the country into depression and ended the Roaring Twenties in 1929. The day Gatsby and Tom argue at the Plaza Hotel, Nick suddenly realizes that it's his thirtieth birthday. He thinks of the new decade before him as a "portentous menacing road," and clearly sees in the struggle between old and new money the end of an era and the destruction of both types of wealth.

Related Works:

The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas

Appearances vs Reality

Since there is no real love between Gatsby and Daisy, in The Great Gatsby, there is no real truth to Gatsby's vision. Hand in hand with this idea is the appearances and reality theme. Fitzgerald displays what critics have termed an ability to see the face behind the mask. Thus, behind the expensive parties, Gatsby is a lonely man. Though hundreds had come to his mansion, hardly anyone came to his funeral. Owl Eyes, Mr. Klipspringer, and the long list of partygoers simply use Gatsby for their pleasures. Gatsby himself is a put-on, with his “Oggsford” accent, fine clothes, and “old boy” routine; behind this facade is a man who is involved in racketeering. Gatsby's greatness lies in his capacity for illusion. Had he seen Daisy for what she was, he could not have loved her with such singleminded devotion. He tries to recapture Daisy, and for a time it looks as though he will succeed. But he must fail because of his inability to separate the ideal from the real. The famous verbal exchange between Nick and Gatsby typifies this: Concerning his behaviour with Daisy, Nick tells him he can't repeat the past. “Can't repeat the past,” Gatsby replies, “Why of course you can!”

Related Works:

Macbeth, by William Shakespeare

Moral Corruption

The wealthy class is morally corrupt in The Great Gatsby, and the objective correlative (a term coined by poet and critic T. S. Eliot that refers to an object that takes on greater significance and comes to symbolise the mood and world of a literary work) in this case is the eyes of Dr. Eckleburg, which preside over the valley of ashheaps near Wilson's garage. There are no spiritual values in a place where money reigns: the traditional ideas of God and Religion are dead here, and the American dream is direly corrupted. This is no place for Nick, who is honest. He is the kind of person who says he is one of the few honest people he's ever met, and one who is let down by the world of excess and indulgence. His mark of sanity is to leave the wasteland environment to return home in the West. In a similar manner, T. S. Eliot's renowned poem "The Waste Land" describes the decline of Western civilisation and its lack of spirituality through the objective correlative (defining image) of the wasteland.

Related Works:

"The Waste Land", by T. S. Eliot

TASK 2: Create a comic strip that depicts a key scene relating to your theme. You will be sharing this!

TASK 3: Turn your topic sentence/thesis from Task 1 into a full thematic paragraph using your evidence from Task 2 (produce a reading).

TASK 4: Find an intertextual link to discuss in at the end of your paragraph.

EXAMPLE THEMATIC ESSAYS

Class: Power, Privilege, and Influence in the United States

By Carol Brantley, Delyte Frost, Charles Pfeffer, Joan Buccigrossi, Marcus Robinson. 2003 wetWare, Inc. Rochester, NY.

Class may be correctly referred to as the status an individual or group achieves by virtue of its economic strength, the influence among other groups, and the power to affect change in its community of choice.

Perhaps the most elusive of all the social ills confronting us today is the issue of class.

It can evade any attempt at categorization or simplistic definition. The issues and problems of class struggle cuts across the social dimensions of race and ethnicity, gender, national and geographic origins, educational background, and even marriage and parental status. Thus, the class issue cannot be merely defined in terms of economic power or social influence.

Class may be correctly referred to as the status an individual or group achieves by virtue of its economic strength, the influence among other groups, and the power to affect change in its community of choice. The problems and issues surrounding class have several dimensions. They are:

1. The hierarchy of “Haves” (the dominant group) and “Have Nots” (the subordinated groups)

2. The systematic oppression of subordinated groups to advantage and strengthen the dominant group

3. The promise, myth, and dogma of individualism in American society

This discussion of class will look at the history and definition of classism.

History of the Class Struggle

Human beings have participated in struggles between the classes throughout history. Class is a culturally installed way of maintaining the status quo between “the Haves” and “the Have-Nots.” Looking only as far back as the 1600s, we find that class was a function of a rigid caste system based on genealogy or “blood.” If you were born into royalty, then the royal class extends throughout your lineage in perpetuity (or until your family was over thrown in a peasant revolt or invading forces). Conversely, if you were born outside of royalty or to the peasant class, your entire lineage was relegated to that status.

This class issue plays out in terms of religion as well. The pilgrims came to the new world in search of a place to be free of the religious (class) persecution they experienced in the old world. It did not take long before the artifacts of the culturally-installed class oppression began to show up in the new world. The new comers saw themselves as being superior to the indigenous people they found here, and the cycle of oppression was repeated by those who were formally oppressed.

The subordination of classes intersects with race and gender in American history. Women and people of color have been subjected to systematic subordination. Women were legally the property of men clear into the 20th century. The subordination of people of color included genocide and slavery. Even today, the subordination of people of color occurs in the guise of the welfare state. In the contemporary setting, most common expressions of the class struggle can be found in the various discussions about the appropriateness of Title IX athletic rules and the continuation of Affirmative Action in higher education.

Classism Defined

Classism is the systematic oppression of subordinated groups (people without endowed or acquired economic power, social influence, and privilege) who work for wages for the dominant group (those who have access to control of the necessary resources by which other people make their living).

The criteria for determining class membership or identity can be easily debated. Class has been variously defined by origins, workforce status, income, and educational background. The primary emphasis is on the economics of class. Some consider all who derive their income from wages as members of the working class; others exclude professionals and managers whose incomes are high enough to provide a stake in the capitalist system. Depending on the breadth of the definition, 70-85% of the population can be considered working class. This is true despite the fact that the individuals may identify themselves as members of the middle class.

Classism is the systematic oppression of subordinated groups (people without endowed or acquired economic power, social influence, and privilege) who work for wages for the dominant group (those who have access to control of the necessary resources by which other people make their living). Classism is held in place by a system of beliefs that ranks people according to economic status, family lineage, job, and level of education. Classism says that dominant group members are smarter and more articulate than working class subordinated groups. In this way, dominant group members (uppermiddle class and wealthy people) define for everyone else what is “normal” or “acceptable” in the class hierarchy.

Class affects people not only on an economic level, but also on an emotional level. “Classist” attitudes have caused great pain by dividing subordinated group members from one another and suppressing individual means for personal fulfillment or survival. It is not unusual to find a level of collusion between subordinated group members and dominant group members as a means of survival by gaining access to some of the privilege retained by the dominant group. There is also a fair amount of internalized oppression experienced by some subordinated group members, i.e., a disdain or shame about traditional patterns of class in ones family and a denial of heritage.

Race and Class Identity in The Great Gatsby

by John Crocker and Dr Celena Kusch

Extracts from:

http://www.uscupstate.edu/uploadedFiles/Academics/Undergraduate_Research/Reseach_Journal/006_ARTICLE5_2009.pdf

During the 1920s, scientific studies that viewed the African American race as biologically inferior were being contested and replaced by various sociological studies of American society, which examined American culture and its hierarchical nature, concluding that inferiority was determined not by scientific evidence, but rather by the dominant race or group.

This paper uses these scientific and sociological studies to analyze F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Nella Larsen’s Passing, in order to show how these texts reflect this changing idea of racial identity, while also exploring the implications of class identity and its relationship to race within these two texts. By examining Larsen’s Clare Kendry and John Bellew, as well as Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, this essay highlights the complexities of race, class, and cultural identity found during the modernist period.

The focus on the deaths of the “passing” characters of Clare Kendry and Jay Gatsby shows the various modes of social control that are inherent within the novels and how they relate to American modernist society. This paper concludes that white racial dominance proves to be the most explicit form of social control within the two works.

Fitzgerald and Larsen address this issue by agreeing with sociological studies that viewed African Americans as biological and intellectual equals, rather than inferiors, while both parodying and critiquing characters hostile to these emerging ideas.

INTRODUCTION

Tom Buchanan, when speaking to Nick Caraway in The Great Gatsby, alludes to the racial fears and anxieties prevalent during the modernist period. Tom states, “Civilization’s going to pieces [….] the white race will be –will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved” [1]. This fear of the submergence of the white race echoes “Danger in Race Mixture,” a study published in The Science News-Letter (1927), which states that the “negro-white” combinations “seem, on the whole, socially inferior to the parent races,” because they combine “something of a white man’s intelligence and ambition with an insufficient intelligence to realize that ambition” [2]. Therefore, scientific discoveries during the early part of the modernist period shunned the mixing of races, mostly because African Americans were viewed as biologically and intellectually inferior to whites. However, as pointed out by James Reinhardt in “The Negro: Is He a Biological Inferior” (1927), racial superiority is enacted by “peoples who happen to occupy, for the time, a favorable position; and that these arguments have had an emotional, rather than a scientific and rational, background” [3]. Reinhardt is pointing out that racial inferiority is not based on science or rationale, but is rather based on racial dominance, and it is the white race that has been in control throughout the history of the United States.

This transition of thought, in which popular notions of racial identity were challenged, allowed the literature from this period to reflect and struggle with these ideas, which is evident in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) and Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929). These texts reflect the scientific and sociological studies on race that were being performed during the modernist period, allowing us to see the contradiction of views regarding race, while siding more with the sociological studies that viewed African Americans as biologically equal, rather than inferior.

RACE AS THE “ULTIMATE TROPE OF DIFFERENCE” IN THE GREAT GATSBY

Just as sociology is important to understanding African American survival within a given setting, sociological studies performed during the modernist period also helped to disprove the scientific studies that saw African Americans as biologically inferior to whites. James Reinhardt points out that biological inferiority is determined by the racially dominant group and is not predicated on rational or scientific facts [3], and Wilson Wallis also states in “Race and Culture” (1926) that differences among human beings can be attributed to culture, rather than race, saying that difference among races “fluctuate as the culture life of neighbors changes, and independently of changes in the physical type of the group in question” [8].

Because of this fluctuation of racial changes, Wallis notes, “we have no reason to believe that one race differs from another in innate psychic equipment” [8], but rather can attribute all differences to the particular culture and environment of a certain group. Despite this growing trend away from biological determinism, the character of Tom Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby upholds the previously perceived scientific evidence that African Americans are biologically inferior to whites [1], while also unintentionally affirming the studies of Reinhardt [3], Miller [5], and Wallis [8] that disagree with these scientific discoveries.

Tom, after pointing out that he has read Goddard’s “The Rise of the Colored Empires,” by noting that he

feels “civilization’s going to pieces” because of the submergence of the white race, also states, “It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things” [1]. Tom is stating that the white race is the dominant race, which, according to Reinhardt, dictates who they feel is biologically inferior. Therefore, Tom is agreeing with Reinhardt, while attempting to uphold the perceived scientific discoveries by saying, “It’s all scientific stuff” [1]. After Tom is finished speaking, however, Fitzgerald allows us to see him as pathetic by having Nick state, “There was something pathetic in his concentration” [1].

Fitzgerald is aware of these scientific studies, which is why he allows Tom, a dishonest character who cheats on his wife, to adhere to these beliefs. Therefore, Fitzgerald is implicitly disagreeing with these scientific studies and leaning more toward the sociological studies performed during the modernist period.

Tom’s support of these early twentieth-century scientific studies of race influences his opinions about interracial marriage. As Tom is talking to Daisy about her relationship with Jay Gatsby, he says, “Self-control […] I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife […] Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white” [1]. Tom’s hypocritical statements allow us to conclude that he sees Gatsby as the “other” based on Gatsby’s socioeconomic status, rather than racial affiliation. However, Tom does state that the next step after inter-class relationships is interracial marriage, which creates a relationship between class and race, much like the study performed by Miller, who states that racism was only appropriated to maintain “class supremacy” [5].

Tom calls Gatsby a “Nobody from Nowhere” [1], which alienates Gatsby based on social class, but because Tom connects inter-class relationships with interracial marriage, he is also racially alienating Gatsby, which furthers Gatsby’s exclusion from the dominant U.S. culture and class. Gatsby’s socioeconomic “passing” also ends when he is killed by George Wilson, who finds out from Tom that Gatsby is responsible for the death of his wife, Myrtle. Tom states that he told Wilson “the truth,” and that Gatsby “had it coming to him” [1]. Tom’s truth, much like the scientific truths of the early modern period, is determined by the dominant culture, rather than being based on rational thought. Therefore, the truth that leads to Gatsby’s death is also based on racial and class dominance, which is furthered by Tom’s admission that Gatsby “had it coming to him.” Gatsby is the alienated “Nobody from Nowhere,” which allows Tom to feel justified in telling Wilson that Gatsby killed Myrtle, although Daisy, not Gatsby, was driving at the time Myrtle was hit.

CONCLUSION

The need for this social dominance and control proves to be the real threat for both Fitzgerald and Larsen.

The irrational maintenance of white biological dominance is the fatal force in both books. The novels address these issues of social control by questioning modern scientific studies that viewed African Americans as biologically inferior, and instead force us to see the emerging views of race that were coming to light during the 1920s.

Tom Buchanan: The Ruthless Protector

by Christine Ramos

http://reading.cornell.edu/reading_project_06/gatsby/documents/Ramos.pdf

From his first appearance, Tom Buchanan is a mouthpiece of racism. For instance, he sees himself as one of the “Nordics” who “make civilization;” and who must prevent “these other races” from having “control of things” [p.13]. Elsewhere, he complains of the lack of “self- control” of people who “begin by sneering at family life and family institutions,” and threaten to “throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white” [130]. How does Tom’s expression of such attitudes illuminate his character, his relations with Daisy, and his sense of his place in the world?

At first glance, Tom Buchanan’s speech about Nordic superiority is just one of hate and disgust for other races. However, Tom focuses more on his fear of the demise of his way of life, becoming “utterly submerged” by others (13). His racism is a facade for his fear of romantic dreamers, such as Gatsby, who he believes are a different race altogether. Tom’s passionate and harsh expression about his views on race sheds light on his character, his relationship with Daisy, and his sense of his place in society: it portrays his ruthlessness in protecting the way of life of the established rich from romantic dreamers.