A New Criticism View of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
In another age, traveling medicine shows would tout their amazing stars as “The Great” or “The Invincible”. We learned to expect feats of magic and miracle from these men, even if beneath it all we knew they were charlatans. Fitzgerald used this bit of the pop psyche in the title of his novel, “The Great Gatsby”, and as we might expect he delivered a character strikingly similar to these miracle men of old. However, many people believed in these charlatans, even if they wouldn’t say so in public. Their tricks tapped into our desire for magic and wonder; they were men of fantasy and intrigue. In naming his novel “The Great Gatsby”, Fitzgerald stirred the complex reaction America had to all the Great and Invincible of our history, tapping into a rich spring of paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension.
Fitzgerald drove the reader into his novel with the question of Gatsby’s greatness. We wondered who this man might be. We come with a prejudice from the title, then Fitzgerald further guides us to accept Gatsby’s greatness by showing us his wealth. He has such wealth we are willing to accept the man must be great as well. But an ambiguity exists at the same time; nobody knows where this man came from, where his wealth originated, or indeed what makes him so great. But we believe it just the same. Here we have a man who has wealth and seems willing to share it. He seems well mannered and genteel, yet he reaches down from his pedestal and befriends our narrator, Nick. It seems somewhat a paradox, but real life is full of such opposites that the story only seems more real because of it. Because the paradox seems so real we believe the story, and because we believe the story we commit even deeper to believing the story’s title; the man must indeed be great.
But Fitzgerald also introduces a tension, possibly springing from the sense of ambiguity. As a reader we want to know where Gatsby came from, why he is wealthy, but we are afraid we won’t like the answer. Fitzgerald strings us along then plants little seeds of doubt, and we begin to worry. What if Gatsby is a bootlegger or a gambler, would we be able to reconcile the belief we have already adopted that he is indeed great? We need him to be great, because we already believe he is. Eventually, however, we come to realize Gatsby was not born to greatness nor did he really aspire toward it. Even his schooling is questionable. He does not have any of the sure signs of greatness we have come to expect, yet we realize there is still something great about him. It might simply be that we want to justify the decision we’ve already made about him. We need him to be great because we’ve already made up our minds that he is, but this brings a certain irony into play because we have committed to his greatness even though he isn’t great by the definition we originally would have given the word.
Again, it is like the charlatan who made us believe in snake oil. When the snake oil doesn’t cure baldness or make your hiccups go away, we tell ourselves “The Great and Powerful” charlatan was a great entertainer. He is still great, just not in the way we originally expected him to be. In “The Great Gatsby” Fitzgerald first made us believe Gatsby was great, then left us to justify the reasoning in spite of the evidence. But that is just like real life.
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5 Responses to “A New Criticism View of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby”
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Like many, I first came upon this book in an English class, perhaps the last place Fitzgerald might have expected to have found it since the book was a commercial failure during his lifetime.
Your analysis here is a very intersting one, and it hits upon a process many people go through when accepting anything that turns out to be different than they expected later on. At worst, people will continue to hold to their original opinions regardless of later contradictory evidence.
This predilection “works well” as we read the novel and go through the stages of acceptance and justification you describe.
Malcolm
Malcolm R. Campbell’s last blog post..Book Review: ‘The Frugal Book Promoter’
Hi Malcolm,
Then the “New Criticism” critical theory was probably what you used in English class! I didn’t really succeed in sticking to New Criticism’s creed of only referring to the text. In reality, this is more a Reader Response critique. But anyway, glad you found it interesting.
If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been writing a series of Gatsby critiques using the major theories of critical analysis. Can you tell I’m getting toward the end of my Master’s work? LOL
Ah, so you’re copying parts of your thesis into the blog! Don’t give away a potential book.
Malcolm
Malcolm R. Campbell’s last blog post..Book Review: ‘The Frugal Book Promoter’
My thesis won’t be on critical theory, I’m just getting geared up. I think the PhD would have to come before anybody would listen to me about criticism.
Actually, my thesis might be a fiction piece . . . and I’m going to be doing some reading up on self publishing and web promotion. Of course all that might find its way into this blog . . . if anybody’s left after I bore them all to tears with this critical theory stuff. LOL
Hey! Who says theory is boring????
Seriously, I am enjoying reading through these posts on The Great Gatsby, Terry. I have found that it is sometimes helpful to do a brief reading of a text from as many different critical perspectives as is manageable. It helps, I think, to see the text from different angles, and it an exercise like this can also remind us of the fact that the various schools are all valid, when applied well.
OK, so maybe most people think theory is boring. But I find quite the opposite to be true for me.