56 pages • 1 hour read
F. Scott FitzgeraldThe Great Gatsby
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1925A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Illusion of the American Dream
Through Nick’s observations and conclusions about the romantic exploits of his friends in East and West Egg, Fitzgerald offers a broader examination of the state of the American dream in the 1920s. Although the so-called Roaring Twenties are often recalled in modern popular culture as an era of prosperity, merrymaking, and challenged gender roles, Fitzgerald views “The Jazz Age”—a term he coined—as a corruption of American ideals. Individualism is subjugated to unattainable dreams of wealth. The pursuit of happiness is replaced by the pursuit of pleasure. All of this leads to a sense of moral decay that Nick ultimately rejects by moving back to Minnesota.
To Nick, the greatest victim of this corrupted American dream is Gatsby. Embarrassed by his humble beginnings, a young Gatsby projects all his ambitions toward wealth and upward social mobility onto Daisy. This serves neither of them well; Daisy is expected to live up to an impossible ideal of perfection, while Gatsby is compelled to subjugate his entire identity to a dream of prosperity. While Gatsby eventually achieves the wealth he craves, it is a hollow victory. The old aristocratic dynamics that predate the founding of America—and against which America was presumably a reaction—continue to exclude him from the highest echelons of society.
Moreover, Gatsby’s casting of Daisy as a paragon of perfection acts as a warning against maintaining one’s faith in the American dream, when that dream may no longer be a worthy pursuit in the era the book was written. To Fitzgerald, Daisy is no more worthy of Gatsby than the 1920s promise of prosperity is to everyday Americans. As Nick learns, the moral rot of a postwar America—one that was arguably accelerated by the disillusionment solders felt after witnessing unspeakable acts of violence in World War I—demands a reconfiguration of the American dream that extends become the accumulation of wealth.
The Capacity to Reinvent One’s Identity
Gatsby exemplifies the mutability of identity and a person’s capacity to reinvent that identity. As a boy who came from humble beginnings in South Dakota, Gatsby lies to Daisy about his family’s wealth to prove himself worthy of her. Yet when she rejects him for Tom, this alter ego becomes an obsession. Through ill-gotten gains from bootlegging, Gatsby builds up the persona of a mysterious millionaire. The readers feels the effect of this aura is keenly thanks to Fitzgerald’s decision to withhold the true details of Gatsby’s life until well into the novel.
Yet this raises the question of whether Gatsby truly changed or if he is still James Gatz from South Dakota. Gatsby’s reinvention may be doomed from the start, in that he longs for and eventually achieves the wealth and sophisticated he lacked as a youth, yet he did it made those gains to recreate a love affair from when he was still James Gatz. By changing his identity into what he thought Daisy wanted—though she presumably loved with him for who he was—Gatsby may be the one most responsible for poisoning the relationship.
Another less subtle version of a character reinventing one’s identity is Nick. Although he never undergoes the kind of change Gatsby does, he mindfully relocates from Minnesota to New York to embrace the zeitgeist of the 1920s, which found its epicenter on the East Coast. It is an open question whether Nick’s ultimate failure to reinvent himself is due to a moral fortitude on his part, insufficient motivation, or an immutable sense of his own identity that remains entrenched in the more traditional moral values of the Midwest. Nick and Gatsby thus both raise the much broader question of whether it is truly possible to change one’s own identity.
The Role of Love and Relationships in a Culture Defined by Wealth and Hedonism
Ironically, of all the relationships and love affairs depicted in The Great Gatsby, the most stable is Tom and Daisy’s, despite their mutual infidelity. Nick cuts ties with Jordan, Myrtle and George are on the verge of a total breakdown when she is killed, and of course Gatsby fails to win back Daisy. From one perspective, this reflects a broader cynicism toward love and relationships on the part of the author.
The dissolution of every promising relationship suggests that healthy and fulfilling romantic love is made virtually impossible by the cultural and social forces of the 1920s. The era’s hedonism leads to infidelity and mistrust, while the emphasis on wealth accumulation over moral and spiritual concerns upends individuals’ emotional priorities. For example, Gatsby centers his conception of what he can provide to Daisy solely around wealth and social status. Given that, it isn’t entirely surprising that she rejects him after learning his wealthy persona is a lie. Mirroring this relationship is the marriage between Myrtle and George. Myrtle too centers courtship around wealth and materialism, thus poisoning her marriage. Finally, Jordan’s sanguine attitudes about truth and morality, which are in large part reactions to earlier eras’ moral strictures, alienate Nick. Only Tom and Daisy succeed as a couple, suggesting that the sociocultural conditions of the Roaring Twenties are largely conducive to toxic relationships.
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