The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0125/01254.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 25KB | 468 lines

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$Pretitle{}
$Title{Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Great Gatsby: Chapters 5 - 9}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Fitzgerald, F. Scott}
$Affiliation{Department Of English, Simon Fraser University}
$Subject{gatsby
daisy
gatsby's
dream
buchanan
itself
jay
like
ideal
indeed}
$Date{}
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Title:       Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Book:        Great Gatsby, The
Author:      Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Critic:      Cooperman, Stanley
Affiliation: Department Of English, Simon Fraser University

Great Gatsby: Chapters 5 - 9

Chapter V

     Once Nick understands the Gatsby-Daisy relationship, he (and the reader)
also understands that Gatsby's entire "production" is aimed at the winning of
an ideal, and there is a marked increase in urgency when Nick discovers the
entire area of West Egg ablaze one evening with "unreal" light. It is Gatsby's
mansion, where the lights have been turned on in every room. This is a very
effective image, an example of the narrative economy of Fitzgerald at his
best. For the blaze of "unreal" light communicates both the intensity of
Gatsby's emotion, and the illusion which is the basis for the emotion itself.
Some sort of climax is obviously in the offing - and if this climax turns into
a absurdity, into an anti-climax of pathetic tragedy (as indeed it will), the
cause is to be found in the nature of Gatsby's dream - a dream which (as we
have so often remarked) contains the inevitability of its own destruction.

Gatsby's Gratitude:

     The resources of Gatsby himself are so completely without a standard of
either moral code or social perception, that his attempt to express himself
becomes little more than a vulgarity. For in sincerely wanting to "thank"
Nick, he offers to cut him in on a lucrative stock deal.

     Under the circumstances, however, Nick has no choice but to refuse
Gatsby's offer - for the offer itself would turn an act of friendship into a
"business deal," and so become an act of degradation. That Nick perceives
this, and Gatsby does not, defines the gulf separating a world in which all of
human emotion - love or friendship, or gratitude - is little more than
"business" and material acquisition, from a world (Nick's world of the
Midwest) where there are still areas of human life which are simply not to be
bought or sold.

     The point to remember is that Gatsby does not mean to be sordid or
insulting; he is using the only means at his disposal-the only "magic" he has
at his command: material acquisition. It is, indeed, the same "magic" with
which he hopes to achieve his Ideal of Beauty: Daisy Buchanan.

"Grand Passion" And Low Comedy:

     Nick tries to comfort him, and finally becomes impatient: "You're acting
like a little boy," he says to Jay Gatsby, the Prince of the Golden Palace,
and this single remark defines much of Gatsby's peculiar charm - and pathos.
For Gatsby, despite (or because of) his wealth, and his dreams, is indeed a
"little boy" - a worshipper of toys which he takes to be signs of Divinity.
For boy-men like Jay Gatsby, the trivial must be always elevated to the
Cosmically Significant, and it is precisely this quality of "boyish"
idealization demonstrated by Gatsby, that other American writers (Ernest
Hemingway, for example) came to see as the unique "charm" - and maddening
weakness - of so many of their countrymen.

The Palace Of Enchantment:

     And how does Gatsby react to the fact that he has at last captured his
Butterfly Queen with a "net of gold"? He simply moves like a man sleep-walking
through a dream that has suddenly become flesh. His very possessions,
accumulated with such effort, suddenly become almost "unreal" in Daisy's
presence; and indeed they are important only as they succeed or fail to
succeed in giving her delight.

     It is important to note, however, that the very realization of Gatsby's
dream has in some way "spoiled" the dream itself; at this moment which he had
idealized for so long, when his emotion is at "an inconceivable pitch of
intensity," Gatsby somehow is beginning to feel a loss-a loss of something he
cannot name or identify. "He was running down like an overwound clock," Nick
observes - and the image, with all its absurd deflation, is indeed a
description of Gatsby's ultimate fate.

Gatsby's Magic Shirts:

     Gatsby's silk shirts as many critics have noted, are actually far more
important than any mere garment ever spun by machine or man. For these shirts,
to Jay Gatsby (like his car or his mansion), are important not in themselves,
but for what they represent - and what they represent is the shrine of
"success" and Ideal value made possible by success itself. Gatsby does not
merely "wear" these shirts; he worships them, or uses them as sacred objects
in a ritual whose meaning is, paradoxically enough, spiritual rather than
materialistic.

     To Tom Buchanan, for example, a shirt, even a silk shirt, would be-quite
simply-a shirt. For Jay Gatsby the material object transcends itself; it
becomes a mystic sign and spiritual endowment. This is what Daisy sense in
this memorable scene-for as Gatsby continues to pile the rainbow of silk cloth
higher and higher, Daisy literally collapses in a kind of ecstatic moaning;
bending her head into the shirts, she begins to cry "stormily," declaring
their beauty with sobs of mingled delight and sadness: like a music lover
rhapsodizing over a violin solo by Bach.

     The meaning of Gatsby's shirts, in other words, despite the peculiar
absurdity of the entire scene, is that of a man who brings to his Dream a
preoccupation with materialism which in some way has been transformed into
enchantment; hence the relevance of the dedication on the flyleaf of The Great
Gatsby, the bit of verse from the work of Thomas Park D'Invilliers:

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!"

Gatsby's "Hymn":

     After what might be called the "ecstasy of the shirts," however, Gatsby's
mood of exultation somehow darkens and returns to a lower pitch. For having
shown Daisy his palace, having reached her at last-knowing that she will be
his-there must inevitably be a loss of enchantment itself. Daisy's fascination
for Gatsby, after all, had rested in large part upon her very unavailability;
made available once again, turned from an Ultimate Cause to simply another
possession, Daisy must suffer a considerable loss in status. Gatsby senses
this, a "loss" to which Nick refers when, describing Gatsby's appearance, he
remarks that "his count of enchanted objects had diminished by one."

     "Enchanted objects," after all, by definition disappear when touched;
and this is precisely the measure of Gatsby's success - and his loss.

Chapter VI

Gatsby's Identity - And The American Dream:

     At this point Nick's analysis of the Gatsby character provides a basic
insight not only into the character of the namesake of the novel, but into
"The American Dream" of enchanted "success." For the dream of the 17-year-old
James Gatz-the vision of "a vast, vulgar, meretricious beauty" that in some
way was Divine as well as merely materialistic, is precisely the dream of
Jay Gatsby as a man.

     The pathos, of course, is that the fevered dreams and hope for some
iridescent and glowing "glory" that one might expect from a 17-year-old
drifter possessed of a keen imagination, is precisely the dream of the adult
man as well. The result is a kind of nursery turned into a cathedral; a world
in which the fairy-stories of adolescence (themselves based on pulp fiction)
become the sole motivation of manhood, and are given an almost spiritual
sanctification because they are the only Holy Cause which James Gatz - and the
world which shaped him - can offer to human aspiration.

     From his adolescence, in short, Gatz - Gatsby had been pursuing the Holy
Glow of some vaguely imagined "success," an "identity" gleaming like a mirage
just over the horizon of tomorrow. The result