$Unique_ID{bob01252}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Structure Of The Great Gatsby:}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Fitzgerald, F. Scott}
$Affiliation{Department Of English, Simon Fraser University}
$Subject{gatsby
fitzgerald

}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Book:        Great Gatsby, The
Author:      Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Critic:      Cooperman, Stanley
Affiliation: Department Of English, Simon Fraser University

The Structure Of The Great Gatsby:

     In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald succeeded in achieving a certain
"disassociation of sensibility" by structuring his book so that both the
"Gatsby" part of himself and that other part-the firm part of his own moral
and intellectual being-would complement rather than dilute each other. Using
the device of a "dual hero" - that is, a first-person narrator who himself
represents one aspect of Fitzgerald's moral vision, he created a work which
is both more and less "autobiographical" than his earlier books.

     If Jay Gatsby represents still another dramatization of the false dream
of money which fascinated Fitzgerald throughout his career, it is Nick
Carroway who represents an assertion of the traditional strengths which had
made America great. By filtering the story of Jay Gatsby through the narrative
of Nick Carroway, Fitzgerald not only defines what "The American Dream" had
become, but what it could have been - and, perhaps, what at one time it
actually was.

     With The Great Gatsby, at any rate, F. Scott Fitzgerald produced one of
the "small" masterpieces of American literature. Using the methods of
impressionism and symbolic narrative rather than documentary realism, he
succeeded in defining not only essential qualities of his own age, but in
producing a tribute-ironic, perhaps, but nevertheless a tribute-to the
basically idealistic vision of American material power. Whether this tribute
must also be considered an epitaph, is not for us to say.