The American 1920s was an epoch marked by declining moral standards and extravagantly pretentious shows of wealth. The luxurious parties, artificial palaces, and irresponsible alcohol consumption of the ‘20s were all visible in the changing concept of the American Dream. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s symbolic novel, The Great Gatsby, James Gatz is consumed by his desire to obtain this materialistic American Dream. Gatz, the ambitious son of shiftless farm people, escapes his disappointing life by conceiving his own reality in which he is the opulent and popular Jay Gatsby.
Along the path to attaining his goals, Gatsby falls for Daisy, a physical manifestation of his aspirations, and lets her represent all that he yearns for. In his plot to regain Daisy, Gatsby commits innumerable vices, loses his true self, and embeds in Daisy more value than she can ever sustain. Despite surface similarities between Gatsby and other morally sordid east-eggers, the narrator, Nick, is correct when he proclaims that Gatsby was all right in the end; Gatsby’s sins were a result of his materialistic 1920s American dream, and not his moral character, which remains intact throughout the novel.
Furthermore, Fitzgerald conveys Gatsby’s purity through contrast with other characters and through the voice of a trustable narrator. Gatsby’s unwavering dedication to a decaying American dream is what captures Nick’s “unaffected scorn” (2), forces Gatsby to partake in sin, and disguises his real values. Gatz humbly grew up on a small farm in North Dakota, a state in the Midwest dictated by more traditional views of the American dream founded on family. For Gatz, the failure of his parents serves as a reason to leave this conservative dream behind, and adopt the popular, rising dream of success.
In the 1920s, the American dream was disgustingly corrupted by notions of opulent, careless, big-city folk, and Gatsby becomes a victim of this idea. When Gatsby goes to Daisy’s house for the first time, he is swept off his feet, not by love, but by sheer astonishment at her wealth and upper class status. He falls in love with everything that Daisy is and represents. For Gatsby, even “her voice is full of money” (120). Gatsby knew “that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God” (110).
The poor, ambitious farm boy thinks that if he intertwines his fantasies with Daisy, then he will be committed to her forever and his desires will be satiated. Unfortunately, while he is forever committed to her, his longings are never fulfilled. It is Gatsby’s commitment to Daisy, the embodiment of his material aspirations, that drives him to partake in so much justified wickedness. Knowing that the only way to win over Daisy is to feign old-wealth, Gatsby develops an intricate series of lies and establishes himself among the Long Island elite.
The “foul dust that floated in the wake of his [Gatsby’s] dreams” (2), that Nick mentions, is the series of sins that Gatsby commits to achieve his vision. Every meeting he has with Wolfsheim, every fake bond he sells, and every bottle of alcohol he bootlegs is to gain money to impress Daisy. Every immoral party that Gatsby hosts that summer is for the purpose of possibly luring in his long-lost sweetheart. Gatsby lived entirely for his dream, and thus all the immoralities he perpetrated were not a reflection of his moral character, but rather the necessary sins for achieving his goal. In reality, Gatsby is a good person.
Fitzgerald gives glimpses of the true Gatsby in various scenes such as in the library where Owl-Eyes notes that Gatsby’s library is real and unread: “It’s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! ” (46). Furthermore, in a novel where alcohol is presented as the elixir of the sinful, Gatsby is the only one that does not drink. In perhaps the greatest act of selflessness in the story, when Nick asks Gatsby if Daisy was driving the car that killed Myrtle, Gatsby responds “Yes…but of course I’ll say I was” (143).
Gatsby nobly takes the blame off Daisy’s shoulders, and pays for the crime with his own life. These examples all illuminate Gatsby’s true personality, which is shrouded by the evils his dream forces him to commit. To further prove Gatsby’s moral solidarity, Fitzgerald contrasts Gatsby with the vulgar east-eggers he is surrounded by. The East Egg social scene is comprised of extremely wealthy, pretentious, selfish, snide, cheating adults with names that reflect their dreadfulness: the O. R. P. Schraeders, the Stonewall Jackson Abrams, the Fishguards, the Hammerheads, the Belugas, the Smirkes, Ripney Snells, Ulysses Swett, S.
B. Whitebait, and S. W. Belcher. Unlike all these infidels that live solely for entertainment and come to his parties for useless fun, Gatsby actually has a real, palpable goal that he wishes to accomplish. Owl-Eyes remarks “Why, my God! They used to go there by the hundreds” (175) when he realizes that no one else came to Gatsby’s funeral. Owl-Eyes is the only one that shows up because he saw the unique truth in Gatsby, while every other senseless east-egger was only temporarily interested in the fun rumors that surrounded his life.
Even Meyer Wolfsheim, Gatsby’s longest, closest friend does not attend Gatsby’s funeral because he declares “When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way” (171). The selfishness in these people is endless. Fitzgerald uses Tom and Daisy in particular to underscore Gatsby’s righteousness. Tom is described as “always leaning aggressively forward,” with “two shining arrogant eyes” (7), and is portrayed to be a cold-hearted, aristocratic cheater. The evil bastard was out cheating on his wife on their honeymoon and on the day that their daughter was born.
Gatsby, who has none of those characteristics and has never cheated, is much more like Wilson in that they both demonstrate true love and both lose their women to the lustful hands of Tom. Even Daisy, Gatsby’s love, is so different from him. She is evil, tacky, tasteless, vulgar, stupid, uncompassionate, and allows for Gatsby’s death without feeling the slightest bit of remorse afterwards. Even though Gatsby loses his life in protecting her, the foul woman does not even come to his funeral.
Nick describes the couple saying “They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together” (6). Nick observes that the couple is bored with their life and that they see beauty in nothing. They are abusers of their old-wealth and wander aimlessly about. This is so vastly different from Gatsby, who knows exactly what he wants all throughout the novel, and tries incredibly hard to gain the old-wealth that they misuse.
Gatsby, a pure, motivated Midwesterner, clearly does not fit in this vile world of disgusting and careless people, and, in many ways, is in fact better off dead. Nick, the narrator through whom the entire story is told, presents a paradoxical view of Gatsby, but still supports the notion that Gatsby was alright in the end. He conveys “Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction – Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn” (2). While it seems contradictory that Nick admires Gatsby, the man who represents everything he dislikes, this statement does make sense.
He does not hate Gatsby, but rather hates who Gatsby must become to achieve his dream. Nick is sickened by the lack of decencies and principles in the East, and on the surface, Gatsby seems to represent all of this. Although, through the course of the novel, Nick uncovers Gatsby’s past and understands that Gatsby is really just a poor, farm boy chasing his dream, who must partake in these vices to achieve his goal. From the very beginning Nick takes notice of Gatsby’s purity: “He smiled understandingly – much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance…” (48).
The genuineness of Gatsby’s smile shines through his façade, and Nick finds warmth in it. As Nick and Gatsby slowly become closer, Nick sees further into the real James Gatz, and finds respect for Gatz’s “extraordinary gift for hope” (2). Nick admires the purpose that he discovers in Gatsby and becomes Gatsby’s only ally in this cruel world. He goes so far as to say “They’re a rotten crowd…You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together” (154). By saying this, Nick is confirming that Gatsby is not like the rest of the corrupt East Egg crowd, but he is a different, better person.
According to Nick, Gatsby “turned out all right at the end” (2), and his viewpoint must be accepted. It is easy to shrug off Nick as a dishonest storyteller, but the truth is that Nick is the most trustable character in the novel. Nick also comes from the Midwest, a place in the 1920s that had not yet been tainted by the changing societal values and the declining behavioral standards that ruined the East. He represents an objective bystander that has no reason to lie, and thus it is reasonable to trust Nick when he declares that Gatsby turned out all right in the end.
Jay Gatsby is a vastly misunderstood character. His excessive parties, rivers of alcohol, and imitation Hotel de Ville all suggest a typical, depraved Long Islander. This is not at all who Gatsby is. He is really an innocent farm boy by the name of James Gatz in the pursuit of success, something his parents never could supply him. Gatsby’s visions of success manifest in Daisy, and his commitment to her becomes eternal. Gatsby’s sins are simply the product of his desire to attain this mutilated dream of fulfillment.
Despite his vices, Gatsby is still a morally sound character throughout the novel. As a tribute to his moral uniformity, he never does fit in with the east-egg crowd, and instead gains the respect of Nick. Gatsby is not so much to blame as is the general deterioration of the American dream in the East, during the 1920s. Gatsby really was all right in the end; He simply “believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us,” (180) and tried his hardest to reach the unachievable goal he set for himself.
