F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a first person narrative told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner vacationing on the east coast. Nick narrates using an inflated, counterfeited tone, and his narration generates the expectation that he is going to be a reliable third party who can account for the story of Gatsby, the “man who gives his name to this book” (Fitzgerald 2). However, upon closer examination of Nick’s use of language, it becomes clear that he does not actually achieve this authority with his opening words. As he sets the stage for the story he is about to tell, he points out that he is writing for us. Thus, the narrative becomes metanarrative from the beginning, as Nick is not only a first person narrator, but like Fitzgerald himself, the author of the book he is writing, and therefore he is shaping a specific account rather than merely recording reality as he sees it unfold. What we, as readers, may or may not choose to realize is that we are reading both books.
In his “younger and more vulnerable years,” Nick recounts advice from his father, which instructs him that if ever he were to “feel like criticizing any one… just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages” that he has (1). By stating this, Nick expresses the idea that inequality and thus division amongst different groups of people begins as early as childhood. Nick later concludes this discussion, still with the intention to ground his credibility as a reliable narrator, by mentioning his father’s words once more, “snobbishly repeating” that “a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth” (2). This second declaration replaces his earlier statement about the origins of the divisive nature of humanity and traces it back further than one’s childhood or “vulnerable years,” to birth. This insight suggests that all human beings have an innate tendency to divide themselves amongst each other and that perhaps this tendency is in our first cry—rooted in language. Ironically, Nick is using language to make this suggestion, while simultaneously attempting to establish himself as a reliable narrator, who does not possess such a default mode of perceiving others. This subtle dissonance leaves the reader uncomfortable upon examining the meaning behind Nick’s words and the conflict they create, because Nick’s his use of language counteracts his many haughty attempts of reliability. Therefore, Nick begins to appear potentially fraudulent as he tells his version of events.
Nick’s narration is also full of double meaning, even from the very beginning, only adding to the perceived partiality of his narrative. After reflecting on the words of his father, Nick speaks more generally to human nature, explaining how his habit of “reserving judgments” has “opened up… many curious natures” to which he has been a “victim” (1). He remarks how the “revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppression” (2). From these early statements, the reader is already able to interpret Nick’s attempt to build his credibility as a reliable third party observer in more ways than one. Here, he appears to speak of the “revelations of young men,” but even this early in the novel, his words contain multiple meanings and could also be talking about language itself. The “terms” that he mentioned can be interpreted as not only the “abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men” (2) Nick overhears, but also the words in which we, as humans, use to communicate with one another and how that communication is “plagiaristic,” already having been used or said, and “marred by obvious suppression,” due to the limitations of language being primarily symbolic at its core. Therefore, Nick’s artificial tone and his elaborate use of words is ironic, revealing Nick and the only tool he is using to inform the reader about Gatsby—words—as somewhat hollow and distrustful, all within the first two pages of the novel.
However, Nick does attempt to account for this implicit loss of trust the reader may experience as early as the first page of the novel. After he explains the “plagiaristic” and “marred” tendencies of how humans use language, he goes on to say that, “reserving judgments is a matter infinite hope” (2). Again, this can be read on the most superficial level, meaning that by withholding judgment on a person’s “short winded elations” or internal feelings, or emotional reactions, one is still holding out hope for the possibility to understand a person and not judge a person from their often times “marred” use of “terms,” or words. With this qualification he is also asking us to reserve judgment as to his narrative, to hear him out fully. But when this statement is examined in a broader context, it becomes an important thematic foundation for the entire novel. The idea that language itself is some kind of dream or miracle, despite its flaws, and that the expression and the receptionof language is an act of trust or “infinite hope” in another person sets up the idea that “infinite hope” is ingrained in humanity, because of the hope required to communicate with others through language. This idea also ties Gatsby’s “extraordinary gift for hope” (2) to human nature from the beginning in order to counteract his questionable exploits, which are never explicitly mentioned by Nick. This phrase “infinite hope,” is extremely important, because it begins not only the second page of the novel, but also what is to become the extended fantasy of the possible avoidance of the type of aristocratic thinking that Nick refers to when quoting his dad, as well as the attraction to this type of thinking. This fantasy continues, as Gatsby stares out over the water at Daisy’s green light, until the last page of the book. There, it is more extensively exposed for its deep ties with destruction after so many of the characters experience tragic deaths, and yet it is simultaneously allowed to persist as a beautiful lie into which humanity chooses to buy.
Although there is already double meaning and irony in Nick’s opening few paragraphs, which attempt to explain why he is a conscientious, cautious, and careful observer, he also makes the decision to end the last paragraph of his opening words with a negation of his ability to be consistently objective. By admitting that even his “tolerance” has a limit, Nick attempts to continue to ground himself as a believable human storyteller. However, Nick is contradicting himself by admitting that he desires “no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart,” but that Gatsby was “exempt from this reaction,” despite the fact that Gatsby “represented everything for which [Nick has] unaffected scorn” (2). Not only is Nick contradicting himself, but his contradictions place Gatsby on a pedestal from the very beginning, by stating that he stands for what Nick is so carefully trying, and failing, to avoid with his flamboyant introduction and continued narrative—the elaborate forged image of Gatsby’s lifestyle. It was Gatsby’s “extraordinary gift for hope,” and his “romantic readiness” that Nick seems to qualify as redeemable, despite the fact that he essentially disdains everything else that Gatsby represents.
Nick even goes as far to point out that, “Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men” (2). As credible as Nick has attempted to sound, this line appears ambiguous, when more closely examined. It is unclear if “Gatsby turned out all right in the end,” or if Nick is merely setting up the reader tobelievethat Gatsby turned out all right and was not the man of questionable intentions that he appeared to be during his lifetime. Or perhaps Nick and readers alike desperately desire to accept Gatsby as “all right.” In this way, the main function Nick’s narrative’s is to make sure that Gatsby appears “all right in the end,” or is viewed as a redeemable character. This idea opens up Nick’s final statement about Gatsby’s death as something to question, as to what truly did “prey on Gatsby.” Was it the “foul dust [that] floated in the wake of his dreams,” or the consequences of obtaining his dreams that were a part of making money in American society that was was his downfall, as Nick explicitly suggests. Or was it Gatsby himself, or human nature, as Nick implies through his bias. This subtle implication suggests that just underneath the beautiful artifice of personality is human nature, and inevitably flawed character, that not only preyed on Gatsby, but also continues to prey on all human beings. Or, as a third option, readers are invited to question the extent to which even Nick preys on Gatsby in his mythmaking narrative endeavors.
The double meaning behind Nick’s words in this opening section in conjunction with Nick’s rhetorical strategy for grounding his credibility become the ultimate contradiction. Nick is basing the reader’s trust in his ability to tell this story about a man, Gatsby, with an “extraordinary gift for hope” on the fact that he is a non-judgmental, third party observer of events and intimate human moments, neglecting the fact—almost as carelessly as Tom and Daisy run through their daily lives—that informing an audience always involves persuasion and therefore judgment.Thus, from the beginning of the novel, Nick is painting a story with symbolic words, laden with double meaning, which he is entrusting to the reader to observe and interpret.
But perhaps even more so than the opening of the novel, the last page of Fitzgerald’s most critically acclaimed work is wrought with even more duality in the nature of its language. Nick is still the first person narrator, however unreliable, but he takes on a more abstract way of speaking, as he completely slips into a mythological mode. Nick becomes “aware of the old island… that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world” (180). The imagery of Dutch sailors implies the old world, or Europe, while imagery of the “fresh green breast of the new world” implies America. This is a powerful metaphor. By imagining America as the “green breast of the new world,” Nick presents readers with a rich and beautiful lie about humanity and its true nature. Readers may want to admire the beautiful imagery of the green breast of America, just waiting for discovery, and how the vastness of the “new” land was the only thing comparable to man’s “capacity for wonder.” But this tantalizing imagery assumes that America was fresh, new, green, and waiting for settlers—not just another part of the earth and already inhabited by humanity.
The contrast here between the image of the green breast and earlier the image of Myrtle Wilson’s ripped, bloody breast, torn apart by Gatsby’s “circus wagon” of a car, is stark. And yet readers may easily forget this contrast, because Nick has essentially written Myrtle, a character much like Gatsby in her fantastic desires, out of the story at this point. His description of America as a representation of man’s capacity for wonder neglects to directly expose the brutality and horrors behind what actually happens when humans are faced with seemingly uncharted territory. In the discovery of the not-so-new world, humanity was faced with a land commensurate to the idea that a society could exist without a hierarchy of social classes and desire for aristocratic thinking, or least reserve an opportunity to break away from the aristocratic system of the “old” world. But that is not what happened with/in America, and the double meaning in Nick’s language subtly suggests that humanity may not have to ability to accomplish this goal/dream and it becomes all the more apparent that human nature is to divide based on differences, and that this is possibly and unfortunately preprogrammed, much like or perhaps as a product of the binary oppositions of language.
The “dark fields of the republic” (180) or human nature, are rooted in language and cannot help but be divisive, and this division appears automatic. Every letter, sound, word, sentence, and thought is heavily concentrated in time and history, while ultimately symbolic in representation. Therefore, language itself and all of its byproducts, are a lie that only makes sense in cultural context, where even storytellers, such as Nick, and readers reside. But this is a lie in which humanity so desperately desires to invest. Though it may be a lie living in the past, language seems to be a type of miracle, because it possesses an ability to extend people and stories into the “orgastic future” in which Gatsby believed. Communication is a type of trust, or hope that people must extend to one another; despite its nature of self-focused perspective that so easily leads people to division, classism, racism, bigotry, and all of the horrors of humanity.
It is only in the second to last paragraph where Nick makes a huge shift in his first person narration and begins to use the pronoun “we,” both addressing humanity as a whole, and signifying his ties with it. Human nature has, and perhaps will always fail us repeatedly, but “that is no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… and one fine morning—“ perhaps we will be better, more conscious people (180). “So we beat on,” with loaded language, full of historical meaning and prejudice. We potentially expose the miracle of language for its artificiality and divisive power every time we come into contact with words, and yet we are “borne back ceaselessly into the past,” by the meaning and interpretation of words, holding out hope like Gatsby had as the romantic American hero.
However, America and the ideas associated with it are not uniquely “American.” More than an American hero who dies, Gatsby is a representation of particular qualities of humanity and an illustration of the lie that there is such a thing as equal footing or impartiality in the world. When Gatsby dies, we are left attached to him, even though pure horror is exposed through the questionable reliability Nick’s language has in telling Gatsby’s story. We are left, despite all of the destruction, with the desire to hear it in a beautiful way that extends hope through narrative, which Fitzgerald provides by extending Gatsby’s hope through Nick’s narrative.
No comments:
Post a Comment