By Lechi Eke
Prior to the late 19th century, past knowledge was revised and previous norms adhered to in literary works. But in the 1880s, men of thought emerged with ideas of pushing these norms aside and trying new techniques. Writers began to experiment with new ways of telling their stories. They addressed the changing ideas of reality – what we, as humans, perceive come from lots of anarchic chaotic goings-on in the mind.
In 1895, Freud Nietzsche published his first major work; collaboration with Josef Breuer, in which he propounded the theory that all subjective realities (or the way individuals perceive things) are based on inner drives and instincts and these inform the way individuals respond to the outside world.
Many earlier theories had suggested that the mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa), and according to John Locke’s empiricism, external and absolute reality could impress itself on a human or an individual’s mind.
In simple terms, these philosophers were trying to figure out why man behaves the way he does, whether it is the environment that influences him (that is “relativity” according to Newton and Einstein, or the interplay of the different parts of man’s mind influencing how he behaves – “positivism”). Ancient philosopher, Aristotle, had written what he called, “man, the animal” and Carl Jung (1875-1961) extended the idea by saying, “…human impulses in breaking social norms were not the product of childishness or ignorance, but rather derived from the essential nature of the human animal.”
So in 1925, American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter and essayist, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) published a novel (The Great Gatsby) that examines the goings-on in a man’s mind, and how his interpretations of what he sees informs his actions or the reality we perceive. What we call reality, according to these cognoscente, is the interplay of the conflicts of the different parts of the mind, and the resultant actions.
The Great Gatsby is a sad story of disappointment and tragedy, a metaphorical dramatic narrative of how America with so much potentials for the young, failed them. The story is set in the Roaring Twenties (1920s) which the author christened The Jazz Age. Fitzgerald like other early modernist writers, writing after WW1, broke writing tradition of artists being reliable interpreters of life, who depict conventional culture and ideas; instead they set out to expose “the irrationality at the roots of a supposedly rational world!” How the individual responds to the society is not out of a state of cool rationality, rather man’s actions come from a jumble of irrationalities, or anarchy. So realism is not as simple as you perceive it. Realism is a product of anarchy from the mind!
Other innovative techniques which arose from the querying of reality which early 19th century writers employed in telling their stories are: stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and the use of multiple points of view. This challenges our knowledge of realism, revealing the need for deeper emotional realism.
Plot summary of The Great Gatsby
A mechanic, George Wilson and his wife, Myrtle, live in a refuse dump known as ‘the valley of ashes’ located in the New York City area in the 1920s. Today the area is known as Flushing Meadows, Corona Park.
In 1922, a Yale graduate from the Midwest, left his homeland to seek greener pasture in the eastern area of New York. His name is Nick Caraway and he had fought in the Great War. Nick gets a job as a bond salesman and rents a bungalow in a village of West Egg, named Long Island. Near Nick’s bungalow is a luxurious estate owned by an enigmatic multi-millionaire named Jay Gatsby, famous for his evening parties (soirees) which he doesn’t participate in.
There’s another fashionable family who lives just on the other side of West Egg, named East Egg, Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Daisy is distantly related to Nick while Tom like Nick is an alumnus of Yale, and a football star while in school. The Buchanans recently moved from Chicago to a colonial mansion across the bay facing Gatsby’s luxury mansion. One evening, Nick visits them and meets a young impudent flapper named Jordan Baker. Jordan is Daisy’s childhood friend and a golf champion. Before the evening runs out, she tells Nick a secret about her friend, Daisy’s husband. Tom is in an illicit affair with a married woman named Myrtle Wilson, the mechanic’s wife who lives on the valley of ashes. That evening, as he’s there visiting the Buchanans, Nick notices Gatsby standing on his lawn gazing across the bay to a green light.
After some days, Tom Buchanan invites Nick to travel to New York City with him. Nick reluctantly agrees. They travel by train and make a stop at that refuse dump named valley of ashes. There, his mistress, Myrtle joins them and they drove to New York City, to a small apartment Tom rented as rendezvous or tryst for the two. Soon, guests arrive and a party starts, but ends in the lovers’ quarrel because of something Myrtle said about Daisy, Tom’s wife. Tom slaps her and breaks her nose.
Nick gets an invitation to a party at Gatsby’s luxurious mansion one day, and attends. At the party, he recognizes no one. Feeling self-conscious, he starts drinking heavily until he meets Jordan. As they chat, a man accosts them and introduces himself as Jay Gatsby, and declares that he and Nick served in the third infantry division during the war. Nick notices that Jay ingratiates with him, and that he keeps his eyes trained on him as he leaves the party.
After that party, in late July, Gatsby and Nick have lunch at a speakeasy (a joint), and Gatsby tries to impress Nick with tales of his heroic acts during the war, and his days at Oxford university. When later, Nick meets Jordan at the Plaza Hotel, she tells Nick how Gatsby and Daisy met in 1917 when Gatsby was an officer in the American Expeditionary Forces, and fell in love before Gatsby was deployed overseas. However, Daisy after waiting for Gatsby to no avail, married Tom albeit, reluctantly.
Gatsby uses Nick to reunite with Daisy and the two starts an affair. Not too long after, in September, Tom discovers that his wife, Daisy, is having an affair with Gatsby when she carelessly addresses Gatsby in an intimate manner in front of him. The two men are later seen in a suite in the Plaza Hotel, arguing about the affair. Gatsby puts Daisy on the spot insisting that she denies she loves her husband. Daisy declares that she loves both of them, and they both are upset. Tom tells his wife that Gatsby is a crook who made his money from bootlegging. Daisy is appalled and decides to remain with her husband.
Knowing this, Tom asks Gatsby to drive Daisy home with his (Tom’s) car. As they drive back to East Egg, Daisy driving, and passing through the valley of ashes, by George Wilson’s workshop, they encounter Myrtle who thinks it’s her lover, Tom Buchanan driving, and she runs into the road to flag down the car. Daisy accidentally kills her.
However, Gatsby takes the blame to save Daisy. When he narrates this to Nick later that Daisy accidentally killed her husband’s mistress, Nick tells him to run away to protect himself from the law. Gatsby refuses. George Wilson believing that the driver who killed his wife must be his wife’s lover goes to Gatsby’s luxury mansion and shoots him dead in his swimming pool. He in turn, kills himself.
Only Henry Gatz (Gatsby’s dad) and Nick attended Gatsby’s funeral despite thelarge parties he used to host. After the funeral, Nick starts considering leaving the east to return to the west since it seems that the east isn’t good for all of them westerners: himself, Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom.
He meets Tom and refuses to shake his hand. Tom admits that he’s the one that told George Wilson that Gatsby owned the car that killed his wife.
Nick decides to visit Gatsby’s mansion one more time before returning to the Midwest. Standing where he first saw Gatsby, he finds himself staring at the green light across the bay which is emanating from the tail end of Daisy’s clock.
The End
The 1920s was a time of great parties across Europe and America. It was a time wealthy individuals showed off their wealth (in The Great Gatsby, Jay is showing off his great wealth, that is the reality we see, but in his mind there are jumbles of thoughts motivating him to throw the parties – he’s in need of his ex-lover, he’s in search of her; he expects to draw her to come to him one day by attending one of his wild parties!). Set in the Roaring Twenties, The Great Gatsby provides a critical history of the Jazz Age, the flapper culture, and the flamboyant reckless lifestyle of the 1920s. This kind of lifestyle often doesn’t end well, and both the protagonist and the author (who himself lived the 20s lifestyle until death), ended in tragic deaths.
At this time in history, the individual counts, a man makes money and gains a chance of seeking pleasure and acquiring what he desires; young women are also coming into their own. We have the flapper girls, and women recognized for their beauties, achievements, and opinion. In The Great Gatsby, Jordan is an accomplished golfer, and Daisy says she loves two men.
Men were coming out of the fear and terrors of the First World War; life was returning to normalcy with the understanding that if there was any problem, it was between nations and not among individuals, least of all, neighbours. But, was it? The problem of love: double-love triangles in the story, is among individuals, not nations – George’s wife, Myrtle/Tom/Daisy, then, Gatsby/Daisy/Tom. Also, people were happy to be alive and prosperous and were willing to share their lives with other individuals, hence the roaring parties.
Fitzgerald conceived the idea of The Great Gatsby from attending the wild parties in Long Island’s North Shore, USA that he was invited to. Some of his characters came from his personal life. Jay Gatsby represents him: he attended an Ivy League school just like Jay, fell in love when penniless like Jay, and had to go make money to win love, just like Jay. He was in the army like Jay, etc. Daisy Buchanan is also limned after Fitzegrald’s first love, Ginevra King, as well as the love of his life, his wife Zelda, who like Daisy had an affair and owned up before her husband unabashed.
Modernism tends to focus on the individual and how he reacts to the changes in the society. So modernism puts the interests of the individual as paramount. This perspective is that values, rights and duties originate in individuals. So the individual is more interesting or important than the society as a whole. Modernism seeks the political and economic independence of the individual. So the focal point of modernist literature is on individual action, initiative and interests. What we encounter in this novel originate from an individual (or individuals) known as Jay Gatsby.
At the end of WW1, Modernism became darker and more cynical, frequently including social commentary and themes of alienation, hedonism (pleasure-seeking or self-gratification) and despair. The novel captures the historical background of America in the 1920s. It was the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, a hedonistic period – gaudy, raucous, a period of bootlegging, speakeasies, flapper girls, etc. It was a morally permissive era; people were disillusioned with existing social norms. Individuals became monomaniacal, obsessed with self-gratification, as we see in The Great Gatsby, the obsession of the protagonist with his love for his ex-lover, and Tom who is self-seeking.
Someone wrote that the Jazz Age represented “a whole race going hedonistic deciding on pleasure.” So Fitzgerald paints a portrait of his contemporary society employing incidents in his life to tell a great story of wealth, love, anarchy and disillusionment.
