The Not-So-Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is often referred to as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, which is no doubt why it is taught in hundreds of high schools and universities across America. It's depiction of life in America after World War I is important to historical literature, as it documents a time when Prohibition reigned and national values changed shape. An underground culture of bootlegging millionaires emerged as Americans attempted to cope with the effects of the war. “The American Dream,” along with its traditional values, diminished, and money, wealth, and extravagance became vogue. The Great Gatsby is the tale told by Nick Carraway, a lucky fly on the wall who becomes enveloped in the high-society life of the Roaring '20s, only to become enchanted by a rich man whom he idolizes, and then disappointed when he learns of his idol's criminal activities. While Fitzgerald's story certainly paints a vibrant picture of the era, there are several inconsistencies with the manner in which the novel is written that may make readers critical of its acceptance as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

Though he used other techniques in his first two novels, Fitzgerald created Nick as a first-person narrator and protagonist whose consciousness filters the story's events. While this method is intended to create mystery amongst the characters, it has been critically referred to as the “unreliable narrator.” The term “unreliable narrator” was coined by Wayne C. Booth in his 1961 book, The Rhetoric of Fiction, and describes a narrator whose credibility has been seriously compromised. According to Booth, an author might elect this voice due to psychological instability within the narrator (as in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), a powerful bias, a lack of knowledge, or even a deliberate attempt to deceive the reader or audience (Boyle).

Nick's voice is unreliable for several reasons. First, it is not Gatsby, the main protagonist, who recounts his own story, but Nick, a secondary protagonist, who is simultaneously suspicious and eventually fascinated by Gatsby. He is not fully reliable in his judgments. Second, whenever Nick does not have a first-hand account of an event, he quotes others to determine the facts. For example, Jordan Baker tells Nick about Gatsby's love affair with Daisy, but Nick also refers to Jordan as a liar. How can he trust her account? Next, Nick is required to reconstruct past events by putting together pieces of stories obtained from other people, with varied perceptions of their own. None of this information can be taken too seriously, especially when Nick criticizes the reliability of these people. Because of these reasons, Fitzgerald's first-person viewpoint is modified because Nick can only rely on what he has been told, which may be distorted in the first place.

Thomas E. Boyle, elaborating on Booth's myth, says that this type of narrator is unreliable because of the concept of distance between the narrator's and the reader's perception. “If this 'distance' exists we have, to some degree, an unreliable narrator, and critics, as well as students, are reluctant to recognize this device since unreliable narrators, as Booth says, 'make stronger demands on the reader's powers of inference than reliable narrators do.'”

A third critic, Amit Marcus, claims that readers who are aware of a cognitive or ethical gap between the narrator and the reader will “treat this type of narrator as inferior to them in either knowledge or morality.” The reader then holds himself accountable of exposing the flaws of the narrator, since he is immune to judgment within the story. In the opening statements of the book, Nick claims, “...I'm inclined to reserve all judgements...” but then goes on to judge each character he encounters, placing them in a “hopelessly lost to money” category and a “those who there may be hope for” category (5). Nick's purity is necessary to Fitzgerald's story so that he can objectively judge the actions of those surrounding him. However, his purity is unbelievable. If he were living in the raucous world of bootlegging parties, glitz and glamour, he nor his questionable intentions could be considered pure. At the novel's end, the reader is left with a sense of emptiness because no character displays any sort of personal growth. Nick is the one character who the reader would expect to benefit from some sort of lesson learned, but the following passage, at the end of the novel, is evidence that Nick still admires the “great” Gatsby and his hopeless pursuit of Daisy: "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther....And one fine morning – " (189) Is it possible that Nick was incapable of growth because he was already so pure and free of judgment?

Finally, it is unlikely that Nick would have fit comfortably in either Daisy or Gatsby's world. Fitzgerald tries to make Nick out to have one foot in both doors, but in the end, his friendship with both is unbelievable. While Daisy is a distant cousin of Nick's, and seems genuinely fond of him, she is obviously incapable of true loyalty or care. She even disregards her own infant daughter, only treating her as an afterthought when she is introduced in Chapter VII. Daisy would not truly care about her long-lost Midwesterner cousin who drifted in to check out the high-class lifestyle. It is also unlikely that a young man just moving to New York to learn the bond business has the means to purchase a residence in West Egg next to Gatsby's mansion. Furthermore, this leads right back to Nick's judgment-free character. In the midst of such judgmental characters, his presence doesn't fit. He considers himself of a moral high-ground that none of the other characters occupy. Again, his narration is questionable, and therefore, unreliable.

Another reason Fitzgerald is so highly regarded in American literature is because he is considered a master of revision. According to Matthew Bruccoli, “The novel developed through layers of drafts and achieved its ultimate brilliance when Fitzgerald revised and rewrote it...The published fascimiles of Fitzgerald's manuscripts and works-in-progress provide instruction on the art of his fiction, which was the art of rewriting” (“Preface,” ix). These remarks are included in the novel's preface, but in Bruccoli's piece, “The Text of The Great Gatsby,” at the end of the book, he says, “...errors in The Great Gatsby resulted from a compound of causes: Fitzgerald's custom of revising and rewriting in proof made for a rushed production schedule; his spelling was idiosyncratic; he had difficulty with details of geography and arithmetic; he relied on his editor, Maxwell Perkins, to check his work...” (191) Revisions are certainly important to the writing process, but Fitzgerald is far from a revision master. In Bruccoli's book, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: A Literary Reference, he explains that the original publication of the book was not as successful as Fitzgerald's previous two novels, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned. At his death in 1940, Fitzgerald considered himself a failure, as he had been largely forgotten. It wasn't until Arthur Mizener's 1951 biography of Fitzgerald entitled The Far Side of Paradise that people began reading The Great Gatsby again. Scholars and the general public were intrigued by Fitzgerald's writing methods and the parallels to his life. In fact, Fitzgerald could have easily written an engaging autobiography of his own incredible life, including all of the same themes in The Great Gatsby.

Fitzgerald must be respected for his desire to portray this ending of the American dream, and to do so in a new, innovative way. However, the unreliable narration of Nick makes the tale unbelievable, and therefore, open to debate by literature students and scholars alike. Claims that Fitzgerald's work should be studied for the mere fact that he is a master of revision and literary device are questionable, as well, when one learns that his writing methods were erratic and that he relied heavily on his editor to clear up inconsistencies and spelling errors.

Recommendations for American Literature 1918-Present

Many important historical events have occurred within the 20th century that are worthy of recognition in literature. The Great Depression, WWII, The Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, tensions between the Middle East and the Western world, and globalization are all topics that should be expressed to students through literature if the goal is to teach the most significant eras in American history. Any book depicting these events would be more appreciated than a book portraying the gaudy greediness of America's first high-class society or the engagement in criminal activity to obtain wealth, which has always taken place in America and abroad. Besides, Gatsby's crimes seem so meaningless now that alcohol is legal and Prohibition seems illogical.

A better indictment of an upper class society exploiting a lower class would be Toni Morrison's “Beloved,” which details the psychological impact of slavery. This would also add a female to the list of books taught in the course, which has been challenged by a feminist OU-C professor in the past.

For a more light-hearted depiction of early high-class society, something by P.G. Wodehouse, a comic writer who created tales about the pre-war English upper-class society, which reflect his birth, education, and early writing career, would be sufficient (although this is definitely not American literature). The author of the Jeeves series isn't the pristine writer that Fitzgerald was, but his depiction of the drama surrounding the lives of the wealthy, elite, and often drunk socialites is humorously indicting of the lifestyle.

And while The Great Gatsby is a light read, Fitzgerald's short story, “Winter Dreams,” would be sufficient to teach the themes presented in the novel, and a weightier book like The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck could be taught. Set during the Great Depression, this novel features a poor family of sharecroppers driven from their home by economic hardship during the Dust Bowl; this novel, too, is set in a time of social change and upheaval in America.

Works Cited
Boyle, Thomas E. “Unreliable Narration in The Great Gatsby.” The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 23.1 (1969): 21-26.
Bruccoli, Matthew. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: A Literary Reference. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000.
Bruccoli, Matthew. “Preface.” The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1925.
Bruccoli, Matthew. “The Text of The Great Gatsby.” The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1925.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1925.
Marcus, Amit. “Camus's The Fall: The Dynamics of Narrative Unreliability.” Style 40.4 (2006).