{"id":179950,"date":"2025-04-10T07:11:41","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T07:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-april-10-2025-a-great-gatsby-centennial-gatsbys-american-dreams\/"},"modified":"2025-04-10T07:11:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T07:11:41","slug":"americanstudies-april-10-2025-a-great-gatsby-centennial-gatsbys-american-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=179950","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: April 10, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Gatsby\u2019s American Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[On April 10th<\/sup>,
\n1925<\/a>, F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s novel The Great Gatsby<\/i> was published
\nby Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons<\/a>. While I have
\nmy problems with Gatsby<\/i><\/a>, it remains one of our most influential and important
\nnovels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I\u2019ll
\nhighlight a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post featuring fellow
\nGatsbyStudiers!]<\/p>\n

On two contrasting
\nbut also interconnected ways to analyze the novel\u2019s title character and themes.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the actual
\ncentennial of Gatsby<\/i>\u2019s publication, I have to start by noting that
\napparently, at the very last minute (and thus too far into the publishing
\nprocess), Fitzgerald tried to get the book\u2019s title changed to Under
\nthe Red, White, and Blue<\/a><\/i>. That hyperlinked piece features info about a
\nrecent public scholarly book, Greil Marcus\u2019s Under
\nthe Red White and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment, and the Stubborn Myth of The Great Gatsby<\/span><\/a> <\/i>(2021), which takes
\nFitzgerald\u2019s alternate title as a starting point for thinking about the book\u2019s,
\nit\u2019s era\u2019s, and our own engagements with key American themes. Since I\u2019m going
\nto do the same here (having so far read only excerpts of Marcus\u2019s book,
\nalthough I hope to check the whole thing out soon as it looks great), I wanted
\nto shout-out Marcus\u2019s work as well as Fitzgerald\u2019s original title, before
\noffering my own considerations of Gatsby\u2019s
\nAmerican Dream<\/a> (which is also, as that hyperlinked record label page
\nreflects, the name of an indie rock band, reflecting just how ubiquitous this association
\nhas been).<\/span><\/p>\n

On the one
\nhand, Gatsby\u2019s American Dream seems at best profoundly ironic, and at worst
\nentirely fake and false. After all, the centerpiece of his dreams is Daisy Buchanan,
\na character who is not only married to someone else, and an awful someone at
\nthat (the exemplary American white
\nsupremacist Tom Buchanan<\/a>), but whose most defining action in the novel is
\nthe accidental murder of another character (the tragic Myrtle Wilson, whom I
\nmentioned in last week\u2019s final post as a perspective we need to consider more
\nfully and then am not really considering more fully this week\u2014my bad, Myrtle!)
\nfrom which she literally and figuratively flees, leaving her supposed love to
\ntake the fall. At the
\nnovel\u2019s conclusion<\/a>, its narrator Nick says of Daisy and Tom that \u201cThey were
\ncareless people\u2026they shamed up things and creatures and then retreated back
\ninto their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them
\ntogether, and let other people clean up the mess they had made,\u201d and if we even
\nsomewhat agree with Nick, we have to recognize that Gatsby\u2019s dreams and his titular
\ngreatness alike are built on a very shaky foundation.<\/span><\/p>\n

But on the
\nother hand, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s quite that simple. Daisy herself can be read as
\na far more nuanced and sympathetic character than Nick\u2019s vision of her suggests
\n(Tom definitely can\u2019t, but he can within this alternative frame be read as
\nabusive toward Daisy, just as he physically abuses Myrtle in their
\none scene together<\/a> in the novel), as both flawed and full of potential in ways
\nthat in this reading would parallel Gatsby and help explain their mutual attraction.
\nBut Gatsby\u2019s dreams are also not limited to Daisy, especially as the reader
\nlearns more about Gatsby (or James Gatz, as he was born) in his childhood and
\nyouthful identity, experiences, perspectives, and arc. That young man\u2019s goals
\nof moving beyond the horizons of his parents and his hometown, of remaking
\nhimself, of pursuing his own future rather than being defined by what had come
\nbefore, are, as the novel\u2019s iconic
\nfinal lines illustrate<\/a>, very much the story of America as well, from its
\nfounding (whenever and however we locate that moment) on down. The fact that he
\ndoesn\u2019t quite succeed, or rather that the past remains with him as he moves
\ninto that future, could be read as a failure or as ironic or etc.\u2014but it could
\nalso be read as deeply human, as the intersection of the worst and best that
\ndefines us all, individuals and nations alike. <\/span><\/p>\n

Last
\nGatsbyStudying tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What do
\nyou think? Takes on Fitzgerald\u2019s novel or its contexts? <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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