Hays Views on Gatsby Essay

Hays, Peter L. Oxymoron in The Great Gatsby. Papers on lyric poem & Lit geological erature 47.3 (2011) 318+. General railroad cardinalFile. Web. 19 Oct. 2012. in that respect argon significant paradoxes by means of bulge out F. Scott Fitzgeralds (life and) work frequently represented by oxymorons, of which Wolfsheims eating with ferocious slenderness (75) is unless adept of the most hu manhoodifest and, as such, real by chance a clue to the paradoxes in the novel. Kirk Curnutt in a review of Fitzgeralds short stories remarks that the titles Flappers and Philosophers and lights-out at Reveille be keen conceits whose effectiveness depends upon one(a)s nitty-gritty for oxymoron (157). Keith Gandal, in a young book, writes of Gatsbys famous doubleness as chivalrous caramel and c grey-blooded killer. Gandal continues, though I am using his words for a antithetical purpose than his His doubleness may have a mainstream enough historical correlative (119).(1) One promin ent instance of doubleness is evident in his approach to Daisy in the novel.Could a man who knew wo hands earlyI presume knew them in the Biblical sensationand since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them (104), be so frighten by Daisy, especi tout ensembley since hes already slept with her (156)? Could aroundone so pitiless in some(prenominal) the army and pedigree be so timid in dating? Gatsby is plainly non a sexual innocent afraid of sex, other nearly 40-year-old virgin. Far from it. He has had basketball team long cadence of tutelage under Dan Cody, sailing three times around the continent, having women eat into champagne in his hair, and visiting the Barbary lantern slide (106-07), which Matthew J. Bruccoli glosses in his notes to the novel as San Franciscos honky tonk district (213), plainly a euphemism. We dont know what Gatsby did for the succeeding(prenominal) five years (from Codys destruction in 1912 until Americas enthral into the war in 1917 1 06), exclusively there aft(prenominal) he rose through military officer ranks to become a major in the army during globe War I and then briefly attended Oxford. be we to expect that he led a celibate life all those years except for his one brief familiarity with Daisy? There is, of course, a well-disposed severance amidst him and Daisy, and this causes him insecurity in come on her and proposing that they start their life over. only if he did date her before and successfully seduced her. And at Oxford he must(prenominal) have met women of a social status comparable to Daisys. In addition, he now foolishly believes that the bullion he has earned erases ofttimes of that social gap so that no one will think, as he tells ding, that I was just some nobody (71), some kind of cheap sharper (145). He excessively believes, erroneously, that in social situations, as opposed to backup ones, he must not do anything out of the stylus (84). That being the case, one has to wonder what he and Daisy do on their afternoons unitedly at his house. Nevertheless, Fitzgerald has established him both as a regular tough (84), someone who looked wish he had killed a man, and a rattling proper and timid individual on social and sexual matters, or as Fitzgerald himself phrases it, an elegant roughneck (53), some other oxymoron. What constrains Gatsby is his thorough sentimentalistism, his dogma in the American story that one, through hard work, can succeed anything, whether reliving the past or marrying Daisy in proper social splendor in Louisville so as to confirm his nobble in American society (see the reword of Poor Richards Almanac and Horatio Alger at the end of the novel).He wants nothing to crack his vagaryl of marrying Daisy in society, the perfect duette on top of the wedding cake, and he wants the social acceptance and respect denied him at St. Olaf College (105) and by the Sloanes and Buchanans of the mankind. What has happened, of course, is t hat following his seduction of Daisy and one special kiss, he wed his unpronounceable visions to her perishable breath and the incarnation was unload (117). The religious language, particularly for one raised as a Catholic, as Fitzgerald was, is telling. Daisy embodies the idea of perfection for Gatsby, an almost unapproachable grand of social success and self-realization. Thus his grail is the un truthfulness of reality (105), another paradox, and as turkey cock attacks him in the suite of the middle Hotel, only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped a focal point (142). But there atomic number 18 other contradictions as well, such as the char croperization of Wolfsheim as a sentimental crook (77), and Gatsbys facial expression, definitely unfamiliar and mistily recognizable (127). Throughout there is Gatsbys real distressing corruption fronting his romantic incorruptible dream (162). snick, too, has his doublenesses. Initially snicks father tells him that all the peck in this world havent had the advantages youve had (5), presumably material advantages. But slit interprets the statement to mean a sense of fundamental decencies is parcelled out un reachly at birth(6), something very different, and a belief that qualifies notch very much as a snob. Nick praises himself for honesty after writing the woman others believe him diligent to, because of his af clean-living with Jordan bread maker (63), but he doesnt bother writing her ii pages earlier opus hes conducting a relationship with a daughter from the accounting division of his bank, incongruously named rightness Trust the reason is obvious the lady friendfriend from accounting is clearly not from his social station and thus not marriageable, as Jordan is, and thus the putative fiancee adopt not be bothered by a mere summer crush while Nick takes his pleasure with the girl from New Jersey.Nick alike assures Daisy and Jordan that the headphone call gobbler receives from Wils on, after Wilson has observe myrtles infidelity, is a bona fide stilt (122) the deal Tom has offered Wilson, however, is anything but in good faith he has employ the potential sale of the car as a way to approach Wilsons garage to talk with myrtle. His actions, car for woman, ar repeated when he takes Gatsbys car to drive to New York City in exchange for Daisy. And Nick describes Tom oxymoronically as a priggish libertine (137). We also have Fitzgeralds assault through Tom Buchanan and Jordan Baker on the remnants of fibrous Christianity and the rude Merriwell novels he grew up with. The 20s were the era of Babe Ruths carousings and infidelities, lacking(p) games due to what sports writers reported euphemistically as stomach aches, due to the Babes prodigious eating, which they may have been, in conjunction with massive hangovers, or possibly alcohol poisoning or raze venereal disease.(2) His ii daughters were born out of wedlock, not reported by the papers.Nor was Ty Cobbs racism, not that most Americans at the time would have cared. Sports writers protected athletes to preserve the get wind of them as role models. The book jacket from a Frank Merriwell reprint says Franks deeds will petition to every boy and girl who strives for fair play and seeks to improve or to excel. The inner(a) imitation calls the series of novels Fascinating stories of athletics. They are extremely high in clean tone and cannot fail to be of considerable benefit to every boy who reads them (251).(3) Merriwell was an All-American football game player at Yale, linking him to Tom Buchanan, who was a discipline figure at Yale (10), and who is not of high moral tone, cheating on his wife during their stay at Santa Barbara (82), in Chicago (139), and again on capacious Island. But unlike the Merriwell book copy that calls the book beneficial only to boys, Fitzgerald is an equal-opportunity employer, allowing Jordan Baker to be both a sportswoman and an incorrigible lia r and cheat at golf (62).Why write virtually matter figures in sport only to tear them dget? Why spice up the novel with paradoxes and oxymorons? Fitzgerald apothegm contradictions in the national psyche. Malcolm Cowleys image of Fitzgerald as the man at a dance and also the poor boy outside with his look pressed to the glass admiring and wondering how much everything cost is apropos (xv) Fitzgerald saw both sides and run d possessed both. His statement in The spin Up that the test of a top-notch intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at once, and mum retain the ability to survive (69) speaks to his awareness of doublenesses and contradictions in America, and he strove to record them, even as one reality denied another dream. His awareness of his own self-contradictions existent romantic, spoiled priestcreated a mode incorporating contradictions. The country was changing in legion(predicate) ways. It was bland ostensibly a puritan nation, y et sex was everywhere.A production-mode deliverance was shifting to a consumer economy. The automobile had changed living, travel, dating, and railway line in the United States (subject of other books, not this paper), and Fitzgerald emphasizes this change with his frequent mention of carsNicks, Toms, Gatsbys several, Wilsonsand roadside garages with new red gas-pumps (25). The middle classes were ascent on the post-war prosperity that, until 1929, seemed as if it could not end. Nick is a bond salesman, and youngish Englishmen were all selling something bonds or damages or automobiles. They were agonizingly aware of the well-to-do money in the vicinity and convince it was theirs for a few words in the right key (46). Myrtle dreams of marrying Tom and improving her station, and Mr. McKee needs only an understructure to Toms East ballock friends to move up the social and financial ladder, figured by that Jacobs ladder, the blocks of the paving material that mounted to a se cret place above the trees (117).Fitzgeralds allusion to Lothrop Stoddard by way of Tom points to the fervent eugenics movement of the twenty-four hours (208), and Tom fears that his sorry position is challenged by non-Nordic races and by nobodies from nowhere (137) is seconded by Mr. Sloane from East chunk who is haughtily determined that Gatsby should not attend his dinner society party (109). And their fears have some justification, as the guest list from Gatsbys party reveals, with its intermingling of old money and nouveaux riches, of elegant and discourteous Homeric Ulysses linked to common Swett, Confederate nobility Stonewall Jackson wed to Jewish Abrams, a menagerie of Civets, Hornbeams, Blackbucks, and Leeches together with such obvious immigrants as Mulready, Cohen, Da Fontano, and Rot-Gut Ferret, along with Belchers, Smirkes, and a Hip (66-67). The old established order, figured by Daisys and Jordans privileged white girlhood in segregated Louisville, is under as sault, as indicated by the incursion into society of recent immigrants and by the Negroes driven by a white chauffeur (73).Gandal states that Gatsbys officership was another such sign of change, promotion by meritocracy rather than by family or cultivation alone. But these changes in reality were not accompanied by corresponding changes in the national romances. Athletes were heroes, reality be damned. African-Americans could plight white chauffeurs, but their opportunities, even in the non-segregated North, were limited, and they were still subject to prejudice, as Nicks reaction to them makes clear. Despite our myth of a classless society, classes were still very distinct in 1925, as Fitzgerald knew all too well from his experience as a poor boy at Princeton and in his courtship of Ginevra King, (4) and as Nick points out in his distinction among West Egg and East Egg (9). Mr. Sloan and Tom Buchanan insist on their own social greatestity to Gatsby, just as Nick does to Wolfsh eim and to the girl from the accounting segment of his bank.Even Daisy finally realizes the safety of staying with her own kind, those of her social class, however repellent her preserve is. Despite our national myth of equal opportunity, it does not exist, as we know but Gatsby doesnt. He thinks that he can do anything, even repeat the past (116). non being a sports hero, like the said(prenominal) Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb (who retired besotted with Coca Cola and GE stock), Gatsbys opportunities for the quick cash to win Daisy are limited, so he turns to crime, as did many during Prohibition. Corruption was pandemic, from Al Capone to Teapot Dome, the sale of national oil reserves by the secretary of the Interior. Fitzgerald mentions two so-called robber barons, men who built huge industries through monopolization, stern D. Rockefeller (31) and James J. Hill (176) (whose mansion was up the street from the Fitzgeralds St. Paul home), men who saw the opportunity (78), just as Wolfs heim did in fixing the World Series.The line between sharp business practice and criminal activity was thin and almost imperceptible then (and recently as well), as Fitzgerald has Gatsby imply when talking to Tom closely Walter Chase (141), a friend of Toms who came to Gatsby looking for money. One twenty-four hour period selling alcohol was legal the next it wasnt. One day monopolies were good business then they were declared illegal. Getting a card from the pplice commissioner to fix traffic violations is merely a courtesy fixing the World Series is criminal. Tom, Myrtle, Jay, and Daisy all commit adultery. well-nigh students may think Tom and Myrtles affair is cheap and disgusting, Jays and Daisys romantic, but both are the same morally and legally, yet we still have the myth of family values preached to us, despite the behavior of our legislators.Nick feels himself morally superior to Toms infidelities, Jordans lies, to Wolfsheims and Gatsbys criminal acts, yet hes an acce ssory after the event of murder, concealing vital evidence from the police. Myrtles infant Katherine lies at her sisters inquest, a loyal act of perjury that Nick praises as demonstrate a surprising amount of character reference (171). Lovely Daisy is a hit-and-run killer.Appearances are deceiving. The America that Fitzgerald portrays is riddled with corruption, yet we still maintain the myth of the city on the hill, the green breast of the new world (189), the beacon to the world for democracy and opportunity. I have difficulty crediting Gatsby as a coherent human being, but as a symbol of the elusive American dream, I find him perfect. He consummately embodies the mutually exclusive qualities of this country, our saying one thing while doing another, our clinging to myths that have little basis in reality. As a well-behaved, socially aware crook, he is a paradox, an oxymoron, and an exemplary American.