Comparing Fitzgerald’s vision of the American Dream to his most famous character’s vision of the American Dream is an intriguing and challenging task.
In brief, we might say that Fitzgerald, the author, was deeply ambivalent about the American Dream, having overtly attempted to climb the social ladder only to end up with his masterpiece going out of print. (Toward the end of Fitzgerald’s life, The Great Gatsby was purportedly no longer available for sale when the author stopped into a book store in Los Angeles.)
From a young age, Fitzgerald set out to join the elite and he had some success. However, this success was far from constant and was not without its (often public) ups and downs.
As part of a celebrity couple (with his wife Zelda) after the publication of his first novels, Fitzgerald lived what seems like a roller-coaster life.
“The couple had to lead extravagant lives to live up to their press clippings, and Fitzgerald’s work suffered for it. He borrowed from his publisher and agent and wrote short stories to finance the writing of his novels. […] Whenever he got ahead, he spent himself into debt again.”
In light of Fitzgerald’s views on the American Dream, anecdotes like these present complexities that are difficult to reduce or easily untangle.
Gatsby, to the contrary, embodies a sublime acceptance of the American Dream in ways that either ignore or subsume the inherent moral, ethical, social and psychological pitfalls that come along with an absolute pursuit of ambition.
Thus we can say that Fitzgerald, the man, has faced the American Dream and grappled with it only to be exhausted by it, while Gatsby, the character, refuses to wrestle with its complexities and so rides that Dream as far as it will take him.
“If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.… [Gatsby had] an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.”
Prepared to deny any ideas that would compromise his chance to achieve the identity he has set out to create for himself (with its attendant cast of characters), Gatsby is closely tied to the ethos of self-creation and self-determination that underpin the American Dream.
In regards to the American Dream, he is an acolyte, a believer, almost a saint and almost a fawning sycophant. His dedication is pure and he feels no moral compunction in effacing himself (and his family and his history) in pursuit of this Dream.
These brief interpretations don’t take into account some of the challenges that a question about author-versus-character will tend to pose.
The first complication this question poses is in defining or describing Fitzgerald’s personally held views on the American Dream. These views are not necessarily represented directly in The Great Gatsby by any of the characters, from Nick Carraway to Jay Gatsby to George Wilson.
While Nick may seem at first glance to be the only stand-in for the author within the novel, Fitzgerald’s critics have suggested that a better way to view the novel is to see both Nick and Gatsby as different versions of Fitzgerald, each representing the author’s social sensibilities in different ways.
In his personal life F. Scott Fitzgerald resembles both Nick and Gatsby. The divide between the naïve (yet jaded) Midwesterner and the essentially ambitious (yet romantic) rich bootlegger can be seen in the man behind the fiction.
“After [the author father] Edward Fitzgerald’s business failed in 1898, he became a wholesale grocery salesman for Procter and Gamble in Buffalo, New York. Edward was transferred to Syracuse, New York, in 1901 (when Scott’s sister Annabel was born) and back to Buffalo in 1903 before losing his job in 1908. The family then returned to St. Paul to live off the money Mollie had inherited from her father.”
Fitzgerald’s background would clearly seem to resemble the background he creates for Nick. Yet Fitzgerald’s adult life was one of extravagance and extremes, beginning with a romance that parallels the one between Gatsby and Daisy in The Great Gatsby.
“Zelda came from a prominent Montgomery family, her father being a justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. Zelda, considered the most popular girl in Montgomery, was attracted to Fitzgerald because they wanted the same things: success, fame, and glamour.”
The similarity between Fitzgerald and both of his two main characters creates a problematic scenario in light of the question at hand. We cannot simply contrast Gatsby to Nick and come away with a clear sense of the author’s own perspective.
Fitzgerald put himself into his characters but projected some of his unfulfilled desires onto them as well.
Gatsby may be, in the end, a figure of tragic hope.
“Throughout his fiction, Fitzgerald mourns the loss of innocence and youthful ideals while recognizing the inevitability of this loss. The great American paradox, as posed by Fitzgerald, is that holding on to illusions is both destructive and necessary.”
Capable of accepting whatever loss may accompany the pursuit of his great dream, Gatsby is (almost) a hero figure. Does this mean that Fitzgerald really "believes" in the American Dream or, perhaps instead, that he would like to believe, simply, in that Dream as Gatsby does?
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