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The Great Gatsby discussion
Where's the Proof that Gatsby "Did it all for Daisy?"
From the mass of gushy Goodreads posts I've read it seems widely held that Jay Gatsby's love for Daisy was so consuming that he earned a fortune in order to win her back from Tom Buchanan. To me there is little evidence that love was Gatsby's primary motivation. He was merely a hyper-ambitious young man, possibly bi-polar, like today's Ted Turner. But let us examine the evidence. Almost halfway through the book we learn through Jordan Baker that Gatsby wants to see Daisy. Until then there has been only a hint or two (Daisy: "What Gatsby?") there may be anything between them. Here is the conversation between Nick and Jordan after Gatsby has asked her to arrange a meeting through Nick: (p.63) Nick: "It was a strange coincidence," I said. (Jordan, p.64) "...he says he's read a Chicago paper for years on the chance of catching a glimpse of Daisy's name. Here is a weakness of the book. These crucial character-revealing bits are delivered not with the force of a bold declaration from Gatsby the ostensible hero, but as third-hand gossip from Jordan through Nick. Gossip is always suspect. Heresay is inadmissible in court, but in a novel? Meh. We don't know how much of these juicy tidbits were made up or embellished by Jordan, or even Nick. But it's all we have to go on so we accept it, some of us grudgingly. Probably based on Fitzgerald himself and Ginevra King, his first fiancee (and a prima debutante in Atlanta, Georgia,) Gatsby and Daisy come across as impulsive, almost hypo-manic personalities. Such people are capable of amazing feats of energy and are often well-rewarded in the arts and business world. But let us not confuse obsession with love. Once the hormones get going, and clearly Gatsby ignited Daisy's and vice-versa, there's no way to judge the quality of their relationship until the biological juices run their course. But the book ends before the hormonal phase has passed. Gatsby's impulsive drive and hyper-ambition has been well demonstrated outside his relationship with Daisy. As a teenager he changes his name and apprentices himself to a wealthy yachtsman for five years. Before going to war he socializes with even more wealthy people, even posing as one at a party where he meets Daisy. He also distinguishes himself in battle during WW I, or at least says he did. After Gatsby dies his father testifies that "Jimmy" was always ambitious, confirming this aspect of his personality. That Jay Gatsby seduces someone's wife because he feels a prior claim on her merely demonstrates an impulsive lack of self control. And using other people to get to her is not very heroic. But Nick is clearly swept up by the idea that Gatsby's passion for Daisy is driven by overwhelming love, and because Nick is narrating the reader gets yanked along with him. (Nick, p.63) "He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths--so he could 'come over' some afternoon to a stranger's garden." This is not first-hand information from observing or speaking with Gatsby but Nick's interpretation of his behavior through something Jordan has said. As for the parties being for Daisy's benefit, here's the only reference I can find: (p.63) "'I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties, some night,' went on Jordan." "Half-expected" falls short of the high devotion required of the romantic view that Gatsby threw extravagant parties primarily to attract Daisy. The more plausible reason for the parties is that they were integral to Gatsby's role as shill for crime boss Woflsheim. These elaborate soirées were a business expense in the dirty business of making connections to pedal junk or counterfeit bonds and other such illicit activities. It was the Roaring Twenties leading up to the Crash of '29, when Wall Street corruption was at its extant highest. Booze and easy sex were lubricants for the engine of corruption that caused the Great Depression. (Not to digress, but history is repeating itself. Wall Street fought regulation and we got the Reagan era junk bond-fueled S&L Crisis, the Energy Crisis, and the sub-prime mortgage-fueled Bush Recession. Thanks to the repeal of Glass Steagall, the gnomes of Wall Street still use our savings accounts as collateral for their games of roulette. Unconscionable greed is back in full swing, sex and porn are at historic highs and society is awash with drugs of all stripes. We are riding for another hard fall.) (p.74) "'Look at this,' said Gatsby quickly. 'Here's a lot of clippings--about you.' They stood side by side examining it." So, out of love or obsessiveness, Gatsby kept a scrapbook of memorabilia about Daisy. Stalkers do this, too. (P.76) "There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion." Here Nick alludes to the extraordinarily exaggerated nature of Gatsby's elaborate imagination concerning Daisy. (P.76) "His hand took hold of hers, and she said something low in his ear as he turned toward her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn't be overdreamed--that voice was a deathless song."[emphasis added] Here Nick describes the hormonal spiral, Daisy is responding to Gatsby's courtship display of wealth and Gatsby is further turned on by her response. And Nick the observer is speculating about Gatsby's reaction to Daisy's voice, doubtlessly tapping his own euphoric courtship experiences. (p.86) Here Nick is speculating on what is going through Daisy's mind as she glances back toward Gatsby's mansion while getting into her limousine. "What would happen now, in the dim incalculable hours? Perhaps some unbelievable guest would arrive, a person infinitely rare and to be marveled at, some authentically radiant young girl who with one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical encounter, would blot out those five years of unwavering devotion." Nick the omniscient narrator is reading Daisy's mind and Gatsby's, telling instead of showing via action or dialog. What writer gets away with such weak delivery of vital character details? (p.87) Daisy and Tom have left the party and Gatsby has asked Nick to hang around. Nick: "He was silent, and I guessed at his unutterable depression. It is not clear whether Nick is paraphrasing something Gatsby said or if this is more of his mind reading. This is important material. Why not have Gatsby speak for himself? Is it because Fitzgerald can't resist using poetic language and it would be out of character for Gatsby? Has Nick earned such credibility that we trust his judgement to this degree? "'I wouldn't ask too much of her,' I ventured. 'You can't repeat the past.' Next comes a key moment in the novel during which Nick seems to merge identities with Gatsby and express his thoughts in a most poetic manner. He dos this elsewhere with Daisy, but here Nick seems to inhabit Gatsby's mind as he interprets his thoughts and memories of Daisy. (p.87) Nick: "He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then [when?], but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was... ...One night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped there..." Nick goes on to describe the encounter in more exquisite poetic detail than Gatsby was incapable of. "Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees--he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder." Nick goes on to describe the magical buildup to their magical kiss. Then the kiss itself. "Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete." These are Gatsby's memories expressed in an elaborate language that is foreign to him--Nick's language, Fitzgerald's. "Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something--an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago." And so here it is, Nick is practically admitting that he is channeling for Fitzgerald himself--that Nick and Gatsby are two sides of his own personality--that all three have shared the same experience of Daisy (or Genevra or Zelda or whomever,) Nick has suddenly become more channeler than narrator. How could Fitzgerald have allowed Gatsby the honor of describing that heavenly experience of his first kiss with Genevra? He couldn't. So he broke character and gave Nick the power of omniscience to describe it in the language the event deserved. And so the question remains: where is the evidence that Gatsby did it all for Daisy? The evidence lies not in Gatsby's deeds nor the words he has spoken; it lies in Nick's channeling narration, his passionate poetic language fired by Fitzgerald's memory of Genevra. The book is a convolution of three inseparable personalities. Gatsby represents Fitzgerald's public persona, his unbounded immature self, the way Fitzgerald felt on alcohol, wild and and powerful, and successful, the way Fitzgerald's mother would like. Nick represents Fitzgerald's inner* self, and both, you could say all three, worshiped the idealistic "promises of life" Scott Fitzgerald experienced as a child in his doting mother personified in Daisy. Fitzgerald doesn't have to sell us on the depth of Gatsby's devotion through his deeds and action because Nick the channeling narrator stands between Gatsby and the reader interpreting his thoughts and deeds in a way that suits Fitzgerald's own romantic fantasies. The egg of bias is dripping from Nick's narrational jaw forward from page one where he says, "If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life... ." *This idea originated in a discussion thread on Goodreads.com, where the pace was fast and furious. It's hard to remember who said what first, but a guy named Matthew said something similar.
The page numbers, though not vital, are one curiosity that might be important. Reason being that there are so many versions of Gatsby floating around, some that are at best flawed compared to what Fitzgerald originally intended or wanted published. On the financial note: Didn't you hear, "Greed is good for America". ;)
Not sure. Whatever one is in the Nook version. It's page 63 out of 140, so just short of halfway. Greed IS good, but unregulated greed has proven time and again to be destructive.
(1) As you mention, Nick is the narrator so some of the motivation is coming to him second hand. Nick never comes out and asks Gatsby about his feelings for Daisy, which is incredibly Midwestern of him (and Fitzgerald). It's still pretty common for "polite" and "proper" Midwesterners to not pry into other people's lives. Nick would have taken Jordan's words as truth in the moment; so we, the reader, are expected to as well. (2) Gatsby thinks he's in love with Daisy for all of the instances you refer to regarding his transformation. He wants to be an important man and Daisy -- with her family status and wealth -- is an achievement in that journey. He definitely has an infatuation with her; and you make a very interesting observation that both Gatsby and Daisy seem more caught up in hormones than actual emotions. Nowadays I always find discussions of 'The Great Gatsby' quite interesting because they tend to show how simplistic the book ends up being. (And how heavy-handed the similarities are between Fitzgerald and both Nick and Gatsby.)
First, he needed to network to set up prospective buyers. Secondly, it satisfied his yearning for social mobility. He got rub shoulders with the elite of the elite. And thirdly, the reason he probably chose West Egg as his upper crust cruising domicile was that his sweetie lived there.
Across the bay you mean. And fourthly, blackmail. Large extravagant parties salted with tempting young actresses and flappers lubricated with free booze were a means of drawing politicians and other powerful people who could be coerced into cooperating with Wolfie's nefarious scams.
Wait a minute Feliks, are you agreeing or disagreeing with Monty`s statement? There seems to be a contradiction in what youre saying.
It is widely held that Jay Gatsby's love for Daisy was so consuming that he earned a fortune in order to win her back after she married uber-wealthy Tom Buchanan. I maintain ..." Again my apology for getting distracted for a few days. Monty I believe that much of the analysis of Fitzgerald's writing is being taken out of context and thus misses the overall motivation. Gatsby is about Money. [ the book ] This is not a love story in any conventional sense. His past actions are in the past. The elevation by Fitzgerald of this tale to that of Greek Tragedy we find early in the mechanism of gossip and rumors about Gatsby. This directly reflect Fitgerald's education. A moral story theme is told via reference to the didactic poets. Specifically Hesiod in The Theogony as in 'gossip oft repeated becomes divine'. Translation mine, but fairly close. The Gatsby character rises above the rest. He is a darkly glowing god.Fitzgerald makes numerous classic allusions and all but writes in illuminated allegory in places. (see my original comments from the 'overated classics', I will clip and paste that later) One other key to what we are given as the Gatz/Gatsby motivations is that he is Trimalchio. Literally the Thrice or Great King. The Gatsby personna is lifted directly from Petronius. In some comment recently on this or related topic Gatsby is bracketed as heroic (doesn't mean good remember) from the title to the end in this story. And that is what we have to go on to analyze the story.So I'll toss another wrinkle just for fun: Is Nick a narrator or a damned chorus? (damned as in fated or pre-destined, not another connotative use) More this PM.
Wow! Hadn't thought of that one at all, but it makes a lot of sense. It explains Nick's near omniscience in the way he relates Gatsby's and Daisy's backstories, as well as experiences of minor characters such as Michaelis, the cafe proprietor, witness to key events while looking after Wilson the morning after Myrtle's death. In a way the external reference cheapens the novel, allowing Fitzgerald to take liberties with the first-person point of view. I found these omniscient excursions distracting. I wonder if a modern writer could get away with it. How they got past Max Perkins, his editor, is baffling to me. External referencing also narrow's the novel's audience. A story should stand on its own two feet instead of using other works for a crutch. Great post. Thanks.
Do they make a difference? Not really except that they exist and passages from a few as I recall are curious foreshadows(for-echoes??) of what is to come. One in particular that stands out as important in the Gatsby 'arc' is Winter Dreams which is a story of a boy who aspires to become part of the old-money world. As a side note the theme of this story while definitely Gatsby under a different name and different outcome, gets expanded tremendously by the author Thomas Wolfe a few years later in his works with some major twists and they are much, much longer. On the other hand, referencing outside works links Fitzgeralds work to the great canon of literature. He set out to do something new. He did in Gatsby in ways that wasn't fully understood (most likely even now) until other writers tried to use similar themes and elements and wound up writing a lot more(some like Wolfe, really a lot more) to get a similar effect.
Wow! Hadn't thought of that one at all, but it makes a lot of sense. " Agreed. I re-visited Gatsby last year (amidst all the fuss), and Nick's passive-yet-all-encompassing view bothered me for a reason I couldn't put my finger on ... until now. Also:
Bothered all the more. A novel shouldn't use other books as a crutch or as an excuse for departing from good authorial standards. It feels as if Fitzgerald is seeking to impress us with the fact that he has read some obscure ancient fable. Big whup.
Nick's passivity (not Gatsby's) makes him appear disinterested and even dispassionate. Of course, this is a class marker: the other upperclasstwits are similarly casual, and Nick's half-hearted pursuit of Jordan stands in stark contrast to Gatsby's stalking of Daisy. As a literary device, a personally-disinterested narrator can be considered objective and therefore reliable. In Nick's case, though, this doesn't work -- he is unabashedly partial to Gatsby. A chorus, though, can be (and often is) biased towards a particular character.
It is widely held that Jay Gatsby's love for Daisy was so consuming that he earned a fortune in order to win her back after she married uber-wealthy Tom Buchanan. I maintain ..." You make a good point about the 1920s being a mirror for now. When I saw the Wolf of Wall St I was sickened by the "culture of excess" portrayed in it. I think Martin Scorsese was too.
Shelley, http://dustbowlstory.wordpress.com
In the same vein, what proof is there that Daisy killed Myrtle, and not Gatsby? We have Gatsby confessing to Nick that it was Daisy -- after Nick suggests it to him. Gatsby was not presented as a man of great moral fiber. Perhaps he saw an opportunity to shift the blame. We cannot be certain what his plans were before Wilson shot him. Not a serious proposition -- just more idle thoughts from an idle fellow, as Jerome K. Jerome would put it.
I don´t doubt that Jay´s feelings for Daisy were love. Love comes in so many different flavors, including obsession.
To me this is the underlying, faint horror of the novel, its true tragedy; not that Daisy's and Gatsby's was a love thwarted, nor even that it wasn't a real feeling they had for each other, but that Jay Gatsby, for his considerable gifts for making money and drawing attention and fame to himself, failed to come up with anything better than squandering it all for some expensive bint. And, I should say, doing so in an immoral way. Sure, the book is joltingly romantic, the way riches and lush lawns are romantic, but this is the key to Nick's dismay at the whole situation, and the reason why he says Gatsby is worth the whole lot of them put together. At least Gatsby had the guts to pick a destination (let's say, a green light) and head full steam for it. The rest are just rich, petty laggards who either smash and move on, or simply insist on being entertained.
If he was such a master criminal and a gung ho guy, how come he didn´t come out of the war with bounty? Any enterprising soldier comes out of the war with the enemy´s dead´s effects. Didn´t he have the initiative to collect anything off the war fields? Didn´t he come away with a pot of poker winnings? Wake up Scott, the book is full of holes.
" Bravo. Well said.
From the mass of gushy Goodreads posts I've read it seems widely held that Jay Gatsby's love for Daisy was so consuming that he earned a fortune in order to win her back from T..."
Perhaps a more revealing glimpse into Gatsby's heart comes at the book's conclusion, with the daily schedule (and list of "resolves") he'd written as a boy. This is the list Henry Gatz shows to Nick Carraway after Gatsby's death. This shows that Gatsby was driven long before he even knew Daisy existed. Given these clues from Gatsby's past, it's likely he would have achieved some fame, notoriety, or wealth whether or not he'd met Daisy. The point Fitzgerald is trying to make, I think, is how Daisy derailed Gatsby's glorious dream. His dream, in its original conception, is what makes Gatsby great. When he is lured from his vision because of his obsession with Daisy, the purity of Gatsby's vision is tainted. And as almost everyone knows, the Gatsby-Daisy story is really an allegory for the corruption of the American Dream.
This is what I consider the fatal flaw of the novel in that SF`s moral code itself was warped, but it was mawkish enough to garner fame. Despite his brilliance, do we need to question why Ezra Pound never got the Nobel? Artists are morally accountable for their visions,and if twisted, you go in the dung heap. That`s why PERFUME will not even stay in the trash bin of garbage literature-it will sink to the furthest depths. back to top Add a reference: Search for a book to add a reference add: link cover Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. How is Gatsby obsessed with Daisy?Scott Fitzgerald, what Jay Gatsby feels for Daisy Buchanan is obsession. Gatsby revolves and rearranges his entire life in order to gain her affections. Gatsby's obsession with Daisy resulted in him buying a mansion across the lake from her, throwing huge parties, and spending years of his life trying to become rich.
Why was Jay so obsessed with Daisy?Gatsby lived for the purpose of Daisy's approval. While everyone around him was so caught up with their reputation in society, Gatsby was caught up with his reputation to Daisy. He wanted her to think the best of him.
What does Jay Gatsby say about Daisy?"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly. Gatsby explicitly ties Daisy and her magnetic voice to wealth. This particular line is really crucial, since it ties Gatsby's love for Daisy to his pursuit of wealth and status. It also allows Daisy herself to become a stand-in for the idea of the American Dream.
Is Gatsby obsessed with or in love with Daisy?He clearly loves her with all his heart, moreover, he is obsessed with Daisy and unable to imagine his life without her in it. Daisy's real feelings remain confused and unclear. But if we think a bit more about it, we'll see the other side of Gatsby and Daisy relationship. He is obsessed with her, he idolizes her.
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Quotes about Gatsbys obsession with Daisy
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