The Rich, The Very Rich and then Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

Shannon Elizabeth looking at once sexually terrifying and terrifyingly sexual in the  1974 classic.

FALSITY seems to be the general focus of Fitzgerald's short novel, The Great Gatsby. Indeed the female characters within the text seem to be forever posing themselves ironically upon the furniture and everybody in general seem to constantly spout the most absurdly cynical, sarcastic "witticisms".

The novel was actually a rather short one, and certainly not without it's flaws. Between the statuesque women-folk and the elitist rich men-folk - who is there for the reader to actually identify with? Our female protagonist, Miss Baker, is offered to the reader as a kind of carved image of classical beauty:

She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it - indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in. - The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1

She experiences no sexual awakening during the novel, and is neither transformed nor altered by the events described within its pages. Our other female protagonist, Daisy, is offered an even more leading role in the novel, but she remains unattainable for the largest portion of the text as a wife and the former lover of the eponymous Gatsby. 

So what is there left, offered to the reader to identify with? The super-rich are impossible to identify with, certainly. Their lifestyle is too without consequence and without order - even the post-world-war 2 ultra rich who built their fortunes from the roiling economy during the baby boomer, dynastic years cannot identify with the faintly aristocratic, work-less elite of this novel.

The hero of the novel is far more Everyman, however, though he is Everyman with naivety that rather fails to destroy him in the end. He is a man searching for the American dream, to make his fortune, who just happens to be friends with these ultra-fashionable, beautiful and rich people. But, once again, who in this post 9/11 world can really relate to this kind of relationship?

On the plus side, the characters spoke with a high degree of realism, and the kind of sarcastic, alluring sentiments with which they speak of everything and the sense that really, they don't give a fuck - this is something we, post-modern 21^st  Century people can really appreciate.