In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald presents to the reader an exuberant world that is bursting with life: from Gatsby’s glittering and sparkling parties to the ‘racy, adventurous feel’ of New York. However, it is under this shimmering surface that the real action of the novel happens.
While the characters in the novel attempt to give the impression of existing on a carousel of pleasure, it is almost immediately apparent that beneath the gaudily painted horses and smiling faces (to extend the metaphor), lies a world of pain and regret, of deception and unhappiness. Beneath a wafer thin veneer of lies, make-up and ‘artificial’ laughter lies the truth: that life for Fitzgerald’s characters is a continual disappointment, a continual falling short of expectations, of ideals. We do not know it at the time but beneath Daisy’s response to hearing Gatsby’s name (‘Gatsby?’…’What Gatsby?’), beneath the ‘excitement in her voice’ lies a world of pain, of thwarted love, despair and unhappy marriage.
Fitzgerald, then, seems to be suggesting that the society he is depicting is an overwhelmingly superficial one; it is a society of surfaces, a society where there is an unbridgeable gulf between appearances and reality. In Fitzgerald’s New York even the moon is contrived, is reduced to the status of an adornment when it is described as being ‘produced like the supper…out of a caterer’s basket’. Later it is described as a ‘wafer of a moon’; something insubstantial, decorative, an embellishment – beautiful but ultimately unnecessary. Nature is further subjugated in Fitzgerald’s description of Myrtle’s sister, Catherine. Despite the fact that Catherine has plucked her eyebrows and drawn them ‘on again at a more rakish angle’, the ‘efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face.’ Beneath the surface appearance (the ‘drawn on’ eyebrows), nature, or reality, is determined to reassert itself. This continual conflict between appearance and reality creates a ‘blurred air’ which permeates the whole novel. Truth and reality are hard, if not impossible, to discern as they exist beneath a surface of artifice. Is Gatsby the hero that Nick seems to think he is? Despite his assertion that he is one of the 'few honest people' he has ever known, can Nick himself be trusted? Is Tom really a complete bastard? Does Daisy really love Gatsby? Tom? Anyone?
This disparity between appearance and reality is further illustrated in one of the stranger episodes of the novel when Nick and Jordan stumble into Gatsby’s library during Nick’s first party at his neighbour’s ornate house. Inside is a drunk, middle-aged man who announces excitedly that the books contained on Gatsby’s shelves are ‘absolutely real – have pages and everything.’ While the reader might find this rather odd (after all, why wouldn’t the books be real? Most books are real, aren’t they?) the inebriated man takes ‘scepticism for granted’ and proceeds to prove to Nick and Jordan that the books are real by selecting one and showing them the pages. Here the fact that appearance and reality seem to correspond is taken by the stout man as a marvel, as something that others would find hard to believe without solid proof. The ‘owl-eyed’ man then compares Gatsby to David Belasco, a Broadway theatre producer, known as ‘the Bishop of Broadway’ who was famed for the ‘realism of his sets’. Even in his drunken but lucid state, he is clearly able to see Gatsby’s world for what it is: an elaborate and fanciful construction.
Can we believe anything we are told about Gatsby? Fitzgerald deliberately wraps an aura of mystery around his eponymous ‘hero’. Before he appears in the novel we are told that he is ‘a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm’s’ and a ‘German spy’. The German connection makes the stories seem almost plausible, but like the man in the library we can take scepticism for granted by this stage. Gatsby is the ultimate mirage, the ultimate illusion. At this point, it is impossible for us as readers or for the characters in the novel to pin him down, to separate myth from history, truth from lies, appearance from reality; we are reduced to relying on gossip and hearsay, like the partygoer who declares that ‘Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once’ (my italics). It’s hard to imagine how Fitzgerald could have made this statement any vaguer, any more qualified, and it perfectly illustrates the slippery and elusive nature of truth in the novel.
It is perhaps the insincerity of the world that Fitzgerald creates that makes it difficult for our narrator, Nick Carraway, to fully engage with the scenes he is passing through; perhaps that is the reason why he describes himself as ‘within and without’. And perhaps that is why our apparently ‘honest’ narrator is ‘simultaneously enchanted and repelled’ by a society that appears to be glamorous, exciting and desirable, but is also superficial, insincere and deceptive.
Mr R.
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