Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s
On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a
story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme
of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic
scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months
during the summer of 1922 and is set in a
circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island,
New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation
on 1920s America as a whole, in particular
the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented
prosperity and material excess.
Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as
an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching
cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance
that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The
Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws
every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the
American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure
surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918,
the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became
intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just
faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century
America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of
the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained
increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people
began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. A person from
any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the
American aristocracy—families with old wealth—scorned the newly
rich industrialists and speculators. Additionally, the passage of
the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned
the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to satisfy
the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.
Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great
Gatsby as emblems of these social trends. Nick and Gatsby,
both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the newfound cosmopolitanism
and cynicism that resulted from the war. The various social climbers
and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsby’s parties evidence the greedy
scramble for wealth. The clash between “old money” and “new money”
manifests itself in the novel’s symbolic geography: East Egg represents
the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. Meyer
Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s fortune symbolize the rise of organized crime
and bootlegging.
As Fitzgerald saw it (and as Nick explains in Chapter 9),
the American dream was originally about discovery, individualism,
and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s
depicted in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed social values
have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast. The main
plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as Gatsby’s dream
of loving Daisy is ruined by the difference in their respective
social statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough money to
impress her, and the rampant materialism that characterizes her
lifestyle. Additionally, places and objects in The Great
Gatsby have meaning only because characters instill
them with meaning: the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg best exemplify
this idea. In Nick’s mind, the ability to create meaningful symbols
constitutes a central component of the American dream, as early
Americans invested their new nation with their own ideals and values.
Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the
ocean to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. Just as Americans
have given America meaning through their dreams for their own lives, Gatsby
instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither
deserves nor possesses. Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness
of its object, just as the American dream in the 1920s
is ruined by the unworthiness of its object—money and pleasure.
Like 1920s Americans in general,
fruitlessly seeking a bygone era in which their dreams had value,
Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished past—his time in Louisville
with Daisy—but is incapable of doing so. When his dream crumbles,
all that is left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is move
back to Minnesota, where American values have not decayed.
The Hollowness of the Upper Class
One of the major topics explored in The Great
Gatsby is the sociology of wealth, specifically, how the
newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ
from and relate to the old aristocracy of the country’s richest
families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly
rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom,
represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich
as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and
taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion,
wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on
subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes’ invitation
to lunch. In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety,
and elegance, epitomized by the Buchanans’ tasteful home and the
flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker.
