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Tiffani Douglas
ENGL 204 American Literature
Critical Essay
2 April 2009
The “Ghostly Heart” of Jay Gatsby
In the novel, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is seen as a controversial figure by most of
the main characters of the book.
His obscure background and his affiliation with Dan Cody
cause him to be the subject of unscrupulous gossip among the elite class in West Egg. Because of
this, the positive character traits of Gatsby are mostly overlooked by many of the main characters
of the novel. Fitzgerald, however, strives to elevate Gatsby as a model for the American ideal of
harboring big dreams. Jay Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s hero in the novel because of his ability to
dedicate himself entirely to a grand, romantic dream and still reconcile it with a concrete,
unflinching reality he knows will not live up to his immense expectations.
As one of the themes in his novel, Fitzgerald assesses man’s ability to dream. Fitzgerald
believed that “no amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his
ghostly heart” (96). Jay Gatsby has the most “ghostly heart” of all men, and his significance in
the novel lies in his ability to give himself unwaveringly to the passionate desires he carries
within himself. Critic Arnold Weinstein, author of “Fiction as Greatness: The Case of Gatsby,”
describes this concept by asserting that “the ‘ghostly heart’ outrivals matter…it generates and
stores up visions to which flesh and blood and things cannot measure up” (Weinstein 26). Gatsby
stands apart from other men because of his willingness to dream to his greatest capability.
In the beginning of the novel, Nick Carraway has no conception of the importance of
seeing the world with the intensity that Gatsby does. When Nick first comes to West Egg, he
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admits, “I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever” (2).
Individuality holds no appeal for Nick, and he has resigned himself to a mundane, dull view of
life void of an passionate desires. He sees no value in dreaming beyond his expectations of the
world—until he meets Jay Gatsby. Barbara Will, author of an article entitled “‘The Great
Gatsby’ and the Obscene Word” describes the transformation in Nick’s view of the world as the
novel progresses. By the end of novel, “Carraway finally perceives what lies beneath the
‘inessential’ face world of his surroundings: a vital impulse, an originary American hope” (Will
125). Nick believes in this hope only when he sees it in Jay Gatsby.
This belief brings Nick out of his cynical perspective of the world and leads him to
understand that a romantic perspective of the world is sometimes indispensible to hope. As Nick
reflects on what Gatsby’s life has taught him about his own, he marvels at Gatsby’s facility to
cherish an ideal dream: “it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I
have never found in any person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again” (2). Robert
Ornstein describes Gatsby’s greatness by attributing it to his ability to dream, for “his dream,
however naive, gaudy, and unattainable, is one of the grand illusions of the race, which keep men
from becoming too old or too wise or too cynical of their human limitations” (qtd. in Eble 35).
Gatsby frees Nick from his cynicism throughout the course of the novel.
Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald uses the grandest language possible to give readers the
elevated description he can to convey the immensity of Gatsby’s dream. This culminates at the
end of the novel, when Fitzgerald compares Gatsby’s dreaming to man’s “capacity to wonder”
(180). Weinstein makes the assertion that “in this dream, as perhaps in all dreams…the desire
forges the object, the imagination makes the world. Desire and will are entirely potent here,
capable of producing their own artifacts and setting up their own regime” (28). Gatsby shapes his
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own reality by believing so strongly in his dream. By the end of the novel, Nick understands the
magnitude of Gatsby’s desire because he realizes that it is conducive to making the most of
reality.
Early in his life, Gatsby’s imagination did not allow for the manifestation of his dreams
in the real world. He was entirely a dreamer, and “the most grotesque and fantastic conceits
haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain”
(99). During his youth, Gatsby was caught in a world that held no connection to reality; his mind
wrought imaginations that would never find semblance in the real world. As he gets older,
Gatsby begins to tie his dreams to reality in an unexpected way. He relies on his imaginings as “a
satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded
securely on a fairy’s wing” (99). By perceiving the “unreality of reality,” Gatsby begins to
understand that the tangible world can be seen as a purchase for his unfettered dreams.
Gatsby finally restrains his wild dreams by finding a focus for them. They take on a
tangible form in the character Daisy Buchanan. Nick notes that when Gatsby meets Daisy for the
first time in several years, “he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of
the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an
inconceivable pitch of intensity” (91-92). Gatsby, however, does not let this “idea” remain an
intangible imagination. Instead, he allows it to drive him on. He lets it spur him toward a pursuit
of Daisy with a love that is motivated by a passionate desire to anchor his dreams in the reality
Daisy represents for him.
Fitzgerald recognizes the danger that this poses for Gatsby. Gatsby’s picture of Daisy is
perfect, but humanity is not. In the novel, Nick observes that Daisy would inexorably “tumble
short of his [Gatsby’s] dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of
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his illusion” (95). In his mind, Gatsby had formed a “creative passion” so grand that living up to
it in the real world would be an impossibility (95). Yet Gatsby has the courage to elevate Daisy
on a pedestal in his mind despite the inevitability of disappointment that loving her on such a
grand scale would cause. This is one reason why Gatsby is admirable despite his many flaws; he
is boldly willing to pursue romanticism in an age when it is unanimously and wholeheartedly
rejected.
Even more admirably than this, Gatsby pursues Daisy, even while knowing that she
would fall short of his romantic vision of her. Fitzgerald shows the magnitude of Gatsby’s loss
when he reconciles the real Daisy with his dream of her by revealing that Gatsby “knew that
when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his
mind would never romp again like the mind of God” (110). The revelation that Daisy is indeed
“perishable” would diminish his dreams of possibility, for he would know that Daisy could not
fulfill them to entirety. Gatsby, however, still pursues her ardently, despite this loss. Weinstein
comments on the significance of this by stating that “Gatsby, even knowing that Daisy is
incommensurate with the Dream, goes on, and much of the novel's pathos hinges on his efforts to
remake the world, the past, to fashion a reality of his own that would correspond to the dream”
(Weinstein 25). Gatsby is attempting to reconcile a disappointing reality with his dreams.
Gatsby’s dreams are connected to reality in another way; they make belief in a positive
future possible as well. For Gatsby, the green light across the water is the personification of
Daisy. The end of the novel reveals this, for Fitzgerald reminds us that “Gatsby believed in the
green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (180). Although Daisy let
him down in the end, Gatsby is still “the consummate hero of belief [because] his belief in Daisy,
in the green light, is of such a magnitude as to move worlds” (Weinstein 28). The moment
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Gatsby met Daisy again, “the colossal significance of that light…vanished forever” and Gatsby’s
“count of enchanted things had diminished by one” (93). The moment Gatsby and Daisy meet
again, Gatsby’s grand dream is confronted and subdued by the reality of Daisy and all her human
flaws even more than it was the first time they were together.
Gatsby’s grand views are not reserved only for Daisy. Throughout the novel, Gatsby has
a general optimistic outlook on human nature as a result of his great dreaming. Fitzgerald
portrays this most clearly through his description of Gatsby’s smile. The smile represents how
Gatsby views others, for his smile “concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your
favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would
like to believe in yourself” (48). The smile shows that Gatsby believes in the possibility that,
although life can never completely measure up to the ideal dreams of man, it can provide some
degree of happiness.
Gatsby’s smile is also relevant because it is directed toward Nick. This shows that
Gatsby’s strength lies in his ability to believe not only in Daisy, but in the lives of all men and
women. His smile “projects the archetypal magic fable to which we never fail to respond: our
own life” (Weinstein 29). Gatsby’s smile is a constant reminder to those around him that the
dreams of man can be fulfilled. His belief in mankind is not limited to Daisy.
This strength negates Gatsby’s countless failures in the novel. Gatsby becomes a hero in
the end, for his “lies, his pretensions, and his corruption are ‘no matter’; nor is his failure to win
back Daisy; what matters is the sustaining belief in the value of striving for a ‘wondrous’ object,
not its inevitable disappearance and meaninglessness” (Will 126). His past relationship Dan
Cody, the disgraceful way he acquired his wealth, and his unsuccessful attempt to woo Daisy are
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all overshadowed by his persistent belief in the possibilities of life. For Gatsby, the value of life
found fruition in chasing his dream, not in attaining it.
Fitzgerald does not by any means portray Gatsby as a perfect human being. He does,
however, use Gatsby to provide his readers with a model for viewing the world through the eyes
of a dreamer. Fitzgerald emphasizes the importance of dreaming, and “his book is, from
beginning to end, despite its revelations and weary narrator, committed to the power of the
dream” (Weinstein 30). Fitzgerald shows this power by giving his readers a character who is
strong enough to lock a great, romantic view of reality within the confines of the actual world.
Gatsby was able to maintain his idealism in an imperfect world in a way no one else in the novel
could.
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Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004.
Weinstein, Arnold. “Fiction as Greatness: The Case of Gatsby.” A Forum on Fiction. 19.1
(1985) 22-38. JSTOR. 26 March 2009. <http://www.jstor.org>.
Will, Barbara. “‘The Great Gatsby’ and the Obscene Word.” College Literature. 32.4 (2005)
125-144. JSTOR 26 March 2009. <http://www.jstor.org>.
Eble, Kenneth. “The Great Gatsby.” College Literature. 1.1 (1974) 34-47. JSTOR 26 March
2009. <http://www.jstor.org>.