Katie McAlister
AP Lang- 5th Hour
2/19/14
From Wonderland to Wasteland
In the literary criticism “From Wonderland to Wasteland: The Wonderful Wizard
of Oz, The Great Gatsby, and the New American Fairy Tale” by Laura Barrett, we are
presented to the idea that the ‘American Dream’ has died due to the lack of faith in it.
This loss opened the door for a new American ‘fairy tale’; one that shows the unreality of
reality. This is done by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the writing of The Great Gatsby, which is
painted on the foundation of The Wizard of Oz.
Barrett introduces the idea that the importance of place is evident in all fairytales,
as it is in The Wizard of Oz, and The Great Gatsby. Working titles for The Wizard of Oz
included “The City of Oz” and “The Emerald City”. This puts the emphasis on the place
rather than the man. Even with The Great Gatsby, the earlier title included “On the Road
to West Egg”, pulling more attention to the location itself. According to Barrett, both
Dorothy and Nick Carraway are moved by the desire for the “American Dream”, and the
rest of their stories are dependent on the places they are in. Even though Barrett mentions
the description of The Valley of Ashes, and the “enchanted land of East Egg”, there is
further evidence that place is important, which is seen through the way that Nick
describes the scenes. Place has a power in The Great Gatsby, shown in the first chapter
when Nick says “instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now
seemed like the ragged edge of the universe- so I decided to go East and and learn the
bond business” (Fitzgerald, 3). With a change of location there comes a change of power
and status. A new life is also symbolized with the change of scenery, “And so, with the
sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees…. I had the familiar
conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer”(Fitzgerald, 4). The
“Valley of Ashes”, described as an underworld, is also where Myrtles death, and the
consequent decline of Gatsby’s future. The description and contrast of the two “Eggs”
added to the idea of social structure and desire. The “less fashionable” West Egg was the
new money, the people rising from nothing. Making something of themselves. This
description alone tells us something about its inhabitants, with out even seeing anything
of them.
Typical fairy tale conventions are all present in The Great Gatsby, and they
present in a similar fashion to The Wizard of Oz. Barrett proposes that the ideas of
tension between good and evil, magical interventions and transformations, the
descriptions of jewels and flowers, the journey motif, and the hunger for love, success,
and identity. However, the author fails to support these specifically. The tension between
good and evil could be described as the tension between Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby.
This is first seen on page 74, where only Gatsby is aware of his intentions to see Daisy,
and is embarrassed. “’This Is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan.’ They shook hands briefly, and
a strained, unfamiliar look of embarrassment came over Gatsby’s face…. I turned toward
Mr. Gatsby, but he was no longer there”(Fitzgerald, 74). Again this tension is seen in a
conversation between Jordan and Nick, when she says “’When I said you were a
particular friend of Tom’s, he started to abandon the idea. He doesn’t know very much
about Tom, though he says he’s read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of
catching a glimpse of Daisy’s name’”(Fitzgerald 79). This tension could also be
portrayed as Jay’s conflicting feelings on spending time with Daisy in the beginning,
when he couldn’t even invite Daisy over personally, or inquire that Nick do it himself.
Instead he had Jordan approach Nick, “’He wants to know,’ continued Jordan, ‘if you’ll
invite Daisy to your house some afternoon and then let him come over.’”(Fitzgerald, 78).
Barrett also writes the theory that the fairy tale relies on Nick’s vision, her
evidence being the description of Gatsby’s party, “”floating rounds of cocktails permeate
the garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual
innuendo”(44). Barrett also uses passages to support her claim about Jordan and Daisy’s
rippling gowns, Manhattans glow, and the imposing but beautiful home of the
Buchanan’s. This claim is very straightforward and accurate. The only thing to be added
to tie the two main stories in this paper together once again, is the fact that we see this
whole story through Nick’s eyes, just as the emerald city is seen through the green
colored glasses in “The Wizard of Oz”. Though the color and mood may be distorted, this
is what helps Nick tell this tale as if it is enchanted, even if the summer truly wasn’t as
amazing as it seems, and gives “The Great Gatsby” the fairy tale potential, which is what
makes this story great, by Barrett’s standards. In other passages, you can see again the
fairytale way that Nick Carraway describes his surroundings. “With the influence of the
dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so
remarkable in the garage, was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her
gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment, and as she
expanded the room grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy,
creaking pivot through the smoky air”(Fitzgerald 30). This description of Myrtle opens
the door to fantasy as Nick describes the mood in the air with a physical, enchanted
description. Earlier in the story, Nick uses his description to introduce us to Daisy’s voice
and Gatsby’s smile- both very compelling and enchanting through the story. “Her low,
thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech
is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again…. But there was an excitement
in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing
compulsion, a whispered “listen”, a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a
while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour”(Fitzgerald
9). “Her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless,
thrilling words”(Fitzgerald 15). “The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in
the rain. I had to follow the sound of it for a moment, up and down, with my ear alone,
before any words came through”(Fitzgerald 86). This constant description of Daisy’s
beautiful flowing voice adds to the romanticism and beauty in the fairytale. Later,
Gatsby’s smile is described to the same purpose. “He smiled understandingly- Much
more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal
reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced- or seemed
to face- the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an
irresistable 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, and assured you that
it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey”(Fitzgerald
48).
Later in her literary criticism, Barrett brings up the point that Gatsby promotes the
change from humans into machines- which is an inversion of Baum’s animation of
inanimate objects in The Wizard of Oz. Barrett uses the transformation of Tom
Buchanan, and the robotic movements/actions of George Wilson to prove this point. I,
however, do not agree with this. I, in fact, propose the opposite! I think that through the
course of the book, humanity increases in a lot, if not most, of the characters. Gatsby,
who functioned only on frivolous parties and the hope of someday glimpsing Daisy- truly
falls in love with, and is willing to give his life for her in the end. He begins to see that
some people are worth dying for. Nick, also begins to see reality. He is awakened from
his previous state (which could be described as inanimate) and is awoken from his ideal
world, where he is “one of the few honest people he has ever met”, to admitting that he is
just “five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor”(Fitzgerald 179). The truth is that
the virtues we pride ourselves in, sometimes, just end up to be easier to deal with. As a
human it is easier to be honest- rather than not be.
Parallels content wise between The Wizard of Oz and The Great Gatsby are also
very prominent according to Barrett. She presents a very convincing argument, in which
Fitzgerald and Baum write similar subjects. The Valley of ashes is very similar to the
plains that Dorothy escapes. Both are described as grey, containing bleak dust/ashes. The
neverland of Oz, is comparable to West and East Egg, where they are both sparkling and
pristine white. The green of the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz, is expressed in
smaller symbols in the Great Gatsby, full of promise like the green light at the end of the
Buchanan’s dock- but ultimately deceptive. The hope that Daisy and Jay would be
together was never realized. The yellow brick road, that lead to promises and the great
wizard (Gatsby), was left crumbling in the Valley of Ashes in The Great Gatsby. This
could symbolize the deterioration of the American dream. This idea of deterioration is
confirmed by the fraud that is found in The Wizard, as well as Gatsby- who you never
know much about, except the fact that they are portrayed as “larger than life” figures,
who just turn out to be normal guys. “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long
Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself… and to this conception he was
faithful to the end”(Fitzgerald 99). We are lead to believe that people are not always s
they seem.
Barrett also proposes that in The Great Gatsby, image matters more than content.
She backs this statement with evidence from The Wizard of Oz- the projection and image
of the way we see things, matter more than what they truly are. Even though the emerald
city is truly white- the people only care about seeing it as green. This is true with Jay
Gatsby. His image is more important to people than who he truly is. The rumors and
perpetual mystery feed the interest in him. No one really cares who Gatsby is- they care
about the actions of party, the glamorous house, and the fascinating rumors that surround
him. Even at one of the chapters- many people admit that they have never even met him
personally- yet they judge based on the material possessions of the man. Gatsby was able
to reinvent himself based solely on the conception he had of himself. As he projected this
image- it was only a matter of time before people started to accept solely what they saw
of him. This shows that the man matters less than the portrayal of him.
Through the criticism of Laura Barrett, we as readers are opened to the portrayal
of The Great Gatsby as a fairy tale, based on Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. Instead of being
caught up in the glitz and glammer of Fitzgerald’s beautiful language (which can also be
paralleled to the hype and whirlwind excitement of the people in the 20’s), we are forced,
in this essay, to look passed the eloquent words and deeper into the true meaning of the
book. This analysis presents ideas that reduce the two stories to materialistic desires, and
pose the idea of a new kind of fairy tale that is geared more towards the death of the old
“American Dream”. The criticism in the essay by Barrett shows The Great Gatsby and
The Wizard of Oz in a light that emphasizes the sad ending to the reality of love in
combination with the horrors of excessive materialism, fairytalistic mindsets, and
importance of place and image over individual people and storyline; that was so
prominent in the wealth of the American society in the 1920’s.