The Great Gatsby: Driving to Destruction with the Rich and Careless at the Wheel
Author(s): Jacqueline Lance
Source: Studies in Popular Culture , October 2000, Vol. 23, No. 2 (October 2000), pp. 2535
Published by: Popular Culture Association in the South
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23414542
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23414542?seq=1&cid=pdfreference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Studies in Popular
Culture
This content downloaded from
192.80.65.116 on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 02:09:41 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Jacqueline Lance
The Great Gats by:
Driving to Destruction
with the Rich and Careless at the Wheel
As one of the most celebrated novels of the century, F. Scott Fitzgerald'
The Great Gatsby has attracted significant critical attention, yet despite t
quantity of scholarly work, few critics fully examine the automobile trope that
permeates the text. Significantly, there are over two hundred references to the
automobile in the novel, including references to the "car(s)" (Crosland 51-5
"driving" (and its cognates) (94-95), "garage(s)" (129), and "gasoline" (12
as well as related references to the automobile (Crosland). "As a represent
tive figure of the age" (Cowley 133), F. Scott Fitzgerald must have been awa
of the cultural impact the automobile was having on his generation, and
riddles his best-known novel,-The Great Gatsby, with references to this po
lar form of transportation. What is puzzling about the many references to the
automobile and the contexts in which it is portrayed is that Fitzgerald pri
rily depicts it in negative terms. Apparently, Fitzgerald was not trying to
tique the automobile as a form of transportation since he owned a second-ha
Rolls Royce (Fahey 66) himself - but was creating a trope in which the au
mobile stands for a larger social ill.
In order to begin unraveling the automobile trope in The Great Gatsby,
recent related scholarship must be examined, beginning with several studi
on color-symbolism and the complex pattern of contrasting light and da
colors. Daisy's repeated association with the color white has attracted the n
tice of several critics, including A.E. Elmore, who observes in his article, "Color
and Cosmos in The Great Gatsby, " that "white, even after one exclu
near-synonyms such as silver, makes more appearances in the novel than a
other single color, and something like three of every four are applied to E
Egg or characters from East Egg, especially to Daisy" (428). Furthermore
Elmore asserts that "in both the Neoplatonic and Judeo-Christian tradition
white ... is symbolic of the One, or of God, or of His abode" (430), a sign
cant fact in terms of Fitzgerald's portrayal of Daisy. In his article, "Colo
Symbolism of The Great Gatsby, " Daniel Schneider remarks that "white t
ditionally symbolizes purity, and there is no doubt that Fitzgerald wants t
underscore the ironic disparity between the ostensible purity of Daisy ... a
[her] actual corruption" (14).
Schneider contends that yellow becomes the "symbol of money, the
This content downloaded from
192.80.65.116 on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 02:09:41 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
26
Jacqueline Lance
crass materialism that corrupts the dream and ultimately destroys it" (13). Of
course, it is Gatsby's dream of winning Daisy's love and respect that is cor
rupted by his obsession with possessing wealth and material objects, a wealth
that Gatsby believes will ensure Daisy's unwavering love. Appropriately,
Gatsby owns a monstrous and fantastic yellow-colored car. In his study Image
Patterns in the Novels of Ε Scott Fitzgerald, Dan Seiters examines Fitzgerald's
depiction of Gatsby's automobile, namely its "rich cream color" (Fitzgerald
68), which results from the "combination of the white of the dream [Gatsby's]
and the yellow of money, of reality in a narrow sense" (Seiters 58). After this
car becomes the vehicle of Myrtle Wilson's death, it is simply described as "a
yellow car" (Fitzgerald 148). Yellow, as "color imagery unfolds, becomes purely
and simply corruption. White, the color of the dream, has been removed from
the mixture" (Seiters 58). As white was used primarily to refer to East Egg,
"yellow and gold are applied predominately to West Egg and in particular to
Gatsby" (Elmore 43 5).
Other colors besides white and yellow have symbolic meaning in The
Great Gatsby, such as the color blue, which is the color of Tom Buchanan's
tasteful coupe. Schneider insists that Fitzgerald uses the color blue to symbol
ize a romantic idealism, a continuation of the white imagery that denotes
Gatsby's dream (15). Although Schneider does not specifically mention Tom's
car in his analysis of The Great Gatsby, one could infer from his analysis of
other references to "blue" that Tom, characterized by his blue coupe, was the
ideal Gatsby was straining towards. If the color blue is a symbol of Gatsby's
romantic dream of attaining Daisy's love, it is appropriate that a blue car should
characterize Tom. After all, becoming Tom was Gatsby's dream.
Just as the color of the automobile symbolizes a significant aspect of
the driver's personality, the car itself further reflects each driver's
socieo-economic status in the world of West and East Egg. The most obvious
example of this is Gatsby's own car, the Rolls Royce described by Tom later in
the novel as a "circus wagon" (128). Seiters suggests that Gatsby's car is the
result of his arrested development in adolescence; it is "the very vehicle for
one who formed his ideals as a teenager and never questioned them again"
(Seiters 58). Gatsby believes that his automobile will advertise his wealth and
new status, and it does with unfortunate results; he unwittingly advertises his
status as an outsider, one of the nouveau riche of West Egg.
While Gatsby's status as one of the nouveau riche is advertised by his
yellow car, the Wilson's low social and economic status is advertised by their
lack of a running automobile. Fitzgerald portrays George Wilson as an inef
fectual man who is trapped underneath the grim reality of his life in the valley
of the ashes, "He was a blonde, spiritless man, anemic and faintly handsome.
This content downloaded from
192.80.65.116 on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 02:09:41 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Great Gatsby
27
When he saw us [Tom and Nick] a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light
blue eyes" (Fitzgerald 29). Wilson is described as an almost lifeless shadow of
a man, and his despondency is reflected in the characteristics of the only car
that he owns, "the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim
comer" (29). This dilapidated vehicle represents the physical, emotional, eco
nomic, and marital deterioration present in Wilson's own life. Furthermore,
the sign outside of the Wilsons' garage proclaims, "Repairs. GEORGE B.
WILSON. Cars Bought and Sold" (29), a declaration that has a hollow ring to
it when it becomes evident that he cannot fix his own car, just as he cannot
mend his own life.
Myrtle Wilson acutely feels the absence of a working automobile, and
like Gatsby, seeks the automobile as a way to bolster her precarious social
position. Since Myrtle possesses little wealth and cannot boast of high breed
ing, she is reduced to selecting a taxicab she will ride in temporarily. Futilely,
Myrtle tries to move into the same social class as the Buchanans and compen
sates for her lower economic and social status by ensuring that she can at least
ride in style.
While the Wilsons desperately strive to own a car that actually runs,
Daisy Buchanan can boast of owning a car since her adolescence when she
drove a "little white roadster" (Fitzgerald 79). As a married woman, Daisy and
her husband possess at least two cars of their own, the blue coupe and the
older model car that Tom considers selling to George Wilson. Interestingly,
the cars that Daisy and Tom own are barely described; they are simply differ
entiated from other vehicles by their colors, "blue" and "white." These under
stated cars reflect the understated good taste of the Buchanans; they are com
fortable with their wealth and social position and do not need to advertise their
status by driving gaudy and showy automobiles.
Nick Carraway does not own a showy car, nor does it seem that he
wants one. His colorless description of his own car, "an old Dodge" (Fitzgerald
8), is the first reference to an automobile in the novel and serves as an illustra
tion of Nick's own social and economic status. Without reserve, Nick estab
lishes that he has little wealth and is struggling in his new career in "the bond
business" (7), yet he devotes a passage to describing his impressive family
lineage of resourceful and respected businessmen. His modest and functional
automobile reflects his own sense of satisfaction with his family background
and his temporary economic situation. Like Nick himself, Nick's car is the
by-product of American ingenuity and follows a tradition of being both reli
able and respectable.
Although Jordan Baker's experiences with automobiles are crucial to
the novel and the automobile trope, her ownership of an automobile is unclear.
This content downloaded from
192.80.65.116 on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 02:09:41 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
28
Jacqueline Lance
Evidently, Jordan can drive a car; yet Fitzgerald never establishes whether or
not she owns a car of her own, just as he never establishes much else about her
background. She must come from wealth and breeding since she lives a lei
surely life as a professional female golfer and seems to know the "right" people
in both West and East Egg.
Not only are characters defined by the kind and color of automobile
they drive, but the way they behave behind the wheel strongly indicates their
attitude towards life and relationships; those who are "careless" drivers ap
proach life in the same manner with which they approach the open road. Just
as they carelessly cause injury to people and property while behind the wheel,
they inflict similar emotional wounds on those with whom they come in con
tact. The characters in the novel who are the most careless drivers emerge as
those who are the most careless in their personal relationships.
As the conversations on careless driving suggest, Jordan Baker oper
ates a car much as she approaches life, unreliably and without emotion. Be
fore Nick and Jordan have their first conversation about careless driving, Nick
narrates an incident that illustrates Jordan's carelessness both with automo
biles and in life:
When we were on a house party together up in Warwick, she
left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down, and then
lied about it—and suddenly I remembered the story about her
that had eluded me that night at Daisy's. At her first big golf
tournament there was a row that nearly reached the
newspapers—a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a
bad lie in the semi-final round. (62)
The incident starkly reveals Jordan's character, and her misuse of the
automobile at the house party anticipates the deception she employs to cover
up her carelessness of leaving the borrowed car out in the rain with the top
down. After Nick reveals this part of her character, the unsavory story he re
calls about her having cheated in a tournament earlier is hardly surprising to
the reader.
Tom Buchanan is another character who is careless in both life and
behind the wheel. The reader learns early in the novel that Tom is having an
adulterous affair and is careless enough with his marital relationship that he
takes a call from his lover while he is dining at home with his wife and friends.
With this in mind, it is not surprising to find out later that Tom is one of the
careless drivers of the novel. Later, Jordan reveals to Nick many of the details
of the Buchanans' early courtship and marriage, including a distasteful inci
This content downloaded from
192.80.65.116 on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 02:09:41 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Great Gatsby
29
dent that occurred in August of 1920, shortly after the couple returned from
their honeymoon. According to Jordan's account, Tom was involved in a car
accident in which he "ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night and
ripped a front wheel off his car" (Fitzgerald 82). Tom's carelessness extends
far beyond his driving on this one particular night; he was accompanied by
"one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel" (82) at the time.
At the end of the novel Daisy Buchanan is revealed as the most care
less of all the drivers. Daisy slides behind the wheel only once in the narra
tive, yet her trip becomes one of the most pivotal events of the novel since it
simultaneously shows her carelessness behind the wheel and her carelessness
with human relationships and anticipates the deception she employs to cover
up her crime. Of course, the incident is the hit-and-run accident that kills Myrtle
Wilson. We never see Daisy getting behind the wheel until she comments to
Gatsby that "she was very nervous" (151) after the confrontation between
Gatsby and Tom in New York, and "she thought it would steady her to drive"
(151). The narrative reveals that Daisy was driving carelessly by driving too
fast and by allowing herself to be distracted by the day's unpleasant events.
Finally, after hitting Myrtle with Gatsby's car, Daisy panics and flees the scene,
not even stopping to see if her victim survived.
Not only does Daisy's careless driving directly result in a fatality, but
it leads to other deaths that could have been prevented had she claimed re
sponsibility for the accident. Tom and Daisy adhere to the story that neither of
them had been involved in the death, leaving Gatsby to take the blame for the
accident. Daisy's carelessness behind the wheel clearly reflects the careless
ness with which she approaches her love affair with Gatsby. She uses him to
appease her own feelings of inadequacy after Tom's numerous affairs and
quickly discards him when his existence threatens her own.
Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald consistently uses the automobile as
a vehicle to reveal the carelessness and materialism of his characters and he
extends the scope of the automobile to that most feared and mysterious human
condition of all, death. Early in the novel, Nick pairs the automobile with
death in his description of Chicago's sorrow at Daisy's absence: "The whole
town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourn
ing wreath and there's a persistent wail all night along the North Shore" (14).
In this hyperbolic situation, Nick uses the automobile to conjure up images of
a funeral scene. Fitzgerald again links the automobile with death when Nick
observes a funeral passing during his trip to New York with Gatsby: "A dead
man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms I was glad that the sight of
Gatsby's splendid car was included in their [the mourners] somber holiday"
(73). That Gatsby's car could have buoyed the spirits of the mourners is pure
This content downloaded from
192.80.65.116 on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 02:09:41 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
30
Jacqueline Lance
speculation, yet it is clear that the car becomes a part of the funeral and the
mourning. Death attaches itself like a contagion to Gatsby's car during this
trip, foretelling of the dire events to come.
Fitzgerald's careful depiction of the automobile culminates with the
hit-and-run accident that kills Myrtle Wilson as the automobile literally be
comes a vehicle of death, and Fitzgerald carefully leads the reader to the acci
dent by further developing the automobile trope. The tension that leads to the
accident begins during the fateful luncheon at the Buchanans when Tom ob
serves Daisy and Gatsby together and realizes the two are having an affair.
After coming to this realization, Tom agrees to move the party to the
city so he can confront the lovers on neutral ground. Interestingly, Tom insists
on switching cars with Gatsby, who hesitantly agrees. During this one trip to
New York, Gatsby and Tom have switched identities; Tom drives the gaudy
yellow car with Jordan and Nick as passengers, while Gatsby positions him
self behind the wheel of the tasteful blue coupe with Daisy at his side. While
Tom drives the "circus wagon," he feels the pain of Daisy slipping away from
him and learns that George Wilson intends to move West with Myrtle since he
"just got wised up to something funny the last two days" (Fitzgerald 130),
presumably that Myrtle is having an affair. Fitzgerald carefully orchestrates
the meeting between Tom and Wilson at the garage to ensure the reader under
stands that both George and Myrtle Wilson notice the shiny yellow car Tom is
driving.
After the confrontation at the hotel in New York, Tom establishes his
dominance over Gatsby by insisting that Daisy and Gatsby again ride together,
but in Gatsby's own car this time. By switching cars, Tom regains his own
identity while relegating Gatsby to his former role as the hopeless dreamer,
the one who can never attain his dream.
In the same instant that Gatsby's car runs over Myrtle Wilson, the
glorious cream-colored car transforms into a "death car" (Fitzgerald 144). All
of the negative connotations that Fitzgerald has linked to the automobile cul
minate in this terse description, a "death car." Suddenly the automobile has
become death itself, leaving a trail of bodies and destruction in its wake.
Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald has repeatedly used personification to ani
mate automobiles with the personalities of its owners/drivers, and by exten
sion, Daisy becomes linked with death as she sits behind the wheel of this
"death car." No longer is Daisy Buchanan simply a careless driver. However,
Daisy leaves death behind when she slides out from behind the wheel of the
now-yellow car and recedes into the security of her social class and her care
lessness, leaving death lingering around Gatsby's car and Gatsby himself.
References to the automobile dwindle after Gatsby's and Wilson's
This content downloaded from
192.80.65.116 on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 02:09:41 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Great Gatsby
death, and the "death car" is not mentioned again. Fitzgerald has taken his
reader for a metaphorical ride in which he first asserts the importance of the
automobile in our society and then repeatedly associates the automobile with
negative connotations. Throughout The Great Gatsby, he carefully constructs
the automobile trope until it culminates in a symbol of death and corruption.
Undeniably, Fitzgerald often portrays the automobile as a profoundly destruc
tive force in American society, yet what remains puzzling is why Fitzgerald
felt such ambivalence about America's favorite mode of transportation.
The riddle of the car's negative role in The Great Gatsby becomes
less confounding after examining critical studies that address the role of tech
nology in American literature, such as Leo Marx's The Machine in the Gar
den: Technology and the Pastoral ideal in America. Marx identifies a recur
ring pattern in American mythology, that Americans long for a rural, bucolic
setting in which they can escape from the numbing effects of cities and ram
pant industrialization. Furthermore, Marx observes that as industrialization
became more widespread in the middle of the nineteenth century, the startling
appearance of the machine began to surface in American literature.
According to Marx, the natural world, or "garden," in The Great Gatsby
is a "hideous, man-made wilderness" (3 5 8) that "is a product of the techno
logical power that also makes possible (Gatsby's wealth, his parties, his car"
(358, emphasis mme). Regarding Gatsby's car, Marx observes:
None of his possessions sums up the quality of lite to which
he aspires as well as the car... As it happens, the car proves to
be a murder weapon and the instrument of Gatsby's undoing.
The car and the garden of ashes belong to a world ... where
natural objects are of no value in themselves. Here all of vis
ible nature is as expendable as a -pasteboard mask ... In The
Great Gatsby, as in Walden, Moby Dick, and Huckleberty Finn,
the machine represents the forces working against the dream
of pastoral fulfillment. (358)
Although Marx does not extend his examination of the automobile in The
Great Gatsby past this observation, his comments become crucial to under
standing Fitzgerald's repeated use of the automobile as a negative force. Just
as the pastoral world of Thoreau, Melville, and Twain had been corrupted by
technology, so has Fitzgerald's landscape of the 1920s but now it is the auto
mobile that is one of the primary corrupting forces, littering the countryside
with its unsightly gas stations, clogging the roadways, and providing Ameri
cans with a new leading cause of premature death. Further, the image of the
This content downloaded from
192.80.65.116 on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 02:09:41 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
31
32
Jacqueline Lance
automobile's intrusion into the landscape represents our society in decline, a
society that depends on wealth and possessions to define personal worth, a
society that allows the wealthy to triumph over and even destroy those who
cannot possess the trappings of the rich.
In his study "Scott Fitzgerald: Romantic and Realist," John Kuehl
supports the theory that the automobile is a crucial trope in The Great Gatsby
and concurs with Marx that industrialization and technology, including the
automobile, mar the pastoral landscape of the novel: "The valley is bordered
by mechanization and urbanization: a highway, a railroad, and Wilson's dingy
garage. In front of this garage where Wilson repairs cars, Myrtle, his wife, is
killed by an automobile - Fitzgerald's symbol of violent death in the machine
age" (417). In addition, Kuehl asserts that Fitzgerald's "interweaving of pas
toral nostalgia and cultural history" (416) reflects his belief in a "lost America"
(416), a mythological land described by Nick in the following passage:
And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to
melt away until gradually I_became aware of the old island
here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes—a fresh, green
breast of the new world, its vanished trees, the trees that had
made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers
to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory
enchanted moment man must have held his breathin the pres
ence of this continent compelled; ο an aesthetic contempla
tion he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last
time in history with something commensurate to his capacity
for wonder. (189)
The idealized, pastoral landscape Nick imagined met the gaze of the Dutch
sailors has been desecrated in the twentieth century in the name of progress,
and the beauty of the natural world has been obliterated by humankind's com
pulsion to master the environment, a compulsion that has resulted in an urban
ization of the landscape, which creates valleys of ashes. Fitzgerald must have
deeply mourned the death of the pastoral landscape and apparently felt that
the automobile would be an apt "vehicle" to convey this profound sense of
loss.
Jacqueline Lance
University of South Florida
Tampa, Florida
This content downloaded from
192.80.65.116 on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 02:09:41 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The
Great
Gatsby
33
WORKS CITED
Cowley, Malcolm. Three Novels ofF. Scott Fitzgerald. Charles Scr
1953. Rpt. in Fitzgerald's The Great Gats by: The Novel, The
Background. Ed. Henry Dan Piper. New York: Charles Scribn
1970.133-40.
Crosland, Andrew T., comp. A Concordance to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Gre
Gatsby. Detroit: Gale Research, 1975.
Elmore, A.E. "Color and Cosmos in The Great Gatsby. " Sewanee Review 7
(1970): 427-43.
Fahey, William A. F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream. Twentiet
Century American Writers. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell,
1973.64-88.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. Preface and Notes by Matthew
Bruccoli. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Kuehl, John. "Scott Fitzgerald: Romantic and Realist." Texas Studies
Literature and Language: A Journal of the Humanities I (1959): 412-2
Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Idea
America. London: Oxford UP, 1964.
Schneider, Daniel. J. "Color-Symbolism in The Great Gatsby. " Universi
Review 31 (1964): 13-18.
Seiters, Dan. Image Patterns in the Novels ofF. Scott Fitzgerald. Studies
Modern. Literature 53. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986.
This content downloaded from
192.80.65.116 on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 02:09:41 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
34
Jacqueline
Lance
WORKS CONSULTED
Allen, Frederick Lewis. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of th
Twenties. New York: Harper & Row, 1957.
Bewley Marius. "Scott Fitzgerald and the Collapse of the American
Modern Critical Views: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ed. Harold Bloom. N
Chelsea House Publishers, 1985.
Callahan, John. F. The Illusions of a Nation: Myth and History in th
F. Scott Fittzgerald. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 19
Doyno, Victor A. "Patterns in The Great Gatsby. " Modern Fiction S
(1966): 415-26. Rpt. in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: The N
The Critics, The Background. Ed. Henry Dan Piper. New York: C
Scribner's Sons, 1970. 160-67.
Fraser, Keath. "Another Reading of The Great Gatsby. " English S
Canada 5 (1979): 330-43.
Friedrich, Otto. "F. Scott Fitzgerald: Money, Money, Money." The
Scholar 29(1960): 392-405.
Knodt, Kenneth S. "The Gathering Darkness: A Study of the E
Technology in The Great Gatsby. " Fitzgerald/Hemingway Ann
Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli. Englewood, CO: Information Handling S
1978.
Lehan, Richard. The Great Gatsby: The Limits of Wonder. Twayne's
Masterwork Studies 36. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990.
MacPhee, Laurence E. "The Great Gatsby's 'Romance of Motoring': Nick
Carraway and Jordan Baker." Modem Fiction Studies 18 (1972): 207-12.
Mizener, Arthur. The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography ofF. Scott Fitzgerald.
NewYork: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1950. Rev. ed. New York: Vintage Books,
1959. Rpt. in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: The Novel, The Critics, The
Backgrounds. Henry Dan Piper. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1970. 127-32.
This content downloaded from
192.80.65.116 on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 02:09:41 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Great Gatsby
Posnock, Ross. "Ά New World, Material Without Being Real': Fitzgerald's
Critique of Capitalism in The Great Gatsby. " Critical Essays on F. Scott
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby Ed. Scott Donaldson. Critical Essays on
American Literature. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1984.
Rae, John B. The American Automobile: A Brief History. The Chicago History
of American Civilization. Ed. Daniel J. Boorstein. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1965.
Stewart, Lawrence D. "'Absolution' and The Great Gatsby. " Fitzgerald/
Hemingway Annual 1973. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and C.E. Frazer Clark,
Jr. Washington D.C.: Microcard Editions Books, 1974. 181-87.
Stouk, David. "The Great Gatsby as Pastoral." Major Literary Characters:
Gatsby. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.
Way, Brian. F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Art of Social Fiction. New Y ork: St.
Martin's, 1980.
This content downloaded from
192.80.65.116 on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 02:09:41 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms