Selected Interpretations of The Great Gatsby
Quotation
Source
Gatsby's attempts to attain an ideal of himself and then to put this
ideal to the service of another ideal, romantic love, are attempts to
rise above corruption in all its forms. It is this quality in him that
Nick Carraway, the novel's narrator, attempts to portray, and in so
doing the novel, like its hero, attains a form of enduring greatness.
Hermanson, Casie E. "Overview of The
Great Gatsby." EXPLORING Novels.
Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003.
Discovering Collection. Web. 13 Sept.
2010.
Gatsby is the hero we need to acknowledge and affirm, but the hero
we dare not be. Nick, who is, like us, within and without,
simultaneously repelled and enchanted by the inexhaustible variety
of life, is the hero we can and must become.
Gross, Barry. "Our Gatsby, Our Nick."
DISCovering Authors. Online ed. Detroit:
Gale, 2003. Discovering Collection. Web.
13 Sept. 2010.
The Great Gatsby is an initiation story and its most important
character is actually its narrator, for the novel's meaning is finally
indistinguishable from Nick's change in awareness. And the change
in character is due, ultimately, to Nick's recognition that inflexible
social conventions and moral standards are less valid than systems
which judge the individual on an individual basis.
Mellard, James M. "Counterpoint as
Technique in The Great Gatsby."
EXPLORING Novels. Online ed. Detroit:
Gale, 2003. Discovering Collection. Web.
23 Sept. 2010.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is certainly more than an
impression of the Jazz Age, more than a novel of manners. Serious
critics have by no means settled upon what that "more" might be,
but one hypothesis recurs quite regularly. It is the view that
Fitzgerald was writing about the superannuation of traditional
American belief, the obsolescence of accepted folklore. The Great
Gatsby is about many things, but it is inescapably a general critique
of the "American dream" and also of the "agrarian myth"—a
powerful demonstration of their invalidity for Americans of
Fitzgerald's generation and after.
Trask, David F. "A Note on Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby." EXPLORING Novels.
Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003.
Discovering Collection. Web. 23 Sept.
2010.
I have difficulty crediting Gatsby as a coherent human being, but as
a symbol of the elusive American dream, I find him perfect. He
consummately embodies the contradictory qualities of this country,
our saying one thing while doing another, our clinging to myths that
have little basis in reality. As a well-behaved, socially conscious
crook, he is a paradox, an oxymoron, and an exemplary American.
Hays, Peter L. "Oxymoron In "The Great
Gatsby.." Papers On Language &
Literature 47.3 (2011): 318-325. Academic
Search Elite. Web. 13 Sept. 2015.
Jay Gatsby, then, is the ultimate American arch-romantic. Because
he lacked the wealth and timing, he missed the girl on whom he had
focused what Nick calls his "heightened sensitivity to the promises
of life." After obtaining the wealth through corrupt means, he
returns five years later to fulfill his "incorruptible dream" by
attempting to repeat the one golden moment of his life when he
possessed that "elusive rhythm," that "fragment of lost words"
which we all seek to recall in this mundane existence from a former
life, time or world. Not since Don Quixote's pursuit of Dulcinea has
literature seen such a noble, heartbreaking, and impossible quest.
Inge, M. Thomas, and Eric Solomon. "F.
Scott Fitzgerald." DISCovering Authors.
Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003.
Discovering Collection. Web. 23 Sept.
2010.
Fitzgerald's distinction in this novel is to have made language celebrate
itself. Among other things, The Great Gatsby is about the power of art.
Samuels, Charles Thomas. "The Greatness
of Gatsby." EXPLORING Novels. Online
ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Discovering
Collection. Web. 23 Sept. 2010.