Almost every high school student in the United States reads Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and I think that there's a lot to learn from it. The approach that my English class took at the end of our exploration into the book was one called the illuminating moment: where we look at special instances in the novel where Fitzgerald is speaking to the reader.
Whether it was the Egyptian Pharaoh’s reign in 3000 BCE, the Indian caste system that formed in 1500 BCE, or even the French bourgeoisie in the 18th century, the social class has prospered throughout history. America offered no exception in the 20th century. With currency and trade comes the unavoidable phenomenon of social hierarchy, where the most fortunate or skilled individuals find themselves at the top of a rigid pyramid while the rest of the population is at their mercy. A system as ancient as the emergence of humanity itself, it flourished during the 1920s Jazz Age when the United States was struggling to balance a desire for progressive development with a connection to traditional institutions. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a modernist novel published in 1925 at the apogee of the tumultuous era, presents multiple characters that find themselves in radically different social categories, whether through family inheritance or a gradual uphill climb. The former case, illustrated by Tom and Daisy Buchanan, is not seen as inherently problematic by Nick Carraway, the narrator of the story, who acknowledges that old money can be recognized and used for beneficial means. However, by the end of his experience with the couple, Nick sees the potential for wealth to be used in a destructive and divisive manner as he witnesses two unexpected deaths, one of them being the rich Jay Gatsby of West Egg. Tom, Daisy, and even Gatsby himself display an inability to look beyond an obsessive greed for wealth in their quest for love and social prosperity. Even after the detrimental effects of their acquisitiveness transpire, Tom Buchanan’s final encounter with Nick is before his entrance into a jewelry store, a continuation of his ceaseless pattern. The culminating event in the novel with Tom serves as Fitzgerald’s main illuminating moment which reveals the demolition that occurs when the wealthy fail to look beyond their status and monetary gains in their daily interactions.
Before Nick makes his final move to the West, mainly due to Gatsby’s death and the lack of morality he sees in the chaotic Eastern cities, he encounters Tom Buchanan on Fifth Avenue. The conversation which they have together acts as the primary illuminating moment in the novel because it solidifies the fact that wealth and high social status lead to destruction and a lack of intimacy within a person. Speaking about Gatsby and Myrtle’s death, Nick sees that Tom had his “share of suffering… [and] what he had done, to him, was entirely justified” (Fitzgerald 178-179). However, Nick also points out that the overall situation “was all very careless” (179) because Tom always has his opulent background to fall back onto. Part of a wealthy class of elite who separate themselves based on their pecuniary gains, Tom and Daisy “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money” (179) because they always have access to the privileged aspects of society. In other words, the avarice that Tom and Daisy have developed as a result of their extraordinary wealth has led them to lose intimacy with the people around them since human relation is a secondary entity to them. They “let other people clean up the mess they [make]” (179) because their social status has completely estranged them from the rest of the human community. Such a realization comes to Nick when he sees Tom going “into [a] jewelry store” (179), continuing to concern himself as to how he will display his wealth and separate himself from the “creatures” which lie below. Compared to Nick, who is haunted by the east coast because of how it figuratively and literally kills the individual, Tom sees Gatsby's death and the events which surrounded the ordeal as another reason to disengage with ordinary citizens and continue pursuing a life of great wealth in the city. Daisy Buchanan, his wife, possesses an analogous mindset in that she readily accepts the continued onslaught of gifts that Tom showers her with— wealth has replaced her human intimacy with a desire for tangible entities. Presumably, when Nick encounters Tom going into the jewelry store “to buy a pearl necklace” (179), he is applying yet another technique to appease Daisy and keep the couple in their irreproachable barrier away from those who are not well-endowed like them.
Moving beyond Tom and Daisy, Fitzgerald reveals the old money’s detrimental tendency of replicating ancient traditions in order to separate themselves through his second illuminating moment, when Nick and Jordan Baker are searching for Gatsby during his party. Being the first of his neighbor’s parties that he attends, Nick observes how the guests conduct themselves, noticing many patterns about how wealth plays a role in their attitudes and behaviors. He sees that the “party had preserved a dignified homogeneity, and assumed to itself the function of representing the staid nobility of the country” (44). In particular, the people there were “on guard against… spectroscopic gayety” (44). Nick fails to see any diversity, both in the people’s actions and in the representation of social classes. The former is due to the party’s obsession in maintaining a genteel approach that repudiates the modern ways of the nouveau riche, while the latter is because ethnic/social similarity comforts the people most in their process of maintaining aristocratic rituals that fits the ways of the old money. In continuing to uphold traditional roles, all of the men and women dance in an identical fashion that has the “old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles” (46). As opposed to seeing the dances as graceful, Nick is disturbed by the intentional lack of jollity and flagrant conformity which make up the movements. Even if his primary goal in the moment is to find Gatsby, Nick notices the patterns as to how the guests behave because everyone is doing it in the exact same manner in order to conform with the rules that the elite have put into place. As opposed to welcoming intimacy, and accepting new sentimentalist methods that embrace equality in a relationship, the people at the party hold “each other tortuously, fashionably” (46) while in the corners there are “single girls dancing individualistically” (46). The single women are free from the strains of a masculine figure who would have retained all of the power in a relationship based around materialism at the time. Wealth, as seen by Nick during the party, creates bonds that are all about appearing dignified instead of cultivating respect for one’s partner. For the rest of his journey afterwards, Nick carries such sentiments with him when he analyzes the love that couples claim to have with one another, Tom and Daisy being an example.
In his ultimate attempt to reveal the divisive proclivities of the wealthy, Fitzgerald reveals that Gatsby, the symbol for the nouveau riche, is also blinded in his quest for riches and social prosperity through his reason for being interested in Daisy. The final illuminating moment of the novel appears in Gatsby’s initial quest to use Daisy to spring himself up to a wealthy social status. Instead of falling in love with Daisy herself, Gatsby is “amazed… he had never been in such a beautiful house before” (148). Her abode is a representation of all that Gatsby wants to achieve, since he is in a moment of transition between his identities— James Gatz of the Midwest to Jay Gatsby of West Egg. Meeting Daisy during such a switch, Gatsby would only be satisfied with the most elite habitation, since he had set very high goals as to how he would achieve success in society. In particular, the “hint of bedrooms upstairs… and radiant activities taking place through its corridors” (148) are what strike Gatsby first in his entrance— Daisy’s character is an afterthought in the myopic, rapacious phase that he goes through when he is emerging from his poor adolescence. Not only does Gatsby lack any affection towards her, he is also “excited… that many men had already loved Daisy— it increased her value in his eyes” (149). The connotation of “value” makes it evident that Daisy acts as both a boost for Gatsby to attain personal success and an object that he wants to use to show to other men that he is the romantic victor. Though he does not marry her, an amalgamation of wartime events and Tom Buchanan’s superior status, he attempts to give “a sense of security [towards her]; he lets her believe he was a person from much the same stratum as herself” (149). However, their lack of intimacy leads to an absence of reciprocity between the two. Since Daisy’s way of falling in love is founded on one’s wealth, Gatsby must fake his personality to create a relationship that is not based on true romance. Daisy’s way of vanishing “into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby— nothing” (149) shows that her inability to look beyond her social class is what destroys her intimacy with those around her, and confines her to Tom Buchanan’s domination once she eventually chooses him through marriage. Money keeps both Gatsby and Daisy trapped in their views of how to move, for the former person, and remain, for the latter, in their social categories.
Challenging the wealthy as a whole, Fitzgerald uses Tom’s appearance at the end of his novel, coupled with Daisy’s exclusive view of love through materialism, to reveal the insatiable appetite for money and elitism that the rich eventually develop through their daily actions. Clinging on to the social castes for support, especially in the Roaring Twenties, some wealthy members of society refuse to look below their small place at the top of the pyramid. Even though there will always be some above others in a social hierarchy, the difference comes with whether people are willing to amalgamate and connect, either in an amiable or intimate manner. Indian untouchables, even in the modern world, face a degrading set of norms that withdraw their human rights while simultaneously being ignored by the upper class of their society. Though the parallel may appear extreme, the urban life in 20th century America during the time that The Great Gatsby took place mercilessly threw away some for the wellbeing of others. While the terms “rich” and “poor” will never cease to exist within the human community, inhumane obsession over wealth will inevitably lead to destruction and alienation in society as some people’s basic human needs are not met. While certain elite, like Tom and Daisy Buchanan, stay trapped in their monetary bubble, others, like Gatsby and Myrtle, die at their feet.
Works Consulted
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, 2004. Print.
Joshi, Barbara. "India's Untouchables." Cultural Survival, Sept. 1983, www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/indias-untouchables. Accessed 5 May 2019.