“The Great Gatsby”by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
The Great Gatsby might be the most famous fictional view of class from a liberal point of view in the U.S. It was given free to soldiers during WWII in pocket books, and then became required reading in high school English classes. It seemingly still is. Modern writers like Tom Wolf were inspired by its social perceptions and ribbing of the rich. He even borrowed a hit-and-run from this book for his novel “Bonfire of the Vanities.” “The Wolf of Wall Street” film echoes Gatsby’s glitz, which seems to be the only thing that has stuck in popular culture. Fitzgerald died virtually penniless in Hollywood at the age of 44, a heavy alcoholic, so he never joined the elite fraternity that he always admired. His class consciousness never led to class antagonism - but perhaps it should have.
Nick Carraway, the narrator, is a stand-in for Fitzgerald himself. Many of the experiences in the book happened to the author. Nick is a middle-class ‘mid-westerner’ and Yalie, now aspiring to be a Wall Street bond man. On nouveau riche Long Island he is accidentally close to the mansions of the wealthy – multi-millionaire Gatsby’s and Tom & Daisy’s, the latter who he has known from Chicago. Tom’s a racist, muscular jock with money who is having an affair; Daisy is an effervescent child-woman, but also mother of a 3 year old girl. They are both ‘careless people.’ Her friend Jordan Baker is a familiar of ‘the sporting life’ in well-heeled towns around the U.S., a lover of parties and gossip.
The preface makes claims that every teenager would identify with Gatsby, and gush over his romance with Daisy, as if all kids are on the threshold of the American dream, as if all were millionaires in waiting. In my farm-college town in Minnesota, that was far from the case. I doubt anywhere in the country it was true except in upscale precincts. These imaginary types were odd airheads to the rest of us. Or as Fitzgerald puts it “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” This is not an unusual sentiment - unless you’ve never met one or someone aspiring to be one. Many have not because they stay hidden.
One stand-out character in the narrative are the large
mansions and their many rooms; the huge gardens; the beaches, boats and exotic cars. These are all a stage at Gatsby’s for the
champagne, the gin, the dancing and the tented parties; the endless foodstuffs;
the hot band; the Roaring, Riviera excess. This is what we gawk at. It would
work as an over-the-top episode of Lifestyles
of the Rich and Famous, and the dream of every lazy, louche money-grubber. In popular culture it is this flashy detritus
that stays with us. It is the golden
toilet.
Gatsby pays for all this.
He is rumored to be descended from royalty. He tells Nick that he came
from money and went to Oxford for a short time, and used to dabble in oil and
drugs, or at least drug-stores. His
wealth actually comes from bootlegging at those drug stores according to
Tom. He’s friends with the police
commissioner and closely associates with Manhattan crooks who sometimes provide
him with staff. One conversation reveals
that some money might come from bond forgeries or theft. He smacks of the lumpen bourgeoisie. Gatsby becomes a moveable stand-in for every
ambitious rich person you’ve ever heard of. He actually came from poor farm
stock in North Dakota, a truly benighted place in the view of New Yorkers. He
got a cash stake after working for a rich man in Minnesota. This is really a rags to riches story, the
most common kind of Horatio Alger mush but with a dark, romantic twist.
Fitzgerald’s mission is to humanize the man. And so we witness his adolescent love affair with
a former teenage Daisy who he met 5 years ago, and now lives across a large
pond from him, married to a terrible husband.
Gatsby’s lonely and obsessed with her. So we get to like this love-struck
man fatally living in the past. The old
cliché of ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’ or ‘money doesn’t buy love’ ring in the
ears of the reader, even if they are not written down. We are to pity the rich fool, even as he sadly
dies a martyr to love. This muddled view
of class is then christened ‘The Great
American Novel.’
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The Party is on on Long Island |
Daisy, Gatsby’s love, supposedly has a voice that ‘sounds like money.’ Fitzgerald describes her as ‘the golden girl and ‘the King’s daughter.’ She’s upper-class from Louisville, Kentucky,
a southern belle and yes, careless. If
you are a certain male reader you might have a class crush on her too, just as
Fitzgerald himself had on a real upper-class beauty from Montgomery, Alabama. And the cliché that “you can marry a rich
girl as easily as a poor one” pops into the reader’s mind. Though that is not true either.
“The Great Gatsby”
replicates the particularly ‘American’ fascination and yearning for wealth that
the whole culture radiates - even if that wealth has a dark side. It is why the rich run the Democratic Party of
liberals and centrists. It is why the
rich dominate the Republican Party of conservatives and hard reactionaries. It
is why the capitalist money system hides in the shadows, even though it
dominates every moment of our lives, including our culture. The book is part of a temporary time of
cultural excitement in the ‘roaring 20s’ when fun and money were one. It is an endless, romantic summer without war
– though both Fitzgerald and Gatsby had been in the military in WWI. But that war has no impact on this book, and
the sad ending has no impact on the summer.
In 1925, socialism was growing across the world, revolutions
and insurrections had occurred, a Depression and an even bigger war were
brewing, fascism was making strides and surrealism and modernism had become
world-wide cultural movements. At this
moment in history good ‘ol Scott was only vaguely touched by all this. There are plenty of writers like him even now. So you can choose – upper class aspiration,
class awareness or class antagonism. Fitzgerald choose 1 and 2, which is
sometimes more than most. Time for #3.
Prior blogspot reviews on this issue, use blog search box,
upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: “Gatsby,” “class.”
May Day Books has a large section of left-wing
fiction.
The Cultural Marxist / June 26, 2025