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].S. Lawry
GREEN LIGHT OR SQUARE OF LIGHT IN THE GREAT GATSBY
.. he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps. ... His life had been confused and disordered ... , but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.^1
In launching upon the unknown, European explorers of North America committed themselves as much to an encounter with space, time, and being as with territory. That the commitment was largely unwitting probably increased rather than lessened the energy of the encounter, along with its inher e nt tensions. The idea of unfilled space offered despair as well as hope, alienation as well as engagement; the idea of a time just beginning, disorientation as well as renewal of the hope that man would be restored to a new Eden. Men must have found it difficult to distinguish vision from a horror of the vacuum or the void. For later European settlers and their descendants, the baffling encounter apparently has not ceased. It figures in almost all North American
fiction, and all but dominates The Great Gatsby.
Although Fitzgerald was not much given to philosophic speculation as such, and despite his feeling that the book was "dramatic", with
Gatsby he came very close to writing either a philosophical novel about
Am erican history or an historical work upon the springs of North American psychology and philosophy. Fortunately for literature, he instead wrote a novel of lyrical discovery, conveyed for the most part in affective images. Two of those images, which in their way comment profoundly upon the North American encounter with space, time, and being, are those of a line leading to a green light, and a flat white light fixed and bounded in a square. 2
UGHT IN THE GREAT GATSBY 115
Classroom proncouncements that a straight line is the shortest distance b et ween two points (or, better, an infinite number of points extending in two directions) and that two right triangles may compose a square are no doubt sufficiently tiresome. Applied to human aspirations, however, they ma y become meaningful and moving. The line leading from Jay Gatsby to both the past and th e future moves freely and yearningly across space and time. It is seen most powerfully in his gesture to ward a green light across the water. The square sought out or inh a bited by the Buchanans, on the other hand, a ttempts to freeze, flatten, or contain space and time. It is suggested in their being framed several times in doorways and windows, 3 as if in under- developed, but space-limiting and time-arresting, still photographs. Within the contex t of those images, th e prin cipal characters of
Gatsby are im portant not so much in themselves as in their beliefs. The
line and the square serve to distinguish Gatsby's committed hopefu ln ess from the Buchanan s' encapsulating carelessness. His line to the green light leads b ack (and thus forward) to the incorruptible New World dream. Their rectangle, with its safely doubled, limiting parallel lines, fashions a closed, comp li citous parody of that dr eam. The line is "commensur ate to [m an's ] capacity for wonder", whereas men within the square will be "car eless... [smashing] up things and creatures and then [retr eating] back into their money or their vast carelessness" (pp. 182, 180). The lin e signifies "romantic readiness" (p. 2); the square, a fou l dust which forms in its wake. And t he lin e seems living, the square, dead. Different though the line and the square appear to be, they are constitutionally related. In keeping with the unkn o wn c haracter of the New World and its new men, both involve visions or dre a ms - which may, of course, prove to be nightmares. Jay Gatsby is not alone in trying to embody a Platonic conception of himse lf and his world. Fitzgerald perceives with pity that in the birth of the twentieth-century American from his self-conceiving, even the best will be trailed by clouds that are foul, inglorious. Like the Buchan ans, the North American must now inhabit an urban corrupti on of the New World that once dazzled the eyes of Dutch sailors. His defiled, lowerca se new world has been reduced to being "material without being real" (p. 162). New York City is mainly illusi on, having been built "with a wish out of
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UGHT IN THE GREATGATSBY 117
associated w eb of teleph one connections. Th e reverse movement is confirmed when Nick at last a bandons a debased, Kar am azovian East in which "anything can happen" for his original midw est. He thus enacts his mature insiste nce that hum an conduct be fo und ed on something other th an "money or ... vast carelessness" (p. 180). He also seeks a place where men might still find "identity with this country" (p. 177). Despi tc the er r or both Jay a nd Nick have mad e by mistaking a modern " vast, vulgar, an d mer etricious" imi tation (p. 99) for a truly Pl atonic love a nd being, at the end of the work Nick is abl e to p ronounce "lastly" upon the blank white square a nd th e living green li ne. Like G atsby, he and the novel celebrat e th e New World's eissentially "incorruptible d ream" - even th ough conce ding that, up to a point, the o bj ect of th e dream is likely to be discoverable onl y in th e large! y un cor rupted dre amer. 9
I
" I can 't help w h at's past" , cries Daisy. "Of cou rse yo u can [r epeat the past] ",Jay insists. " I wouldn't ask t oo much of her ... you can't repeat the past", ca uti ons Nick Carrawa y, the narrator-hero (pp. 1 33 , lll). Nick no twith standing, the novel itself "of course" r epeats the past. Almost as soon as it is begun, it moves to th e exp erien ced New York past of Nick Car raway. It proceeds then t o t he m ore dista nt past represented in four internal narratives- a p a st which Nick pr ogressively shares and int e rprets. Although Nick's final awareness is framed in the na rr ative present, it has to do with a still more rem ot e, originating past which is theref or e the American futu re - that of th e exp lorat ion a nd definiti on of the New World. Although the essenti al rea lity that has reapp ea r ed is unkn o wn to most o f the characters durin g the rushing past (which seems to th em so hermeti cally present), it is intimated in tihe "elusive rh y thm, a fragment of lost wo rd s" (p. 112) that Nick has sensed a nd tri ed to "repeat" after hearing part of Gats by' s story. The wo rds probab ly would h ave whispered some th ing like "Redeem the time" ; a nd the rhythm might have traced for an unfallen E ast a green th o ught in a green shade.
During mu ch of the first half of The Great Gatsby, however, Nick
~oo seeks o nly the da ylight or the klieg-lit square. His drive is seen as typical. Almost all of th e cha ra cte rs at first stret ch la me hands toward a
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118 TilE^ DALHOUSIE^ REVIEW
frenetic present and receding future, believing that they have thus turned their b ac ks on the past. For them, Manh at tan will never be the magnificent green breast of a New World. Even at best, it is only a rectangular city "rising up ... in white heaps and sugar lumps", in which "anything can happen" (p. 69). At worst, it resembles the related "small block of yellow brick" near the valley of ashes, which is itself "contiguous to absolutely nothing" (p. 24). It takes a while for Nick to recognize that the square formed by East Egg, the valley of ashes, New York, and West Egg is a single debased setting and that its excitement conceals indifference and the levelling of all values. It honors only fashion and more or less inconspicuous consumption. Nevertheless, to most of its adherents it seems to offer both a goal a nd a sanctuary. It even promises them its own version of "all the mystery and... beauty in the world" (p. 69). What its parody actually yields is only a universal toleration combined with universal, undemanding scepticism. Such tolerance appears, however, to reflect "infinite hope" (p. 1} in the flickering urban creature. Thus the square, unlike the green light with its so litary intensity, seems to offer an amoral, multifarious, diffuse, and anonymous generality. Each adherent's carefully truncated in- dividual "line" soon makes parallel discovery or disclosure of other brief lines. Despite the original promise of freedom and toleration, conspiracy or complicitousness are either sought out or thrust upon such people. The similar lines are thus bent or complicated until they fashion an enclosing square. No longer simple or fr ee, the doubled parallels restrict even as they reflect one another. Frequently, the personal "square" is initiated when the three members of a right triangle seductively command a fourth to join them. In East Egg, the triangle Tom/Daisy/Jordan solicit s Nick as a fourth; in New York, he is sought by the triangle Tom/Myrtle/Catherine. Near the centre of the novel, in wh at is more a threat than a promise, Nick is almost brought into a new rectangle with Jay /Daisy/Jordan. However, one aim of such parallelograms is the exlusion of moral threats and social misfits. Gatsby therefore is never included. Even at his own party, "no singing quartets were formed with Gatsby's head for one link." At almost the same time, Nick chooses to exclude himself, refusing to make a fourth when an undergr a du ate and two chorus girls engage in "an obstetrical conversation" (pp. 50, 51).
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America as a fake castle, and their social backgr ound seems less gaudy than Jay's new money and show-business associates. However, Tom's wish for an irrecoverable football game is not appreciably different from the young Gatsby's dream "universe of ineffable gaudiness" (p. 99). Similarly, the restlessness of th e Buchanan set is not essentially different from the transcience and anonymity of the Gatsby parties , nor Jordan Baker's cheating at golf from Wolfsheim's fixing the World Series, nor Tom's physical cruelty from the guns used for Ga tsby by Wolfsheim's people. And the characteristic wastela nd restlessness is as marked in the flashing eyes of Tom and Daisy as in Gatsby's extravagant parties. This is not to say that East Egg and its square o f light cannot seem romantic. Daisy and Jordan, two of the intersecting points, are first seen within the "bright rosy-colored space" formed by Fren ch window s (p. 8). Dressed in white, the cool and effortless women seem to levitate on the undemanding air. Unlike Jay, who listens to others, Daisy's voice demands that men listen to its whispered promise (p. 9) -which turns out to be money. Both women have a sad or wan brightness in harmon y with fashionable coolness, scepticism, "absence of all desire" (p. 12), and "practicality". The scene is not only reassuring but transferable; when the Buchanans dine, they move to a "rosy-colored porch, open toward the sunset" (p. 12). Although Daisy makes small talk about the future, she sips time without effort, almost indifferently. At last, a jarring ph o ne call from New York shivers the seemingly protected evening. But in any case, the women's cool whiteness, framed within rose-colored squares of light, had always been too white: too like the ne wspape r pictures of Jordan (pp. 9, 19); too like the "white ashen dust" (p. 26) that sifts over Wilson in the valley of ashes; to o prophetic of the woman in a white evening gown in Nick's later El Greco nightmare, who also was etherized upon indifference. For some of these reasons, Nick at onc e moves to a judgm e nt against the East as well as its immediate representation, East Egg. Whereas Jordan treat s the New York call with ''hardy scepticism" (p. 16), Nick wants to call the police. He also reacts sharply when Daisy enacts pain but converts it into a spuriously thrilling display of sophistication. In contrast to his later reluctant belief in Gatsby, he refuses the "con tributary" sus- pension of honesty asked by Daisy (p. 18). Despite her op e ning up to
LIGHT IN THE GREAT GATSBY^121
him, as she had once opened up for Gatsby, in a "flower-like way" (p. 2lo ), Nick stubborn ly recalls Jordan Baker's related dishonesty in sports. All but commanded to join this East Egg triangle, taking his place in the "cheerful square o f light" in which the Buchanans are fra med (p. 20), he leaves. Almost at once he comes upon Gatsby alone in darkness, stretching his arms toward the green light. Nick, too, had just been responding to the o riginal New World's "loud, bright night, with wings beating in th e trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life" (p. 21 ). His faint judgment against the ~ast is thus paired with a possible sentim ent for night, a green light, and Gatsby. Nevertheless, by daylight he con tinue s am ong the "roadhouse roofs and ... wayside garages" (p. 21) of the geographic rectangle. He finds in tile valley of ashes not on ly an ultimate reduction of the green breast of the New World, al ong with the reduction of J ay's Plat onic vision to the blank commercia l stare of Dr. Eckleburg, but also the "impossi ble" triangle Tom/Myrtle/George. Like all the other characters, Nick hurries to escape from the valley. He therefore offers littl e resistance when Tom all but commands him to join the New York triangle Tom/ Myrtle/ Cath e rine. However, this second side of the geographic square is the most instructive of th e l ot. It suggests the destiny, and perhaps the essence, of th e o ther sides, no matter how gl amorously they may be studded with white cities, white palaces, or movie-star white light. When he encounters the third side, New York City, Nick can still sense something of the original dream. Fifth Avenue is so idyllic that he "wouldn't have been surprised to see a great fl oc k of white sheep turn the corner" (p. 28). Nevertheless, his allegiance sti ll inclines to the modern East. It s ho mogeneou s nature is stressed again by the insistent rising of unperceived parallels betwe en Eas t Egg and New Yo rk. If the valley's Myrtle Wilson is all " s mouldering" vita lity (p. 25) in co ntrast to Daisy's white coo lness, a me taphorical bond is supplied by her gh os tly hu s band, covered in "white ashen dust". If Myrtle's living ro o m in New York is ove rcr o wded (somewhat like Gat s by's ho use, la ter), it is o nly that she is new at being a golden girl involved in fashionable consumption. So is her sister Catherine , the proxy J o rdan for Nick in this second Buchanan rectangle. Catherine is a trifle to o o pen in staring "possessively at the furniture" (p. 30).
LIGHT IN THE GREAT GATSBY 125
Egg se tting , in which it might have been least e xpected. It begins as the original American dream insistently penetrates the foul modern confetti of Gatsby's party. Once again, th e moon seems to "float in the Sound" in a "triangle of silver scales ". The somewhat tipsy Nick finds th e scene t o be "signicant, elemental, and profound" at almost exactly the instant that he encounters Gatsby's momentary smile of "eternal reassuranc e" (pp. 4 7, 48). In the evening's host, Ni ck unexpectedly rediscovers h o pe that each man really is the better self he sometimes wishes to be. Like the first Dut ch sailors, Gatsby seems to register disinteres ted wonder in a direct line - the human being at one point, and his j oy in the essence of material objects at the other. For an instant, man becomes as he "hath been of yore". Prophetically, both Gatsby and Nick reject the cacaphonous party, even as they are rej ec ted by it. Upon taking his solit a ry de parture, Nick turns to see Gatsby standing alone beneath a "wafer of a moon" (p. 56). In anoth er indication that the first half of the novel is reaching its close, Nick's own narration, which had developed the geographic and personal rectangles, surrenders to the m ore '' objective" narrations of J ay and J ordan. These accounts not only help Nick to comprehend himself as well as Gatsby but also to judge the two narrators. That judgment is itself a mark of Nick's progress. In hearing the seemingly fantastic yarn told him by Jay, Nick's first impulse was to h o ot, somewhat aristo cratically, at dime-novel hokum. His discovery of factual truth, to say nothing of romantic "reality", within Jay's story comes as a revelation. After wavering between "believing everything and nothing about him", Nick accepts a fo rm of belief (p. 102). On the other hand , Jordan's account of Daisy, Jay, and Tom in Louisville creates only disillusionment. Far from discovering truth within hokum, it sh ows Nick only the hard rock of reality. Like Jordan in the present, Daisy th en had chosen hard power, wealth, and practicality; she had, indeed, " 'change' her mine' " from Gatsby and ro mance (p. 77). Th e refor e, neither woman can at first associate Gatsby with the vanished "officer in (Daisy's) white car" (p. 79 ). As Gats by's prin cess in a white palace, Daisy had been more than ac tual; as her lover in a white car, Gatsby might as well have perished. Whether or not the past can be repeated thus depends in large part upon ro mantic readiness, orne of which appears in c oncentrated a war eness of another person. As
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Nick has n oticed, such a ttention is characteristic of Gatsby. It se par ates people from the anonymous square, making each one, at least for an instant, a green light. In Jordan 's narr ative, love had dwindled down to T o m' s invo lvement in a car wreck with a mistress and Daisy's having put money into her voice. Fading into unromantic desire, love thus led to Jordan's universal scepticism, n ot Gatsby 's eternal reassurance. Inst in ct ively, the audi- torial Nick elects Gatsby's starlight over Jordan's "casual moths" and a popular song's b a th etic "shiek of Araby" (p. 80). By m eans of the two marratives, he has been brought close, "objectively", to the Platonic creation of Gatsby. Therefore, it is not Gatsby alo ne who has come alive, "delivered... from the womb of his purp oseless splendor" (p.
The meaning o f the square and the line, and of Nick's progress from the o ne to the o ther, is confirmed in action as the fir st half closes. By opening his o wn house for the central union of Jay with Daisy, Nick offers a choice between the two forms. At first amused by J ay's awkward romanticism, thus recapitulating his first impression of Ja y' s story, Nick soo n finds that his committed heart is b ea ting as quickly as Jay's. He not only comprehends J ay's aspiration but is in "ecstat ic cahoots" with it (p. 154). However, the meetin g is clouded from the start. Not o nly may it produce only another square, with J ay displacing Tom, but also it may present merely one more instance of Daisy's cool Louisville insularity. Su ch a fear is hinted in G ats by's having dressed in a silver shirt and golden tie to meet the golden girl from a white pal ace. Although he is born again within the dr ea m, "literally" glowing with a "new well-bein g" as if he migh t be a true "patr on of recurrent li ght " (p. 90), and although the "prehistoric marshes " in Nick's lawn (p. 89) might have serv ed as the green br east o f a New Wo rld, th e objec t of the dream fails the dreamer. Gatsby's dr eam-ho use therefore no longer seems "real" to Gatsby. If Nick assigns some blame to Ja y for investing his Gal at ea with more promise and meaning that she could embody, he charges Daisy with the major failure. The internal narratives all agreed that she had once "blos so med like a flo wer". If Jay had feared th at in love his mind wo uld n o longer be free to " romp... like the mind of God" (p. 112), having surrend ered a Keatsian Cynthia for one mortal creature, he was wrong. Daisy as "fay" co uld have been to herself as well as him all th at
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identify Gatsby's true Platonic Father. In seeming to surrender his function as omniscient and subjective narrator, Nick actually becomes at once a reporter, a chronicler, and a tragic messenger. He serves to bring immediate "historic" truth as well as its full philosophic
implications to the reader. Although Fitzgerald's odd momentary
divestiture of Nick is less confident in practice than it may appear in description, the device itself allows Nick an objective voice within his own participative narrati o n. 1 3^ With it, he himself offers the first of this secti on's two internal narratives. As the reportorial Nick unfolds the "history" of Gatsby , Jay is more than ever identified as the true North American dreamer. He is the Platonic conception of himself; a God's-boy; almost, a Jay Christ - or as To m would have it, a "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere" (p. 130). In the long run, it makes little difference that the materials for his conception were "vast, vulgar, and meretricious" (p. 99). This is not to say that the tragic Gatsby doe s not pay the high cost of such matter. By being not only a Platonic conception but also the peculiarly American manifesta- tion of that idea, the "self-made man", 1 4^ he necessarily traces more from Horatio Alger th an from God, and more from the nineteenth- century, Codyesque hero than from Alger; it is that progenitor who has imported to the present East all the "savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon" (p. 101) and who certifies that the American East is to be no Byzantium. Cody's yacht had represented "all the beauty and glamour in the world" to the boy J ay (pp. 100-101). It is no accident that New York similarly promised Nick "all the mystery and ..
. beauty in the world" (p. 69). Yet, beneath it all, the possible wonder of the original New World dream w as maintained in Gatsby. It permits him to believe he can re peat the past, for within it love and beauty are not time's fools. Althou gh Gatsby cann o t repeat the past or rewrite hist o ry, he can continue the ingrained North American vision. Had he not once seen ordinary sidewalks rise, and become new heavenly ladders? And had he not touched th e New World's green br east and drunk from "the pap of life "? In spite of the fl a wed materials of his dream, Gatsby has been a Kubla Khan. 1 5^ Follo wing him, Nick, too, has found his way into th e charmed circle. Significantly, both men leave behind them square family portraits that would have defined Nick in the lineage of his "hard - boiled great-uncle", a nd Gatsby in the "hard, empty face" of Dan Cody. (pp. 3, 101).
LIGHT IN THE GREAT GATSBY 127
Nick actually hears all this from Gatsby "very much later" (p. 102), but in any case has already doubly reversed time in acting the reporter. When he picks up the direct narrative again, he must detail the doubled rejection of Jay by the Buchanans. In the first, a triangle composed of Tom, Mr. Sloane, and an anonymous woman inva de Jay's house but leave him alone, once more, at his own steps. The raw nominalist rock of the world is alr ea dy beginning to break the fairy wing (p. 100). In the second, Daisy too rejects the West Egg universe which Jay has formed in order to meet her presumed purchase price. Although she is entranced by the silvery parody of Jay's starlight in the movie frame of a film star and her director, she otherwise fears th e direct desperation 1md sweaty eagerness of Jay's partygoers. And Nick , seeing the gathering partly through her eyes but even more fully within his own, finds that Eas tern glamour has turned tawdry. The "many-colored, many-keyed co mmotion" now is opposed not o nl y by his increasing maturity but also by a new, "pervading harshn ess" (p. 105). It is associated largely with Daisy's condemnatory view and Tom's violent dislike for J ay. When the Buchanans leave, they are prophetically framed by "ten square feet of light volleying out into the soft black morning" (pp. 108-109). If Daisy regrets leaving "romantic pos- sibilities", she nevertheless goes with Tom (p. 110). Remaining behind with Jay, Nick now hears th e final internal narrative of the work. It comes from a Gatsby who knows he has been tejected. Alth o ugh his feet move over the fruit rinds and "crushed flowers" of present actuality (p. 111 ), Gatsby's mind moves in th e past, when love had created a New World. Returned t o that "starting place" (p. 112) and rememb ering its true moonlight, the wond ering Gatsby acknowledges that he had then seemed to surrender Plat on ic wo rd or idea in favor of human act and flesh. He inst ead found t h at his green shade had n ot vanished. It had instead gained a body, as when Mil to n's Adam awo ke to find his dream was real. Daisy had "blossomed for him like a flowe r", inc arna te (p. 112). Reversing Do nne's formula, Gatsby had found that physical love might expand the ideal, not part f rom it. Only at th e ca tastr o phe does Gatsby dwell upon the past. In th at ashen moment he r ecalls th at his wartime affa ir with Daisy had unexpectedly beco me th e "following of a grail", not the quick, careless affair he had pl anned. Daisy, on the other hand, remained es sentially untouched. Even then, she faded away from him into "her rich house,
LIGHT IK THE GREAT GATSBY 129
balances a world of values on her indiffer ent chin, Daisy alm ost visibly retires into her protective Buchanan triangle. Even her "thrilling scorn" for Tom suggest her spurious scorn at the beginning of the novel (pp. 18, 1 32). She seeks out blankness, f astening herse lf permanently to Tom and his limitations. Only her voice reminds Nick and Jay of what she had once seemed to be: only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, (with Gatsby) trying to tou ch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespair- ingty, toward that lost voice across the r oom. (p. 1 35, italics added)
Although Daisy leaves New York with Ja y, T om's con trol over her is such that the lovers have now been "snapped out, made accid ental, isolated, like ghosts" (p. 1 36). Except for Nick, Jay's immediate world has shrunk to ghosts and wraiths, on the one hand, and raw, volcanic real ity on the ot h er. For Nick, the a fternoon is decisive, ul t im ate. Although he makes one last a tt e mp t to seize the day with J ordan Baker, hoping th at they will be "too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age" (p. 136), th e careless square will not permit it. In s wift rectangulation of East Egg, West Egg, and New York with the valley of ashes, Myrtle Wilson is murdered. When Nick learns that the Buchanans are allowing Jay to take the blame for Daisy, he refuses to enter their house with Jord an. Repe ating (and confirm ing) an earlier scene, he sees Tom and Daisy sitting together conspirato rially in their "small rectangle of light" while Jay, bel ow in the e mpty moonlight, mounts watch "over nothing'' (p. 146). While the half-sick Carraway wat ches in spir it with Gatsby, who is now be set by both "grote s que reality and savage, frightening dreams" (p. 147), Daisy vanishes into her rich house, hoping th at its white shell will both imprison and preserve youth and mystery (p. 150). Her wish for power, "securit y" (p. 149), a nd wealth is a demand for c ryoni c self-assurance - a very cold pastoral indeed. She will not sieze th e day nor recapture the past, fo r to her time must remain meaningless. If such simu ltan eous imprisonment and pr eserva- ti on suggest less of Keats than of a fly in amber, Daisy probably would not protest. Such a creature endures, and has an unambiguous aesthetic and commercial value. Fortunately, the ashen present manages at the last to offer Gatsby something more th an wraiths and raw roses. The "shadow of a tree"
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and its "ghostly birds" within the "gray-turning" day (p. 152) lend him something of his Plat on ism and past dream. Even when the extravagant dreamer's "Jay Gatsby" is at last replaced by the absolute man, he does not regret his commitment. He recalls th at when he returned to Louisville after the war, the magic had drain ed from the places he and Daisy had s hared. Nevertheless, he also r eme mbers that t he swiftly curving train that had then drawn him a way from th e curve of the setting sun had produced only a material loss in Einsteinian space and time. Despit e his grievous mistakes about the dire ctio n, the green light at the summit of an aspiring Platonic ladder had no t dimmed. The immediate present, however, is "raw ... material with o ut being real" (p. 162). In its loveless world of ashes and wrecked machinery, Gatsby is killed by George Wilson. In one calc ulated stroke, Tom Buchanan has thus "carelessly" eliminated tw o outsiders from his square. Wh en four men bring Gatsb y from his a lm ost unu sed pool , no flights of angels sing him to his rest, a nd his o nly melio dious tear at the moment is "The poor so n -of-a-bitch" (p. 176). It remains for th e novel to trace Nick's fl at revoca ti on o f the East that had sacrificed Gatsby. He cuts his tie s with J o rd an Bake r; with the foul dust of fo rm er hangers-on, who promptly forget that J ay ever lived; with Gatsby's biological father, mor e interested in the gaudy mansion than his unknown son; with a West Egg th at has turned phosph or escent nightmare in which "no one kn ows ... a nd no one cares," so that, predi ctably, "nobody came" to Jay's funeral (pp. 178, 17 5); and with the Buchanans, who smash things up and retreat (p.
180). If need be, th e retreat can be confirmed by o ther Wolfsheimian
cuff links and another enthralling whit e neckla ce. And yet, Nick eventually finds all "this part" of the story to be "unessential" (p. 165 ). He gives to Gatsby in dea th the "intense personal i ntere s t" that Gats by had offered to pe o ple in life. Because h e had offered Jay a living tribute and will write a kind of gospel of his life, he can wa lk ca lmly away from the obscene word scrawled on Gatsb y's steps. Even though it is the last m o te of foul dust in Gatsby's wake and th e standard twentieth-century epitaph for the past, it is no thing "personal". Ele ct ing his own version of the past-repeating, future - pr o mi sing green light and line, Nick a bandons all that the East has co m e to mean: as if it, along with its ho uses , were also unessential. Th e midw est "starting point" that had once se e med to be the "r agged edge of the universe"
1~2 THE^ DALHOUSIE^ REVIEW
- Cf. Paul Lauter, "Plato's Stepchildren, Gatsby and Cohn," MFS, 9 (1963-64), 338-346; James E. Miller, Jr., F. S co tt Fitzgerald: His Art and His Technique (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1964), p. 118; Thomas Hanzo, "The Theme and the Narrator of 'The Great Gatsby,' "MFS, 2 (1965), 183-190; and J.S. Westbrook, "Nature and Orytics in The Great Gatsby," AL, 32 (1960), 78-84. As will appear below, I view Nick more favorably than do those critics who charge him with deceit and ultimate retreat.
- See further Frederick]. Hoffman, "Introduction," The Great Gatsby: A Study (New York: Scribner's, 1962), p. 10; and Barry Gross, "Our Gatsby, Our Nick." Centennial Review, 14 (1790), 331-340.
- Cf. Robert Emmet Long, "The Great Gatsby and the Tradition of Joseph Conrad," TSLL, 8 (1966), 422; Elmore, "Color and Cosmos," p. 443; and Charles T. Samuels, "The Greatness of 'Gatsby,'" Mass. Review, 7 ( 1966), 794.
- Cf. Robert Sklar, F. Scott Fit zgerald: The Last Lao c oon (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967), p. 175. 1 I. Cf. Bewley, The Eccentric Design, p. 283.
- See also Harold Hurwitz, "The Great Gatsby and Heart of Darkness: The Confrontation Scenes," Fitzgerald-Hemingway Annual, ed. MJ. Bruccoli (Washington, D.C.: Microcard Editions, 1969), pp. 27·34.
- For further discussion of Nick's perspectives, see E.F. Carlisle, "The Triple Vision of Nick Carraway," MFS, II (1965-1966), 361-360.
- Cf. Joseph N. Riddel, "F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Jamesian Inheritance, and the Morality of Fiction," MFS, 11 (1965-1966), 331-350; especially, n. 12, p. 346.
- Cf. Stem, The Golden Moment, pp. 168-227.
- See Sklar, The Last Laocoon , p. 176, upon the novel's cycle of voyage and return. For a view in general dissent, see John Fraser, "Dust and Dreams and The Great Gats by ," ELH, 32 ( 1965), 554-564; and for views of Nick and Jay opposed to that of this essay, Richard Lehan, "Focus on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gats by: The Nowhere Hero," in American Dreams, American Nightmares, ed. David Madden (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Ill. Univ. Press, 1970), pp. 106-114, and Richard Foster, "The Way to Read Gatsby," in Sense and Sensibility in Twentieth Century Writing, ed. Brom Weber (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Ill. Univ. Press, 1970), pp. 94-108.
