Gatsby Critics

Tom and Daisy insulated

Jerome Mandel - Daisy and Tom are 'royalty completely distanced and insulated from ordinary human concerns'

Daisy as suffering victim

Sarah Beede Fryer - 'she does feel, she has suffered, and her desire for her daughter to be a 'fool' is actually a desire to shelter her from experiencing the pain that Daisy herself has known'

women as scapegoat

Judith Fetterley - 'an American love story entered in hostility to women and the concomitant strategy of the scapegoat'

Tom and Gatsby compete for Daisy

Judith Fetterley - Tom and Gatsby attempt to appropriate from himself the 'romantic pose of protector of fair womanhood'

Gatsby as untainted and pure

Mizener - 'the incorruptibility at the heart of Gatsby's corruption'

Gatsby as arrogant and immoral

Dyson - Gatsby's 'self-centeredness masquerading as heroic vision'

GG style

Mizener - a 'kind of tragic pastoral'

rise of capitalism (F)

Fitzgerald - 'a whole race going hedonistic, deciding on pleasure'

Nick glorifies NY

Fitzgerald - Nick 'took the style and glitter of NY even above its own valuation'

rise of consumerism as past is abandoned

Kathleen Parkinson - 'an age which... cast off the constraints of the past and... saw the emergence of modern society enjoying wealth on a previously unimaginable scale'

American dream - past and future

Bewley - 'the american dream, whose superstitious valuation of the future began in the past'

Gatsby as divided

Kathleen Parkinson - Gatsby is a 'divided personality, ambivalent even in his death'

Ethnic context

Meredith Goldsmith - link to 'the masculine Bildungsromane of the Harlem Renaissance and ethnic immigration'

american potential / dream

Maxwell Perkins - American 'land of freedom and opportunity'

Gatsby as dandy - explorer

Bewley - Gatsby represents 'a young dandy of the frontier' - 'american romantic hero'

failure of dream

Bewley - theme is 'the withering of the American dream'

Daisy and Tom aligned - both destructive

Bewley - Gatsby's guilt is the 'radical failure... to understand that Daisy is as fully immersed in the destructive element of the American world as Tom himself'

wasteland

Kathleen Parkinson - wasteland is a 'recurrent symbol of social and personal sterility and despair' in 1920s

sense of loss

Judith Fetterley: 'at the heart of the romantic imagination is the need for a sense of loss'

Gatsby trapped in society

Kathleen Parkinson: Gatsby 'becomes a figure of tragic intensity helplessly enmeshed in his environment'

Daisy fails to represent dream

Bewley - Daisy's significance 'lies in her failure to represent the objective correlative of Gatsby's vision'

Gatsby's dream weighs down on Daisy

Judith Fetterley - 'the weight that Gatsby's dream brings to bear on Daisy is unbearable'

Daisy voice

Edwin Fussell - 'typifying feature of her role as la belle dame sans merci'

Daisy - vacuousness and immorality

Bewley - Daisy has a 'vicious emptiness' and 'monstrous moral indifference'

Link to Conrad

John Bicknell - 'Conrad-like cadences'

Narration - modernist

Mizener - 'modified first-person form'

Tom and Daisy insulated

Jerome Mandel - Daisy and Tom are 'royalty completely distanced and insulated from ordinary human concerns'

Daisy as suffering victim

Sarah Beede Fryer - 'she does feel, she has suffered, and her desire for her daughter to be a 'fool' is actually a desire to shelter her from experiencing the pain that Daisy herself has known'

women as scapegoat

Judith Fetterley - 'an American love story entered in hostility to women and the concomitant strategy of the scapegoat'

Tom and Gatsby compete for Daisy

Judith Fetterley - Tom and Gatsby attempt to appropriate from himself the 'romantic pose of protector of fair womanhood'

Gatsby as untainted and pure

Mizener - 'the incorruptibility at the heart of Gatsby's corruption'

Gatsby as arrogant and immoral

Dyson - Gatsby's 'self-centeredness masquerading as heroic vision'

GG style

Mizener - a 'kind of tragic pastoral'

rise of capitalism (F)

Fitzgerald - 'a whole race going hedonistic, deciding on pleasure'

Nick glorifies NY

Fitzgerald - Nick 'took the style and glitter of NY even above its own valuation'

rise of consumerism as past is abandoned

Kathleen Parkinson - 'an age which... cast off the constraints of the past and... saw the emergence of modern society enjoying wealth on a previously unimaginable scale'

American dream - past and future

Bewley - 'the american dream, whose superstitious valuation of the future began in the past'

Gatsby as divided

Kathleen Parkinson - Gatsby is a 'divided personality, ambivalent even in his death'

Ethnic context

Meredith Goldsmith - link to 'the masculine Bildungsromane of the Harlem Renaissance and ethnic immigration'

american potential / dream

Maxwell Perkins - American 'land of freedom and opportunity'

Gatsby as dandy - explorer

Bewley - Gatsby represents 'a young dandy of the frontier' - 'american romantic hero'

failure of dream

Bewley - theme is 'the withering of the American dream'

Daisy and Tom aligned - both destructive

Bewley - Gatsby's guilt is the 'radical failure... to understand that Daisy is as fully immersed in the destructive element of the American world as Tom himself'

wasteland

Kathleen Parkinson - wasteland is a 'recurrent symbol of social and personal sterility and despair' in 1920s

sense of loss

Judith Fetterley: 'at the heart of the romantic imagination is the need for a sense of loss'

Gatsby trapped in society

Kathleen Parkinson: Gatsby 'becomes a figure of tragic intensity helplessly enmeshed in his environment'

Daisy fails to represent dream

Bewley - Daisy's significance 'lies in her failure to represent the objective correlative of Gatsby's vision'

Gatsby's dream weighs down on Daisy

Judith Fetterley - 'the weight that Gatsby's dream brings to bear on Daisy is unbearable'

Daisy voice

Edwin Fussell - 'typifying feature of her role as la belle dame sans merci'

Daisy - vacuousness and immorality

Bewley - Daisy has a 'vicious emptiness' and 'monstrous moral indifference'

Link to Conrad

John Bicknell - 'Conrad-like cadences'

Narration - modernist

Mizener - 'modified first-person form'