The characters are unlikable. They are, as a group, entitled, privileged, bigoted, self-indulgent, and intellectually inert. At one small gathering, one of the characters mentions a book, The Rise of the Colored Empires, which warns the White West about the rise of non-White cultures. White culture should be on its guard. Another character replies, “We’ve got to beat them down.” The White race, the thinking goes, needs to beat down the non-White races.
Speaking of beating people down, the character who enthuses about this “scientific” book later breaks his mistress’s nose. Think about that phrase. This happens like someone sipped a drink.
This character again (Tom), vents his White supremacy when he discovers his wife is having an affair—it’s hard to feel sorry for a fella who has a mistress (one whose nose he’s broken):
Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.
These occurrences pass without comment. Are we supposed to look past them? Is Fitzgerald showing his hand? It’s art, and therefore it’s up to us? The artist gets a pass?
So, these are the kinds of people you encounter in The Great Gatsby. The narrator, Nick Carraway, doesn’t offend; he’s just blank. And Gatsby is remarkably unremarkable. I didn’t see anything great in him. He’s presented as this mysterious Dracula kind of character, but when you meet him, he’s normal to the point of boring.
This novel is supposed to invite analysis and/or discussion of capitalism and the American dream. It does neither. I do not see what this novel has to do with either one. Amassing a fortune—or inheriting one—is supposed to invite analysis? And the American dream was about the lower and middle classes moving up from where their parents resided on the social ladder. The American dream is not about whether you have cleaned your pool or not this season.
I think the attraction is Fitzgerald’s poetics—which I found mostly annoying—and the aesthetic of people in seersucker suits attending extravagant parties. When men were men. When people drank whiskey and smoked. And who doesn’t love the fetishization of wealth? Maybe this is why this novel is so popular: We just want to attend these stupid parties.
And what does the green light mean? I couldn't care less.
