Jay Gatsby and the Myth of American Origins
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America’s supreme economic, political and military power in the world is matched,
says Leo Marx, by “correspondingly ardent, patriotic, nationalistic …thinking of a large number of Americans, dedicated to the idea of America’s unique, divinely ordained role in the world." But this “amalgam of Christian fundamentalist religion and dogmatic patriotism is…deeply rooted in our history,” he continues. Look no farther than F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, for one writer’s take on the notion of America’s “special and predestined role in world history.” Marx teases a wealth of meaning from the final passages of this famous story, an atypical whodunit that’s more “a characterological or anthropological mystery.” A clue to the mystery is “in fact, the myth of American origins.” Fitzgerald explains the rise and fall of Jay Gatsby, “a representative American,” by invoking powerful images of the early American landscape: Henry Hudson’s sailors arriving in 1609. The shores of 17th century New York, writes Fitzgerald, appear as the “fresh green breast of the new world.” This, says Marx, is a landscape that conforms to the female body, one which is ripe for the taking. It’s a landscape that panders to base passions, as well as “to the last and greatest of all human dreams.” Arriving Europeans “arouse a dream that seemed graspable – and they lost it,” says Marx. The Europeans polluted the promise of unspoiled, pastoral America through swift conquest and industrialization of the new land, just as Gatsby snuffed out his own dreams through his dizzying leap for wealth. “Our movement into the future is one of increasing control over the natural world,” says Marx. He concludes, dryly, “This makes our rather shallow notion of progress somewhat dubious.”
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- Published:
2002
- LearnOutLoud.com Product ID:
J015519
Literature
Literary History & Criticism
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