Music and Dance in The Great Gatsby

In the summer and early autumn of 2008, as the global ‘credit crunch’ intensified, resulting in the collapse, part-nationalization, or forced merger of numerous venerable financial institutions, a ...

F. Scott Fitzgerald's self-proclaimed “profound admiration” (Life in Letters 137) of T. S. Eliot shines an important light on Fitzgerald's composition of The Great Gatsby. In October of 1925, Fitzgerald sent a copy of his novel to Eliot with the following inscription: For T.S. EliotGreatest of Living Poetsfrom his enthusiastic worshipperF. Scott Fitzgerald (Life in Letters 128) The following February, he commented to Maxwell Perkins that “T.S. Eliot for whom you know my profound admiration—I think he's the greatest living poet in any language—wrote me he'd read Gatsby three times + thought it was the 1st step forward American fiction had taken since Henry James” (Life in Letters 137).Eliot's influence on Fitzgerald surpassed general awe and inspiration; in fact, there are many indications that The Great Gatsby is in part an emulation of The Waste Land (1922). Several critics have already elucidated this literary relationship, such as Jeffrey Hart, who points out in his article “Rediscovering Fitzgerald” that “Fitzgerald studied The Waste Land … while he was working on Gatsby” and that “[t]he book both salutes Eliot and answers him” (208, 209). Careful readings of each text indeed reveal numerous similarities between The Waste Land and The Great Gatsby. Perhaps the most notable parallel is the presence of the “valley of ashes … the waste land” in Gatsby, home of George and Myrtle Wilson and setting for Myrtle's death (Gatsby 23, 24). Other intriguing echoes of The Waste Land include the water imagery that pervades The Great Gatsby. The “small, foul river” in the valley of ashes seems to be a counterpart of the “dull canal” in The Waste Land (Gatsby 24; Eliot 189). Nick lamenting Gatsby's death by the waters of Long Island Sound evokes Eliot's narrator who weeps by the waters of Leman. Imagery of water and color even suggest a similarity between Fitzgerald's Daisy and Eliot's hyacinth girl. When Daisy meets Gatsby at Nick's house, she appears “under the dripping bare lilac trees…. A damp streak of hair lay like a dash of blue paint across her cheek, and her hand was wet with glistening drops” (Gatsby 85). Similarly, Eliot's hyacinth girl returns “from the Hyacinth garden,” her “arms full, and [her] hair wet” (37, 38).Just as The Great Gatsby is indebted to The Waste Land, so too is The Waste Land indebted—“deeply … indebted,” to use Eliot's own words—to Jessie L. Weston's From Ritual to Romance (1920). In his notes to The Waste Land, Eliot credits Weston's book for “not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem” (21). Weston, a lifelong scholar of grail texts, wrote From Ritual to Romance as a culmination of her studies of pre-classical, classical, and medieval myth. From her enormous breadth and depth of research, she drew the conclusion that the grail legends are not rooted in Christianity or British folklore, but in the secret rituals of pre-Christian fertility cults. The symbolism that Eliot adopted from Weston's book includes not only that of the grail quest, but of these fertility rituals as well. In his notes to The Waste Land, Eliot says of From Ritual to Romance and Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough (1890–1915) that “anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies” (21).Themes of fertility, regeneration, and the quest are similarly important in The Great Gatsby. The quest motif in particular has received much attention from critics. Owing heavily to Nick's claim that Gatsby “had committed himself to the following of a grail” (149), most critics have concluded that Gatsby becomes an anti-hero who symbolically capsizes all romantic and honorable notions of a quest by pursuing wealth as a means to win back Daisy. In F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Critical Essay, Edwin Moseley analyzes the novel as an “initiation and quest for the grail,” arguing that The Great Gatsby is “the initiation story of Nick Carraway and the story of Jay Gatsby's misdirected quest” (22). Robert J. Emmitt, in “Love, Death, and Resurrection in The Great Gatsby,” argues that “Gatsby's romantic quest, with its search for a grail and its parodic connotations of the Christian sacrifice, is a parable of the fate of idolatry, and a commentary on its particular American manifestations” (283). In their article “Sangria in the Sangreal: The Great Gatsby as Grail Quest,” D. G. Kehl and Allene Cooper characterize Gatsby as a quester and conclude that the grail is “personified by Daisy Buchanan” (203). Similarly, in The Medievalist Impulse in American Literature, Kim Moreland calls Gatsby's story a failed romantic quest and Daisy “a false grail” (143).Indeed, The Great Gatsby is rife with symbols of a quest; however, each of the aforementioned arguments presupposes that the novel's quest motif is ironic, even “parodic.” It seems that none of these critics has considered that perhaps the quest motif has a much more serious, profound, and primeval significance than an ironic comment on contemporary American values.A close reading of The Great Gatsby unveils numerous allusions not only to the grail quest as Weston explains it in From Ritual to Romance but also to the specific mythical elements in which she believes the grail quest is rooted. Considering Fitzgerald's affinity for The Waste Land, he was undoubtedly aware that in the notes to the poem, Eliot states that “Miss Weston's book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble” (21). While Fitzgerald's letters do not explicitly mention Weston's work as they do Eliot's, myriad allusions in the novel—along with Eliot's reference to Weston—suggest that Fitzgerald was indeed inspired by From Ritual to Romance and that the grail quest motif in The Great Gatsby, like that in The Waste Land, was influenced by Weston's work. This likely source opens up a new realm of possibility for the significance of the quest in The Great Gatsby and allows us to view Gatsby and Nick not as, respectively, an amoral and a superficial anti-hero, but as archetypal characters in an ancient ritualistic drama.According to Weston, the purpose of the grail quest was not the possession of a material object but, as in the rites of ancient fertility cults, an apotheosis in which the quester gains true knowledge of physical and spiritual life. If we read The Great Gatsby from this perspective, the idea that Daisy is a personification of the grail and that Gatsby plays the role of the quester seems erroneous. As to Nick's assertion that “Gatsby had committed himself to the following of a grail” (149), it is likely that Fitzgerald intended to draw attention to the grail quest motif in the novel, but not in the way that most critics have interpreted it. While there is a dearth of evidence to support the idea that Gatsby mimics the quester and Daisy the grail, abundant evidence exists to suggest an alternative theory: The Great Gatsby is the story of a quest; but not, however, the romantic version of the grail quest associated with King Arthur and Lancelot and the search for a holy relic, nor the quest of Gatsby as he seeks material wealth in pursuit of Daisy. Instead, it is the story of a quest undertaken by Nick Carraway, who seeks gnosis of mortality and divinity, with Gatsby fulfilling the role of the maimed Fisher King who inadvertently leads Nick to his apotheosis. Throughout the novel, thorough evidence verifies that while Gatsby may have “committed himself to the following of a grail” (emphasis added), he is not in fact following the grail. Instead, it is Nick who seeks the grail, and his quest for initiation echoes the rituals of the mystic life cults in which the grail quest is rooted.Before exploring the ways in which The Great Gatsby mirrors the elements of the grail quest presented in From Ritual to Romance, it is necessary to highlight certain aspects of Weston's argument. During her thirty years of studying grail texts, Weston came to doubt the common belief that the myth emerged from either Christianity or British folklore, finding that both explanations of origin proved to be paradoxical, isolated, and disjointed. After studying Frazer's The Golden Bough, she began to formulate an explanation of the grail myth's origins that could reconcile these incongruities. Intriguing similarities between the grail stories and the descriptions of the nature cults in Frazer's book led her to believe that the grail legend may be a record of a life ritual commonly practiced in pre-Christian times and covertly observed in the centuries following the spread of Christianity.The true nature of the grail, Weston claims, can be illuminated by examining the task of the grail quester and its expected results. Scrutinizing the three cycles of the legend that feature Perceval, Gawain, and Galahad as quester/heroes, Weston found that in the majority of existing grail texts, the hero's task is to heal the Fisher King from a debilitating illness or injury, thereby regenerating the king's wasted lands as a result.In most versions of the legend, the exact affliction of the king is quite mysterious. However, Weston discovered in the Sone de Nansai (1250–75) an explanation that she claims applies to all versions in which the king suffers. In this romance, the Fisher King slays the Pagan King of Norway but subsequently falls in love with his daughter, the pagan princess. He baptizes her, though she is not a true believer, then marries her, provoking God's wrath. As punishment for his blasphemy, “His loins are stricken by this bane / From which he suffers lasting pain” (Weston 22). But that is not the only consequence; the Fisher King's infirmity not only emasculates him but renders his lands infertile as a result. As such, it is necessary for the hero to heal the king and in so doing, to restore his lands to vitality.This theme can be traced to earlier literature, most notably to the Rig Veda, or The Thousand and One Hymns (ca. 1500–1200 BC). Written in ancient India and sacred to Hindus, this collection of hymns and praises of the mainly agrarian Aryan population is dedicated to Indra, the god responsible for the rains. More significantly, Indra is praised in the Rig Veda for the “freeing of the waters” (Weston 26); when the evil giant Vritra imprisoned the seven rivers of India and thus imposed drought and starvation on the people, Indra slew him, freeing the rivers from their captivity and restoring the lands back to life and fertility. Weston notes that Indra's accomplishment is the same for which Perceval and Gawain are exalted in grail legend.Like the ancient Aryans who worshipped Indra, most nature cults personified the seasons, weather patterns, vegetation, and other natural elements as divine figures that resembled humans and their experiences. Since these deities symbolized the natural processes of the earth, they were believed to progress from birth to death in the course of a year. One of the primary examples that Weston cites is the Phoenician-Greek god Adonis, who represented the spirit of vegetation. Adonis's annual disappearance into the underworld brought death and sadness to the land; when he returned again in the spring, restoring his reproductive energies to earth, there was tremendous cause for celebration among the nature cults: vegetation bloomed, animals gave birth, and rivers flooded the plains (Weston 40, 43–44).A significant element in the story of Adonis is his cause of death: the vengeful Ares, jealous of Adonis's love affair with Aphrodite, sends a wild boar to wound Adonis mortally in the thigh. Interestingly, Weston points out, scholars generally agree that Adonis's thigh wound is euphemistic for an emasculating injury that symbolizes earth's infertility, with which his death is associated (Weston 43–44). The story of Adonis, a divine youth beloved by a goddess, whose loss of reproductive abilities came to represent the degeneration of earth in autumn and winter, bears a remarkable resemblance to the Fisher King's loss of fecundity, and that of his lands, as punishment for his love of a pagan princess.A final critical point in Weston's argument is her discussion of the “central rite” that explains the mystery of the grail. She tells us that nature cult rituals consisted of two separate rites: public celebrations, in which feasting and other physical pleasures were enjoyed by all members of the cult, and mystery rites observed by only a select few, in which the benefits were individual, spiritual, and often “aimed at … the attainment of a conscious, ecstatic union with the god” (140). These rituals, Weston claims, lie at the very heart of grail legend, for the secret of the grail is “a double initiation into the source of the lower and higher spheres of Life,” the lower sphere being knowledge of human life upon earth, the higher sphere being an understanding of the spiritual forces of life (159). Just as the ancient initiates sought a union with the gods of the nature cults, who transcended earthly existence by bringing the divine gifts of water and vegetation to an ailing land, so the grail quester seeks the ability to heal the king—who, like the fertility gods, embodies humanity and its struggles—thus achieving gnosis of human life.A critical reading of The Great Gatsby from the perspective of From Ritual to Romance reveals numerous striking parallels not only between Gatsby and the Fisher King, but between Gatsby and Adonis as well. Furthermore, extensive evidence links Nick to both the quester in grail legend and to his predecessor, the initiate of the mystic life cults. In many compelling ways, the roles of Daisy and Tom, as well as the novel's setting and plot, further support this theory.To Weston, the Fisher King is “the very essence” of the grail story; he “stand[s] between his people and the land, and the unseen forces which control their destiny”—namely the drought that wastes his lands as a consequence of his illness and the rains that result from his salvation (136). Like the Fisher King, Gatsby's life stages seem to function with the forces of nature. Several of the novel's important events, especially those pertaining directly to Gatsby, occur at a change of seasons. Nick arrives in Gatsby's domain of West Egg around the time of the summer solstice; “with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees,” he feels “that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer” (4), and indeed his life takes a new turn when he meets Gatsby. The day that Daisy and Gatsby choose to reveal their affair to Tom—also the day of Myrtle's death—is “almost the last, certainly the warmest, day of summer” (114). Most importantly, the day on which Gatsby is killed holds “an autumn flavor in the air.” Gatsby's death is sprinkled with images of autumn: it is a “cool, lovely day” when Gatsby walks to his pool against the backdrop of “yellowing trees,” and his gardener tells him that he intends to drain the pool since “leaves'll be falling pretty soon” (153). When Gatsby's body is later discovered, “a small gust of wind” blows the mattress on which he floats, and around it revolves “a cluster of leaves” (162). The autumnal setting of Gatsby's death evokes the death of Adonis, predecessor to the Fisher King; in Cyprus, Adonis's death falls “on the 23rd of September, his resurrection on the 1st of October,” and his feast is celebrated on the autumnal equinox (Weston 46). Given Nick's references to the weather, it is likely that Gatsby's death also falls on or around 23 September, the day after what Nick calls “almost the last … day of summer.”Not only the timing but also the imagery of Gatsby's death highlights a fascinating similarity between Gatsby, Adonis, and the Fisher King. Gatsby is discovered floating on a “laden mattress” that “moved irregularly down the pool” like a bier carrying him to a watery grave (162). This scene resembles Weston's description of the “ceremonies of mourning for the dead god” Adonis, in which mourners “commit[ed] his effigy to the waves”; in some variations of the ceremony an effigy or head was borne “by a current … to Byblos” (Weston 47). Furthermore, in grail legend, the quester often upon at the grail a dead on a bier … or a king on a (Weston The of Gatsby's death scene mirrors these images of Adonis's and the grail king's a point also by Jeffrey Hart, who argues that the Gatsby himself by dead leaves in his death by like the dead fertility god of the of the Fisher King in rains that his Adonis's annual death and resurrection the that life to the Gatsby's immediately the his to Adonis and the Fisher King, it that in Gatsby's death we of The setting of Gatsby's is in the and in a the a and by a of Gatsby's wet to the As the the of are the dead that the falls to which to with this the mythical of Gatsby's As as Gatsby is to the forces of the earth, it is natural that his resurrection to the lands on which the of Long Island only a Nick the of the that Gatsby's death: As my emerged from the into only the of the the at The of the on the of the to me for a while into her and as her her into with a and its are by this which is by Gatsby's death and the that the day of his as the of both the Fisher King and Adonis and life back to their own Gatsby's with the him to the Fisher so his with water the Weston tells us that “the Grail is in the close of either on or the or on the of an important and that “the presence of either or is an important feature in the Adonis As many critics have already out, water images The Great on the is by This of water symbolism can be with the notable presence of the grail motif by reading Gatsby as the Fisher King and not the the Fisher King whose is in the close of Gatsby's physical to Long Island Sound is in descriptions of his much like a Gatsby's home is to de in with a on … and a Gatsby's is from the across from which “the of Egg the we a double to the grail Gatsby's is not only the but also as a its on the Gatsby's is often by its as is Gatsby him, Nick says that have the that Gatsby from the of Nick Gatsby, in his mythical wealth and his on the Gatsby's was story that in a at but in a that like a and was up and down the Long Island Gatsby's in his and Nick explains that in the I his from the of his or the on the of his while his two the water of the over of In the of the is with out at a Gatsby's on the of and and and Nick himself and of as “a of at the “the had and floating in the Sound was a of a to the of the The imagery that Fitzgerald when Nick later Gatsby's who include who was last summer up in … the … … S. … the and the and says Weston, a of which explains the significance of the of Fisher King However, a more specific origin of the can be found in Robert de of (ca. the text to of the Weston explains that the of that holy and his in the certain of the into the of a with the a mystic of which the was as though in other versions of the story “the is as a This story of of the mystic between Gatsby and the Fisher King. If we read the descriptions of Gatsby's we a of any description of Gatsby too a mystic against of and and to a Gatsby's a and who and their “on the of Gatsby's are as of the for certainly they are among the the feast is Gatsby, like the of Gatsby's some of the most compelling evidence Gatsby to the Fisher King and Like Adonis, Gatsby becomes the of it is that rites of the Adonis cults, which Weston numerous versions of grail legend, are also practiced at Gatsby's belief that Adonis each autumn and came back to life each was cause for and celebration by rites of a very specific nature. to The of the the birth and death rites of the Adonis cults “the of and the of and (Weston 46). Weston some intriguing of these that “the most notable feature of the ritual was the to that is the who for and him to his all Furthermore, very these was that of the hair in of the an that also to the of the cults. in grail legend, we upon the grail king on a when the injury to that by Weston notes “the presence of a or in the grail as well as “the of a who has her hair as a result of the … of the Fisher of these bears a to at Gatsby's “the of and the of and Gatsby's feature “a of and and and and and and and The as the the earth from the … the of a and “by the had In the small of the there is as the later Nick the and of a in which “a … had for some and to the already of the Gatsby's house, when the has its we are of a from a in She had a of and the course of her she had that was very was not only she was there was a in the she it with and then up the again in a The down her The presence of this resembles the in the Adonis rituals and in grail Furthermore, of the who has her in grail legend and the who their hair in the nature cult rituals is the presence at Gatsby's of with in new In these may be as but a of the and the of the may to the at the however, when with the numerous other allusions presented in this these images cult ritual grail also in her explanation of the origin of the grail to a ritual of the as they worshipped their god Indra, of the in this of and … are as in the same These presented as and as Weston on to that “the of notably of what we may as a to natural is among we a parallel to feature of Gatsby's in who a in the of an was on the in the … a great of or the for a of the of the or the the people were all over the while bursts of the summer A of who out to be the in a in The similarity between the who to Indra, predecessor of Adonis and of the Fisher King, and the who in celebration of the that is a to Gatsby's be nor can it be is to read Gatsby as a can Gatsby's be as an of the of the a of and for Nick feels at point in the that “the scene had into and The significance that Nick evokes the of and of the nature the and of the may but they are on the of their god (Weston 46). Gatsby, whose energies are to “the of a and (Gatsby becomes the god of these who his his his him in their for were him from those who had found that it was necessary to in this secret that Gatsby is a a even a are in of and more than of Gatsby's to a being further Gatsby's role as counterpart to Adonis and the Fisher becomes even when we the love affair between Gatsby and Daisy and its his Gatsby the affliction of Adonis and the Fisher King, who emasculating as punishment for

F. Scott Fitzgerald's self-proclaimed “profound admiration” (Life in Letters 137) of T. S. Eliot shines an important light on Fitzgerald's composition of The Great Gatsby. In October of 1925, Fitzgerald sent a copy of his novel to Eliot with the following inscription: For T.S. EliotGreatest of Living Poetsfrom his enthusiastic worshipperF. Scott Fitzgerald (Life in Letters 128) The following February, he commented to Maxwell Perkins that “T.S. Eliot for whom you know my profound admiration—I think he's the greatest living poet in any language—wrote me he'd read Gatsby three times + thought it was the 1st step forward American fiction had taken since Henry James” (Life in Letters 137).Eliot's influence on Fitzgerald surpassed general awe and inspiration; in fact, there are many indications that The Great Gatsby is in part an emulation of The Waste Land (1922). Several critics have already elucidated this literary relationship, such as Jeffrey Hart, who points out in his article “Rediscovering Fitzgerald” that “Fitzgerald studied The Waste Land … while he was working on Gatsby” and that “[t]he book both salutes Eliot and answers him” (208, 209). Careful readings of each text indeed reveal numerous similarities between The Waste Land and The Great Gatsby. Perhaps the most notable parallel is the presence of the “valley of ashes … the waste land” in Gatsby, home of George and Myrtle Wilson and setting for Myrtle's death (Gatsby 23, 24). Other intriguing echoes of The Waste Land include the water imagery that pervades The Great Gatsby. The “small, foul river” in the valley of ashes seems to be a counterpart of the “dull canal” in The Waste Land (Gatsby 24; Eliot 189). Nick lamenting Gatsby's death by the waters of Long Island Sound evokes Eliot's narrator who weeps by the waters of Leman. Imagery of water and color even suggest a similarity between Fitzgerald's Daisy and Eliot's hyacinth girl. When Daisy meets Gatsby at Nick's house, she appears “under the dripping bare lilac trees…. A damp streak of hair lay like a dash of blue paint across her cheek, and her hand was wet with glistening drops” (Gatsby 85). Similarly, Eliot's hyacinth girl returns “from the Hyacinth garden,” her “arms full, and [her] hair wet” (37, 38).Just as The Great Gatsby is indebted to The Waste Land, so too is The Waste Land indebted—“deeply … indebted,” to use Eliot's own words—to Jessie L. Weston's From Ritual to Romance (1920). In his notes to The Waste Land, Eliot credits Weston's book for “not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem” (21). Weston, a lifelong scholar of grail texts, wrote From Ritual to Romance as a culmination of her studies of pre-classical, classical, and medieval myth. From her enormous breadth and depth of research, she drew the conclusion that the grail legends are not rooted in Christianity or British folklore, but in the secret rituals of pre-Christian fertility cults. The symbolism that Eliot adopted from Weston's book includes not only that of the grail quest, but of these fertility rituals as well. In his notes to The Waste Land, Eliot says of From Ritual to Romance and Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough (1890–1915) that “anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies” (21).Themes of fertility, regeneration, and the quest are similarly important in The Great Gatsby. The quest motif in particular has received much attention from critics. Owing heavily to Nick's claim that Gatsby “had committed himself to the following of a grail” (149), most critics have concluded that Gatsby becomes an anti-hero who symbolically capsizes all romantic and honorable notions of a quest by pursuing wealth as a means to win back Daisy. In F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Critical Essay, Edwin Moseley analyzes the novel as an “initiation and quest for the grail,” arguing that The Great Gatsby is “the initiation story of Nick Carraway and the story of Jay Gatsby's misdirected quest” (22). Robert J. Emmitt, in “Love, Death, and Resurrection in The Great Gatsby,” argues that “Gatsby's romantic quest, with its search for a grail and its parodic connotations of the Christian sacrifice, is a parable of the fate of idolatry, and a commentary on its particular American manifestations” (283). In their article “Sangria in the Sangreal: The Great Gatsby as Grail Quest,” D. G. Kehl and Allene Cooper characterize Gatsby as a quester and conclude that the grail is “personified by Daisy Buchanan” (203). Similarly, in The Medievalist Impulse in American Literature, Kim Moreland calls Gatsby's story a failed romantic quest and Daisy “a false grail” (143).Indeed, The Great Gatsby is rife with symbols of a quest; however, each of the aforementioned arguments presupposes that the novel's quest motif is ironic, even “parodic.” It seems that none of these critics has considered that perhaps the quest motif has a much more serious, profound, and primeval significance than an ironic comment on contemporary American values.A close reading of The Great Gatsby unveils numerous allusions not only to the grail quest as Weston explains it in From Ritual to Romance but also to the specific mythical elements in which she believes the grail quest is rooted. Considering Fitzgerald's affinity for The Waste Land, he was undoubtedly aware that in the notes to the poem, Eliot states that “Miss Weston's book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble” (21). While Fitzgerald's letters do not explicitly mention Weston's work as they do Eliot's, myriad allusions in the novel—along with Eliot's reference to Weston—suggest that Fitzgerald was indeed inspired by From Ritual to Romance and that the grail quest motif in The Great Gatsby, like that in The Waste Land, was influenced by Weston's work. This likely source opens up a new realm of possibility for the significance of the quest in The Great Gatsby and allows us to view Gatsby and Nick not as, respectively, an amoral and a superficial anti-hero, but as archetypal characters in an ancient ritualistic drama.According to Weston, the purpose of the grail quest was not the possession of a material object but, as in the rites of ancient fertility cults, an apotheosis in which the quester gains true knowledge of physical and spiritual life. If we read The Great Gatsby from this perspective, the idea that Daisy is a personification of the grail and that Gatsby plays the role of the quester seems erroneous. As to Nick's assertion that “Gatsby had committed himself to the following of a grail” (149), it is likely that Fitzgerald intended to draw attention to the grail quest motif in the novel, but not in the way that most critics have interpreted it. While there is a dearth of evidence to support the idea that Gatsby mimics the quester and Daisy the grail, abundant evidence exists to suggest an alternative theory: The Great Gatsby is the story of a quest; but not, however, the romantic version of the grail quest associated with King Arthur and Lancelot and the search for a holy relic, nor the quest of Gatsby as he seeks material wealth in pursuit of Daisy. Instead, it is the story of a quest undertaken by Nick Carraway, who seeks gnosis of mortality and divinity, with Gatsby fulfilling the role of the maimed Fisher King who inadvertently leads Nick to his apotheosis. Throughout the novel, thorough evidence verifies that while Gatsby may have “committed himself to the following of a grail” (emphasis added), he is not in fact following the grail. Instead, it is Nick who seeks the grail, and his quest for initiation echoes the rituals of the mystic life cults in which the grail quest is rooted.Before exploring the ways in which The Great Gatsby mirrors the elements of the grail quest presented in From Ritual to Romance, it is necessary to highlight certain aspects of Weston's argument. During her thirty years of studying grail texts, Weston came to doubt the common belief that the myth emerged from either Christianity or British folklore, finding that both explanations of origin proved to be paradoxical, isolated, and disjointed. After studying Frazer's The Golden Bough, she began to formulate an explanation of the grail myth's origins that could reconcile these incongruities. Intriguing similarities between the grail stories and the descriptions of the nature cults in Frazer's book led her to believe that the grail legend may be a record of a life ritual commonly practiced in pre-Christian times and covertly observed in the centuries following the spread of Christianity.The true nature of the grail, Weston claims, can be illuminated by examining the task of the grail quester and its expected results. Scrutinizing the three cycles of the legend that feature Perceval, Gawain, and Galahad as quester/heroes, Weston found that in the majority of existing grail texts, the hero's task is to heal the Fisher King from a debilitating illness or injury, thereby regenerating the king's wasted lands as a result.In most versions of the legend, the exact affliction of the king is quite mysterious. However, Weston discovered in the Sone de Nansai (1250–75) an explanation that she claims applies to all versions in which the king suffers. In this romance, the Fisher King slays the Pagan King of Norway but subsequently falls in love with his daughter, the pagan princess. He baptizes her, though she is not a true believer, then marries her, provoking God's wrath. As punishment for his blasphemy, “His loins are stricken by this bane / From which he suffers lasting pain” (Weston 22). But that is not the only consequence; the Fisher King's infirmity not only emasculates him but renders his lands infertile as a result. As such, it is necessary for the hero to heal the king and in so doing, to restore his lands to vitality.This theme can be traced to earlier literature, most notably to the Rig Veda, or The Thousand and One Hymns (ca. 1500–1200 BC). Written in ancient India and sacred to Hindus, this collection of hymns and praises of the mainly agrarian Aryan population is dedicated to Indra, the god responsible for the rains. More significantly, Indra is praised in the Rig Veda for the “freeing of the waters” (Weston 26); when the evil giant Vritra imprisoned the seven rivers of India and thus imposed drought and starvation on the people, Indra slew him, freeing the rivers from their captivity and restoring the lands back to life and fertility. Weston notes that Indra's accomplishment is the same for which Perceval and Gawain are exalted in grail legend.Like the ancient Aryans who worshipped Indra, most nature cults personified the seasons, weather patterns, vegetation, and other natural elements as divine figures that resembled humans and their experiences. Since these deities symbolized the natural processes of the earth, they were believed to progress from birth to death in the course of a year. One of the primary examples that Weston cites is the Phoenician-Greek god Adonis, who represented the spirit of vegetation. Adonis's annual disappearance into the underworld brought death and sadness to the land; when he returned again in the spring, restoring his reproductive energies to earth, there was tremendous cause for celebration among the nature cults: vegetation bloomed, animals gave birth, and rivers flooded the plains (Weston 40, 43–44).A significant element in the story of Adonis is his cause of death: the vengeful Ares, jealous of Adonis's love affair with Aphrodite, sends a wild boar to wound Adonis mortally in the thigh. Interestingly, Weston points out, scholars generally agree that Adonis's thigh wound is euphemistic for an emasculating injury that symbolizes earth's infertility, with which his death is associated (Weston 43–44). The story of Adonis, a divine youth beloved by a goddess, whose loss of reproductive abilities came to represent the degeneration of earth in autumn and winter, bears a remarkable resemblance to the Fisher King's loss of fecundity, and that of his lands, as punishment for his love of a pagan princess.A final critical point in Weston's argument is her discussion of the “central rite” that explains the mystery of the grail. She tells us that nature cult rituals consisted of two separate rites: public celebrations, in which feasting and other physical pleasures were enjoyed by all members of the cult, and mystery rites observed by only a select few, in which the benefits were individual, spiritual, and often “aimed at … the attainment of a conscious, ecstatic union with the god” (140). These rituals, Weston claims, lie at the very heart of grail legend, for the secret of the grail is “a double initiation into the source of the lower and higher spheres of Life,” the lower sphere being knowledge of human life upon earth, the higher sphere being an understanding of the spiritual forces of life (159). Just as the ancient initiates sought a union with the gods of the nature cults, who transcended earthly existence by bringing the divine gifts of water and vegetation to an ailing land, so the grail quester seeks the ability to heal the king—who, like the fertility gods, embodies humanity and its struggles—thus achieving gnosis of human life.A critical reading of The Great Gatsby from the perspective of From Ritual to Romance reveals numerous striking parallels not only between Gatsby and the Fisher King, but between Gatsby and Adonis as well. Furthermore, extensive evidence links Nick to both the quester in grail legend and to his predecessor, the initiate of the mystic life cults. In many compelling ways, the roles of Daisy and Tom, as well as the novel's setting and plot, further support this theory.To Weston, the Fisher King is “the very essence” of the grail story; he “stand[s] between his people and the land, and the unseen forces which control their destiny”—namely the drought that wastes his lands as a consequence of his illness and the rains that result from his salvation (136). Like the Fisher King, Gatsby's life stages seem to function with the forces of nature. Several of the novel's important events, especially those pertaining directly to Gatsby, occur at a change of seasons. Nick arrives in Gatsby's domain of West Egg around the time of the summer solstice; “with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees,” he feels “that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer” (4), and indeed his life takes a new turn when he meets Gatsby. The day that Daisy and Gatsby choose to reveal their affair to Tom—also the day of Myrtle's death—is “almost the last, certainly the warmest, day of summer” (114). Most importantly, the day on which Gatsby is killed holds “an autumn flavor in the air.” Gatsby's death is sprinkled with images of autumn: it is a “cool, lovely day” when Gatsby walks to his pool against the backdrop of “yellowing trees,” and his gardener tells him that he intends to drain the pool since “leaves'll be falling pretty soon” (153). When Gatsby's body is later discovered, “a small gust of wind” blows the mattress on which he floats, and around it revolves “a cluster of leaves” (162). The autumnal setting of Gatsby's death evokes the death of Adonis, predecessor to the Fisher King; in Cyprus, Adonis's death falls “on the 23rd of September, his resurrection on the 1st of October,” and his feast is celebrated on the autumnal equinox (Weston 46). Given Nick's references to the weather, it is likely that Gatsby's death also falls on or around 23 September, the day after what Nick calls “almost the last … day of summer.”Not only the timing but also the imagery of Gatsby's death highlights a fascinating similarity between Gatsby, Adonis, and the Fisher King. Gatsby is discovered floating on a “laden mattress” that “moved irregularly down the pool” like a bier carrying him to a watery grave (162). This scene resembles Weston's description of the “ceremonies of mourning for the dead god” Adonis, in which mourners “commit[ed] his effigy to the waves”; in some variations of the ceremony an effigy or head was borne “by a current … to Byblos” (Weston 47). Furthermore, in grail legend, the quester often upon at the grail a dead on a bier … or a king on a (Weston The of Gatsby's death scene mirrors these images of Adonis's and the grail king's a point also by Jeffrey Hart, who argues that the Gatsby himself by dead leaves in his death by like the dead fertility god of the of the Fisher King in rains that his Adonis's annual death and resurrection the that life to the Gatsby's immediately the his to Adonis and the Fisher King, it that in Gatsby's death we of The setting of Gatsby's is in the and in a the a and by a of Gatsby's wet to the As the the of are the dead that the falls to which to with this the mythical of Gatsby's As as Gatsby is to the forces of the earth, it is natural that his resurrection to the lands on which the of Long Island only a Nick the of the that Gatsby's death: As my emerged from the into only the of the the at The of the on the of the to me for a while into her and as her her into with a and its are by this which is by Gatsby's death and the that the day of his as the of both the Fisher King and Adonis and life back to their own Gatsby's with the him to the Fisher so his with water the Weston tells us that “the Grail is in the close of either on or the or on the of an important and that “the presence of either or is an important feature in the Adonis As many critics have already out, water images The Great on the is by This of water symbolism can be with the notable presence of the grail motif by reading Gatsby as the Fisher King and not the the Fisher King whose is in the close of Gatsby's physical to Long Island Sound is in descriptions of his much like a Gatsby's home is to de in with a on … and a Gatsby's is from the across from which “the of Egg the we a double to the grail Gatsby's is not only the but also as a its on the Gatsby's is often by its as is Gatsby him, Nick says that have the that Gatsby from the of Nick Gatsby, in his mythical wealth and his on the Gatsby's was story that in a at but in a that like a and was up and down the Long Island Gatsby's in his and Nick explains that in the I his from the of his or the on the of his while his two the water of the over of In the of the is with out at a Gatsby's on the of and and and Nick himself and of as “a of at the “the had and floating in the Sound was a of a to the of the The imagery that Fitzgerald when Nick later Gatsby's who include who was last summer up in … the … … S. … the and the and says Weston, a of which explains the significance of the of Fisher King However, a more specific origin of the can be found in Robert de of (ca. the text to of the Weston explains that the of that holy and his in the certain of the into the of a with the a mystic of which the was as though in other versions of the story “the is as a This story of of the mystic between Gatsby and the Fisher King. If we read the descriptions of Gatsby's we a of any description of Gatsby too a mystic against of and and to a Gatsby's a and who and their “on the of Gatsby's are as of the for certainly they are among the the feast is Gatsby, like the of Gatsby's some of the most compelling evidence Gatsby to the Fisher King and Like Adonis, Gatsby becomes the of it is that rites of the Adonis cults, which Weston numerous versions of grail legend, are also practiced at Gatsby's belief that Adonis each autumn and came back to life each was cause for and celebration by rites of a very specific nature. to The of the the birth and death rites of the Adonis cults “the of and the of and (Weston 46). Weston some intriguing of these that “the most notable feature of the ritual was the to that is the who for and him to his all Furthermore, very these was that of the hair in of the an that also to the of the cults. in grail legend, we upon the grail king on a when the injury to that by Weston notes “the presence of a or in the grail as well as “the of a who has her hair as a result of the … of the Fisher of these bears a to at Gatsby's “the of and the of and Gatsby's feature “a of and and and and and and and The as the the earth from the … the of a and “by the had In the small of the there is as the later Nick the and of a in which “a … had for some and to the already of the Gatsby's house, when the has its we are of a from a in She had a of and the course of her she had that was very was not only she was there was a in the she it with and then up the again in a The down her The presence of this resembles the in the Adonis rituals and in grail Furthermore, of the who has her in grail legend and the who their hair in the nature cult rituals is the presence at Gatsby's of with in new In these may be as but a of the and the of the may to the at the however, when with the numerous other allusions presented in this these images cult ritual grail also in her explanation of the origin of the grail to a ritual of the as they worshipped their god Indra, of the in this of and … are as in the same These presented as and as Weston on to that “the of notably of what we may as a to natural is among we a parallel to feature of Gatsby's in who a in the of an was on the in the … a great of or the for a of the of the or the the people were all over the while bursts of the summer A of who out to be the in a in The similarity between the who to Indra, predecessor of Adonis and of the Fisher King, and the who in celebration of the that is a to Gatsby's be nor can it be is to read Gatsby as a can Gatsby's be as an of the of the a of and for Nick feels at point in the that “the scene had into and The significance that Nick evokes the of and of the nature the and of the may but they are on the of their god (Weston 46). Gatsby, whose energies are to “the of a and (Gatsby becomes the god of these who his his his him in their for were him from those who had found that it was necessary to in this secret that Gatsby is a a even a are in of and more than of Gatsby's to a being further Gatsby's role as counterpart to Adonis and the Fisher becomes even when we the love affair between Gatsby and Daisy and its his Gatsby the affliction of Adonis and the Fisher King, who emasculating as punishment for

Book Review| January 01 2008 History in Literature: The Story Behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" History in Literature: The Story Behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"Hensley, Laura J. PENNY RUDGE PENNY RUDGE Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review (2008) 6 (1): 193–194. https://doi.org/10.2307/41583144 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation PENNY RUDGE; History in Literature: The Story Behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 1 January 2008; 6 (1): 193–194. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41583144 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressThe F. Scott Fitzgerald Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2008 The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society/Wiley Periodicals, Inc.2008The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society/Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review| January 01 2009 Approaches to Teaching Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" Approaches to Teaching Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"Bryer, Jackson R.; VanArsdale, Nancy P. LAUREN A. RULE LAUREN A. RULE Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review (2009) 7 (1): 155–158. https://doi.org/10.2307/41583016 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation LAUREN A. RULE; Approaches to Teaching Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 1 January 2009; 7 (1): 155–158. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41583016 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressThe F. Scott Fitzgerald Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2009 The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society/Wiley Periodicals, Inc.2009The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society/Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

This work is devoted to the issue of the translation of artistic and visual means from English into Russian based on the material of Francis Scott Fitzgerald's work of fiction "The Great Gatsby". It concerns research on various ways of adequately conveying the author's intentions of a work of art in the receiving language and recreating the stylistic effect of the original through figurative means in the translation process. The object of our research is the linguistic visual means that the translator uses to create imagery. The subject of the study is the stylistic features of the translation of visual and expressive means of language in F. Fitzgerald's work "The Great Gatsby". The relevance of the topic, therefore, is due to the need for a comprehensive study of stylistic techniques when translating from one language to another. The scientific novelty of the article is due to the need to study various means of expression, which in each case, in addition to the aesthetic function, help the author to fully reveal the meaning of the work. The article solves the following main tasks: to analyze the features of the translation of fiction, to identify the main lexical and stylistic figures in the novel "The Great Gatsby", to analyze the translation of the selected means of expression. As a result, we found that the transfer of stylistic means of expression presents certain difficulties for the translator due to their ambiguity. Various means of expression give an emotionally expressive assessment, characterize objects and phenomena, "decode" the author's intentions.

Gatsby:<i>The Cultural History of the Great American Novel</i><i>Beyond</i>Gatsby:<i>How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Culture</i><i>So We Read On: How</i>The Great Gatsby<i>Came to Be and Why It Endures</i>

Last Kiss The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby: An Edition of the Manuscript

Research Article| January 01 2010 Reading "The Great Gatsby" in New Jersey: Responses to Fitzgerald in Richard Ford's Bascombe Trilogy: "The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1995)", and "The Lay of the Land (2006)" HORST KRUSE HORST KRUSE Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review (2010) 8 (1): 208–217. https://doi.org/10.2307/41583162 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation HORST KRUSE; Reading "The Great Gatsby" in New Jersey: Responses to Fitzgerald in Richard Ford's Bascombe Trilogy: "The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1995)", and "The Lay of the Land (2006)". The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 1 January 2010; 8 (1): 208–217. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41583162 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressThe F. Scott Fitzgerald Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2010 The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society/Wiley Periodicals, Inc.2010The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society/Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Research Article| January 01 2010 The Telephonic Logic of "The Great Gatsby" ERIC RAWSON ERIC RAWSON Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review (2010) 8 (1): 92–103. https://doi.org/10.2307/41583157 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation ERIC RAWSON; The Telephonic Logic of "The Great Gatsby". The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 1 January 2010; 8 (1): 92–103. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41583157 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressThe F. Scott Fitzgerald Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2010 The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society/Wiley Periodicals, Inc.2010The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society/Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The main concern of this study is to tackle exaggeration in British and American situations taken from Mrs. Dalloway and The Great Gatsby novels. From a pragmatic point of view, exaggeration in the field of literature has not been given enough attention. Accordingly, this study is an attempt to develop a model for the analysis of exaggeration pragmatically. Thus, it concerns itself with achieving the following aims:(1)investigating the kinds of speech acts through which the exaggeration language occurs in Mrs. Dalloway and The Great Gatsby novels.(2)identifying the devices of exaggeration used in Mrs. Dalloway and The Great Gatsby novels.(3)showing how exaggerators pragmatically proceed the Politeness Principle and the Cooperative Principle in these two novels.(4)figuring out the pragmatic functions of exaggeration used in these two novels. In relation to the abovementioned aims, the following hypotheses are tested:(1) various kinds of speech acts through which the exaggeration language occurs can be used in Mrs. Dalloway and The Great Gatsby novels.(2)a variety of devices of exaggeration are used in these two novels.(3)the Politeness Principle and the Cooperative Principle are violated in The Great Gatsby more than in Mrs. Dalloway .(4)there are different pragmatic functions for exaggeration in these novels.To achieve the aforementioned aims, the following procedures are followed:(1)surveying the relevant literature on exaggeration in general and its pragmatic perspective in particular.(2)analyzing the exaggeration language pragmatically in Mrs. Dalloway and The Great Gatsby according to a model developed by this study.The results of the analysis prove the first, second, and fourth hypotheses, whereas they partially reject the third hypothesis and partially verify it. Keywords: Exaggeration, Pragmatics, Speech acts.

<i>F. Scott Fitzgerald at Work: The Making of</i> The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby (1925) is considered the greatest literary achievement of Francis Scott Fitzgerald. Its first Polish translation was published in 1962. Presently, readers in Poland can choose from among six translations of this iconic work, with three of them added in 2021 and 2022, probably as a result of the entry of the book into the public domain in 2021. Fitzgerald, often regarded as a chronicler of the tumultuous Jazz Age in the United States, presents a socio-cultural narrative that invites reflection on how Polish translators dealt with the cultural elements and allusions pervasive in The Great Gatsby. This paper delves into selected cultural elements and allusions within the context of the five Polish translations of The Great Gatsby.

Reviewed by: So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and How It Endures by Maureen Corrigan Guy Szuberla Maureen Corrigan, So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and How It Endures. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2014. 343pp. $26.00. Maureen Corrigan’s So We Read On moves forward with the spirit and energy of a triumphal march. Corrigan is, after all, telling the story of how Minnesotan F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby rose from a near death to become “our Great American Novel,” and how, in her view, it endures as one of the “modernist masterworks,” a work to be set alongside Ulysses and The Wasteland (23, 176). Along the way, Corrigan reconstructs in detail the moments when The Great Gatsby almost ceased to be. Gatsby was published to critical applause in 1925, but sales were disappointing and Scribners wound up warehousing the second printing. When Fitzgerald died on December 21, 1940, the novel was out of print and sales and royalties had dwindled to nothing. Writers of Fitzgerald’s obituaries who bothered to mention Gatsby generally dismissed it as a frivolous relic of the Jazz Age. In May 1940, six months before his death, Fitzgerald had pleaded with his editor Max Perkins to consider bringing back Gatsby as a “25 cent” pocketbook. He worried that when his daughter “Scottie assures her friends I was an author” she’ll learn “no book is procurable” (214). If only to set the stage for the story of Gatsby’s dramatic return as The Great American Novel, Corrigan reconstructs Fitzgerald’s personal failures—his years of alcoholism and writer’s blocks—and keys them to the crucial dates and dead ends in the book’s publication history. She draws upon the usual and expected resources of Fitzgerald scholarship, but she also explores some untraveled routes in reading and re-reading the novel. She has, it’s evident, steeped herself in Fitzgerald biographies and autobiographical material (Scott’s, Zelda’s, and their daughter Scottie’s), attended to minute details of the novel’s composition history, reception, and sales figures, and, when it suits her, has drawn lessons from the cheesiest pieces of popular culture and the most sacred academic rituals of canon formation. [End Page 84] She takes “the Great Gatsby Boat Tour” through Long Island Sound, which, even with its costumed passengers and ersatz feel, fills out a map of Gatsby’s New York. The chapter titled “Rhapsody in Noir” reveals, in surprising and persuasive illustrations, the connections between Gatsby and the hardboiled school of fiction headed by Dashiell Hammett and the 1920s “gals-guts-and-guns” pulpsters. Her commentary on Alan Ladd’s forgotten1949 Gatsby—afilm noir with a tough machine gun toting Gatsby—throws an interesting light on Jay Gatz’s midwestern origins and his relation to his dissolute mentor, Dan Cody. Looking for the early signs of the book’s revival in the 1940s and 1950s, Corrigan notes, as other scholars have, that the critic Edmund Wilson, the writer Dorothy Parker, and other friends edited and collected Fitzgerald’s work in the years just after his death. Their concerted and individual efforts set in motion a Fitzgerald revival. And, mirabile dictu, she finds the beginnings of a new life in the Armed Services Edition of The Great Gatsby—one of many books printed in paperback and distributed free to American troops toward the end of World War II. She discovers still other indications of the novel’s rebirth deep in the stacks of the Library of Congress. Poring over discontinued American Literature anthologies, handbooks, and literary histories, she concludes that in these textbook worlds of the 1940s neither the novel nor Fitzgerald had an existence. Not until 1955 does she find the first excerpt from Gatsby making an appearance in a college anthology. Fitzgerald’s masterpiece was then on its way to becoming “required reading” in high schools and college literature courses (227). In her introduction, Corrigan declares that she wrote So We Read On “above all, [as] a personal excursion into the novel I love more than any other” (15). In her final chapter, “I Didn’t...

Research Article| January 01 2008 The American Dream Unhinged: Romance and Reality in "The Great Gatsby" and "Fight Club" SUZANNE DEL GIZZO SUZANNE DEL GIZZO Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review (2008) 6 (1): 69–94. https://doi.org/10.2307/41583129 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation SUZANNE DEL GIZZO; The American Dream Unhinged: Romance and Reality in "The Great Gatsby" and "Fight Club". The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 1 January 2008; 6 (1): 69–94. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41583129 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressThe F. Scott Fitzgerald Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2008 The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society/Wiley Periodicals, Inc.2008The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society/Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.