Repetition, Race, and Desire in <em>The Great Gatsby</em>

Abstract

Although disagreement persists over exactly what role race plays in The Great Gatsby, the issue cannot be ignored, especially in recent critical studies. Yet Gatsby reveals an unexplored angle that intersects with psychoanalysis in relation to Lacan’s “fundamental fantasy.” The protagonist’s object of desire (objet a), Daisy, is the maternal figure in a (self-)destructive adult repetition of the oedipal drama, complicated by her metaphorical associations with the American landscape and her husband Tom’s patriarchal and nativist views. Ultimately, the novel’s symbolic structure is haunted by a latent desire to reconstitute Gatsby’s ambiguous socially-projected racial makeup as only figuratively white.