Crisis of Meaning in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages This research will begin with the statement that it is expected that many people would consider F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” as a story of unrequited love. The story, after all, gives much focus on the title character’s efforts to win a woman’s heart despite of circumstances that do not allow it to happen.  Jay Gatsby is an individual who manages to achieve a level of affluence primarily because he wants to get the attention and ultimately earn the love of Daisy, despite the fact that she is already married to a rich and famous individual, Tom Buchanan.  However, love stories would tend to follow the usual formula of happy endings or tragic outcomes that would still leave the reader appreciating the romantic feelings between the main characters.  However, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is definitely not a novel that should be considered as just another love story.  It is in fact the author’s apparent criticism of the perspectives that Americans have on life during the 1920s.  It is a subtle presentation of the questions about the meaning of life that the author himself wishes to deal with.  “The Great Gatsby”, therefore, tackles the existentialist perspective of life in which the crisis of meaning is the central issue that should be resolved. The setting of The Great Gatsby is exactly a time when the United States was adjusting to the emergence of certain cultural products of modernity. ...
As this occurred, attempts at understanding the meaning of life became numerous. Apparently, without the new challenges presented by modernity, the meaning of life is conveniently explained by religion. It is at this point when science has advanced to a point that it challenges the ‘truths’ that religion has insisted upon for thousands of years. New discoveries presented new truths which invalidate those that have upheld by religion. This results in a crisis of meaning, a confusion regarding the essence of truth itself. It is in this context that Friedrich Nietzsche argues that “truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power” (1976: 47). An in-depth appreciation of The Great Gatsby would expose the narrator of the story, Nick Carraway, to be the very person who seeks to resolve this confusion by turning his back on modernity and re-embracing the ‘truths’ to which he is already accustomed to by going back to the West. By staying in the East, every option for a solution to problems is unreliable because this is still a result of modernity. The existential view on this matter is that “any one solution to the problem is bound to appear dubious since there are so many seductive alternatives at hand” (Eagleton 2008: 28). The only option for Nick, therefore, is to flee from modernity and go back to a life prior to it. The crisis of identity is essentially the precursor of existential crisis. When one begins to create an identity according to the desires of others, there is always the tendency to fail, which would eventually result in the crisis of meaning. Nick Carraway envies Gatsby for his ability to ...Download file to see next pagesRead More