Style and Meaning

Lehan, Richard. The Great Gatsby: The Limits of Wonder. 36. New York City: Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1995. 125-133. Print.

There are many “templates” that authors follow when writing a novel. Fitzgerald had many to choose from when writing The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald decided not to go along with a certain mode. He wrote a letter to a man named Edmund Wilson. In this letter he stated his motivation behind his narrative layout of his novel. He said he wanted to, “Write something new- something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.” It was said that his motivation for this was Eliot’s work, The Waste Land. Fitzgerald wanted to write a poetic novel. Fitzgerald went by Eliot’s term of “objective correlative”. This term wants to bring meaning and emotion to a theme so it can be carried out by symbols and imagery. Fitzgerald used objective correlative to portray his themes in the novel. Fitzgerald is able to use Nick to achieve objective correlative. Nick throughout the novel becomes engrossed with certain themes in the novel. Some examples include the transformation of Daisy while she was married to Tom, the “greatness” of Gatsby, and the American Dream theme. Fitzgerald believed that Nick’s obsession for these major themes in the work did not do justice for the readers. Lehan believes that once the reader understands the language of Gatsby then one is able to know how the novel should be read. Nick has more information about scenes than he should know. Fitzgerald doesn’t explain to the audience where Nick got this information. Lehan believes that a poetic prose for a novel doesn’t protect the novel from realistic and ethical scrutiny. An example Lehan used was the incident with the death of Myrtle and how Nick is able to narrate details about this scene without actually being there. Myrtle was ran over by Gatsby car and Nick allows the audience to know it was Daisy and not Gatsby. Readers then question how Nick could of received this information if he was not there and Gatsby never admitted to Nick that it was Daisy.

This criticism explained that Fitzgerald wanted to create a novel with a poetic background. Poetic novels are more prone to question the reliability of the narrator. In order to achieve his “poetic” themes he had to switch Nick’s narration. Nick needed to share knowledge of events that he wasn’t there to actually witness. Fitzgerald didn’t intend to make Nick seem unreliable. This criticism explains to the readers Fitzgerald’s intentions for Nick and the type of narrator he transforms to. It allows the readers to dismiss Nick as unreliable due to the fact that Fitzgerald would not achieve his goal of writing a novel that was “something new and something extraordinary.”. Fitzgerald wanted to use the technique of objective correlative in his novel and didn’t have intentions of making the novel unethical. Nick switching from omniscient to first person raises question about reliability but Fitzgerald dismisses this with his goal of objective correlative. Fitzgerald wanted to bring meaning to his themes and had to forfeit some sense of reliability. This criticism helps shine light as to why Fitzgerald had a narrator switch from first person to omniscient throughout the novel.