Here is my summary after reading scientific article talking about The Great Gatsby.
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. The novel sets in the Jazz Age on Long Island and depicts narrator Nick Carraway’s interactions with the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby’s obsession with reuniting with his ex-girlfriend, Daisy Buchanan.
Article 1
Title : A Psychoanalytic Attitude to The Great Gatsby
Author : Mojtaba Gholipour and Mina Sanahmadi
Year Released : 2013
Objectives
The research aims to understand the role of Gatsby’s mental functions in individual and social behavior. Hence, they could understand how the repression of Gatsby’s unhappy moment of life actually drives his character, so it is related to psychological reason. In addition, this research also notifies how much wealth can be used to obtain power, and how power can help to get the lust.
Methodology
The study uses psychoanalytic approach to the story with the application of Sigmund Freud’s theory to support the interpretation. Thereof, the writers concern with the psychological method of writing in The Great Gatsby by analyzing wealth, power, and lust in some segments of the story.
Finding and Result
- Gatsby’s unconscious mind led him toward something he could never have although he wanted it so badly.
- Dealing with feeling of inferiority, this motivated Gatsby to be rich and use it as a power to reach Daisy as she was his true love. As the story told that Gatsby was off at war, then Tom who was rich used his power and social status to assure Daisy to marry him. Therefore, Gatsby tried to do the same. He amassed a fortune as a means for Daisy’s love. Therefore, catching Daisy’s attention and proving his social status was the cause of what has done by Gatsby. And this is repression as Gatsby can’t go forward without the guidance of his past.
- Gatsby’s behavior can be observed obviously by using Freud tripartite of mind structures. Gatsby is driven by his desire for Daisy on the Id level, his pursuit of materialism comes from the belief that everything in this world can be owned by money. On the ego level, he develops conflicting personality on the super-ego level, or in another word, moral and immoral at the same time. Also, the super-ego level on Gatsby is Nick Caraway, who continuously gives judgments and warning to him.
- Internal motivation is one of the strongest power that drives the character of Gatsby to act as he does and place him in the particular occasion.
- The id level also happens on other characters such as Daisy and Tom. Tom lives for instant gratification and get wealth without struggling, so he is a bit arrogant and feels that he could do everything he wants with his money. Also, Daisy has Id level as she only pays attention to money and materialism. She can also live with all the hurt that she has caused Gatsby.
Conclusion
This paper comes to the conclusion that Gatsby and other characters such as Tom and Daisy reveal the psychological politics of the American Dream’s commodification of identity. All the characters have inconsistency in their three mind structures as the id and super-ego are overmatch; the ego can’t be the mediator to both as well. Moreover, the readers is amazed by the work through the characters’ intriguing romantic and sexual relationship causes the tragic outcome, especially to Gatsby. Hence, the story attracts the readers from the dramatization of characters’ psychology engaging in the relationship which shows emotional dysfunction and loyalty. This emotional dysfunction makes the characters including Gatsby can’t survive and outgrow the unresolved conflicts experienced by them. Thus, this novel is considered as the psychological drama of dysfunctional love due to lust, power, and money.
Article 2
Title : Deconstruction Literary Theory and a Creative Reading of “The Great Gatsby”
Author : Dennis Deborah and Charlene C. Trotman
Year Released : 1991
Objectives
The study aims to know and understand the employment of deconstructionist strategies to analyze Great Gatsby dealing with its curious narratives incongruities and dualities and the duplicitous of its narrator, Nick Caraway
Methodology
The thesis uses Derrida’s theory of deconstruction in the interpretation of the word play used by the author and its connection to the reader and the narrator. In addition, in order to assume from the outside that the reader is being deceived by the author’s words, creative reading process is needed. This is done as one sets out not to discern meaning from the text, but to deconstruct the text to create meaning. Thereof, there will be dualities and deception as well as the gaps and cracks in the text. Then, it leads to fissure or abyss, and differance based on Derrida’s theory.
Findings
- Nick Carraway presents an unsettling dilemma by making the readers perplex near the end of the novel as Nick has led us to expect that Gatsby will reach triumph from what the development he gets. Therefore, Nick is considered as unreliable narrator as he is dishonest and hypocritical. Why is so? He adopts the most comfortable and interesting position and expects us to believe him as he describes himself as tolerant and nonjudgmental, but the fact he is not. He is full of deception as he is never in line with what he said. For example, he said that he was honest, but in the story, he moved to somewhere as he avoided telling woman that he didn’t want to marry her. Hence, Nick’s contradictory statement was questioned.
- Nick and Gatsby are the duality of main characters as they have the same role as the one who is dominant in the story, one as the main character, and one who lives to tell the story. They are opposite as Gatsby is favored in the beginning, whereas Nick is the one who is finally favored. No wonder this subtle inversion allows Nick to replace the main character, Gatsby. Thereof, the duality lying on Nick as narrator and writer place him to destruct Gatsby’s character even he constructs it in the very first place.
- The ‘differance’ of meaning in Derrida’s theory is found through Nick’s contradictory attitude toward Gatsby as he shows deference in the beginning , but later he expresses ‘unaffected’ or ‘scorn’ for Gatsby.
Conclusion
- Thus, the use of deconstructive reading technique comes to the conclusion that everything seems all right or fine for Nick, whereas everything turns out all wrong or bad for Gatsby. Even though both of whom ‘live on’ in a sense of the novel, Nick is the one who finally achieves his dreams as he expresses his literary aspirations and his particular version of American Dream.
- Nick just wants to tell his interest and personal goals instead of exposing Gatsby’s privilege as the main character. Nick acts as if he is the protector and advancer of the last and greatest of all dreams, so Gatsby’s fading romanticized dream seems so-so and trivial. He makes Gatsby fall into abyss and tells that Daisy was not worthy of Gatsby. On the contrary, he positions himself to look forward to his own future and hopes. Thus, Nick doesn’t glorify love, romance, or Gatsby since his real role is to advance his own version of the quest for capturing the elusive, even vanishing American Dream.
Clevaster 