To what extent do Chapter 3 and 6 reflect Gatsby’s dichotomy between a will of enrichment and a rejection of the society that he lives in ?

Introduction :

Some would say that a person cannot run from its roots. Well, it is also the case for Jay Gatsby. If during the incipit and first chapters, a suspense is created in order to entertain the myth-making character that Gatsby is, the reader finally gets to meet Gatsby while taking a look at his regular parties in chapter 3.

Although, chapter 6 comes to contrast this impression : indeed, chapter 6 is a major turning point in the novel: after Gatsby and Daisy's magical reunion in Chapter 5, the reader starts to see the cracks that will unravel Gatsby's whole story.

The narrative suddenly shifts timeframes, and Nick interrupts the story to give the reader some new background details about Gatsby.

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Gatsby’s representation in those two chapters seems protean. On one hand, his actions translate a will on integration, and at the same time he seems to emit a feeling of rejection towards the elite.

To what extent do Chapter 3 and 6 reflect Gatsby’s dichotomy between a will of enrichment and a rejection of the society that he lives in ?

        So this extract reflects the way of life in the binary society that Gatsby thrives in, first through an obvious will of enrichment (I) and then through the double rejection of his past and from the upper-class (II).

I. Volonté de richesse

The representation of the Great Gatsby can be seen as a take off in the chapter 6 and chapter 3. From a desire to acquire material wealth (A), Gatsby tends to make an introspection of himself (B) before rising up to spirituality of greatness (C). 1min27

1. A material wealth and the importance of the wind

        The sixth Chapter of the Great Gatsby is baffling as he gives us an account of who Gatsby really is. We were used - because of the title and chapter 3 wherein a large lexical field of abundance and materiality is presented - to a great, well-rounded and rich Gatsby. But the West Egg dweller has not always been like that. He had had to work to survive and to wear rags which symbolize his poverty.

In the passage we easily understand that the change in his life comes with the wind. There, the wind plays a major role. It looks like a catastrophe but it can also appear as a miracle. This is what Gatsby needed to be successful. Indeed, we may say that the boats are a metaphor of social class and the fact that Gatsby will then swap from his borrowed row-boat to Dan Cody’s yacht represents a renewal for the character. From that moment, Gatsby will never have financial issue as we can see in the chapter 3 but also at the end of chapter 6 when Nick says that there are “tangled clothes upon the floor”.

We might also say that the boats represent life as they bob around the waves . When Gatsby goes on the TUOLOMEE, his life changes and his aspiration get real. 2min55.

B. An introspection through imagination

In this passage, Gatsby’s will for enrichment is reflected through the description of his constant reveries.  

The use of the words “Grotesque” and “fantastic” refers to the description of Valley of Ashes and the repetition here signifies Gatsby’s current place of humble beginnings that “haunt” him so shows his awareness, even obsession of his social position. This is also an allusion to what Nick describes in the first chapter as “what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams”.

The expression “spun itself out of his brain” conveys a sense of turbulence and restlessness. The “gaudiness” is actually described in detail in Chapter 3 at Gatsby’s party however, the straight contrast here implies that the previous description of reality is incomparable to the vividness of Gatz’s own imagination.

In a sense, Gatsby has always been pretending to be someone he is not but this sentence also supposes that from Fitzgerald’s point of view reality is something mutable— it isn’t real in that it can be changed as Gatsby reinvented his life.

“The rock of the world” symbolizes burdens and harsh reality, a reality that he choose to escape from through dreams as James Gatz and through a form of denial as Gatsby and “A fairy’s wing” represents James' fantasy, as the convenient escape. This “promise” is the very idea of the American Dream.

        The construction of this passage, through its complexity also allows the reader to feel the restlessness that the young James Gatz is feeling. Indeed, there are a lot of expressions that convey the overwhelming pressure that he put himself under: the scene is set in his bed, at night, a clock is ticking and his clothes are thrown out on the floor. 4min38

C. A spiritual greatness ?

As mentioned before, Plato used to make a distinction between "the real self" and "the ideal one", the inaccessible persona you aim to become. According to him, you're able to make the ideal world you want to live in, just as Gatsby made himself into the person he wanted to be.  James Gatz, the man that used to attend St-Olaf (Minnesota), is now "Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island". Fitzgerald uses here a gradation to reflect the social ascension that Jay has sustained. He succeeded in going from rags to riches, "springing from his Platonic conception of himself". As such, the place of social status in Chapter 6 takes not only a materialistic perspective but a philosophical and a spiritual one.  

Richness can be assimilated as the proof of an accomplishment and by achieving his goal, Jay Gatsby relegates himself to the "son of God". He describes his "Father's Business" as the service of a "vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty" : quite paradoxical, right ? Well, associating a religious reference to a word such as "vulgar" has the effect to bring back the reader to Gatsby's real world : a life full of vice. Gatsby's egocentrism comes back, as he believes to be "invented", almost shaped and guided as the principal character of his own prophecy. A prophecy in which Dan Cody would play the role of his savior, the trigger of his metamorphosis.

Nonetheless, this “prophecy” doesn’t seem to be completely achieved. 5MIN54

II. La question du rejet

If he tends to reject what he truly is (A), Gatsby is also being rejected (B) by the upper-class society for not detaining their codes and manners. Nonetheless, this opposition between the two world gathers through the literary stake of appearance (C).

1. A double rejection of his background

• This passage shows Gatsby’s attempt to get rid of his status. He wants to be remembered as a part of this new American society, to which he is not initially from. For that reason, he tries to build a new identity and to forget his social roots. The first line of our excerpt of Chapter 6 evinces well this idea by showing that Jay Gatsby is just an assumed name which hides his legal name James Gatz. The use of a legal lexical field with the terms of legal, witness etc. can represent this desire to live outside this society he rejects as a misfit. And Nick even assumes that “he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then”, which means that for long Gatsby had been ready to leave this condition as we see in the antithesis “It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach...but it was already Jay Gatsby”
• He also rejects in a way his own parents as they were shiftless and unsuccessful farmers in order to fully integrate to the Roaring twenties’ society which would otherwise bring him back to his lowness. Nick says ““his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all”. He may have replaced them by Dan Cody who represented what he wanted to be : well-rounded, wealthy… we can highlight the anacoluthon in the full sentence “His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted” which rises up an opposition bw his parents and his imagination showing the discrepancy bw both and accentuating the rejection of the 1st. 7min39

B. The rejection of James Gatz’s persona

        The fact that not until Chapter VI, more than halfway through the novel, do we hear of Gatsby’s legal name illustrates how James Gatz is rejected by Gatsby, for it is the first time we even know this isn’t his real name.