Free Great Gatsby Essays: Philosophic and Political Contexts :: Great Gatsby Essays

The Great Gatsby  Philosophic and Political Contexts Attempting both a bear on close reading of the novel, and the relocation of that reading in spite of appearance wider philosophic and governmental contexts, one must therefore consider the feign of a enormous mystical strain of Western thought upon Fitzgeralds semi semipolitical analysis. For maculation it is a commonplace that Fitzgerald was fascinated, doneout his life, with what is variously conceived as the ideal, the Dream, inspiration, the wordy, or Desire, a customs duty with which the book opens, the political uses of the ideal have largely escaped notice. It seems hard to believe in our period, when a three-decade lurch to the political Right has anathematized the word, but F. Scott Fitzgerald once, rather fashionably, believed himself to be a socialist. Some long time before, he had also, less fashionably, tried hard to think himself a Catholic. maculation one hardly associates the characteristic setting of Fitzgeralds novels, his chosen kingdom of the luxuriant fabulous, with either proletarian solidarity or priestly devotions, it is clear that a latent hostility between Left and religiose perspectives structures the very heart of the vision of The Great Gatsby. For while Gatsby offers a detailed social picture of the stresses of an advanced capitalist horticulture in the early 1920s, it simultaneously encodes its American experience, at key morphological moments, within the mitigating precepts of a mystic Western dualism. Attempting both a sustained close reading of the novel, and the relocation of that reading within wider philosophic and political contexts, one must therefore consider the impact of a broad mystical strain of Western thought upon Fitzgeralds political analysis. For while it is a commonplace that Fitzgerald was fascinated, throughout his life, with what is variously conceived as the ideal, the Dream, inspiration, the visionary, or Desire, a tradition with whi ch the book opens, the political uses of the ideal have largely escaped notice. Fitzgeralds excitably visionary sensibility, nourished in high school years by Catholic mysticism, fashioned him into a superbly perceptive critic of the appropriation of human being need of the ideal by developments in American capitalism in the 1920s. In response to economic crisis in the early years of this decade, the theme advertising media developed and promoted a new cult of glamour, seeking through its allure to create a mass consumer market and revivify the go wrong work ethic. Fitzgeralds entrancement by the suggestive power of beauty sensify him both