The Issues Of Suffering, Depression, And Death In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is an essential piece of American literature. While writing about events that were occurring in America in the Roaring Twenties, Fitzgerald included many themes and issues that are timeless and universal. The period was marked by many technological, industrial, economic and social changes, and Fitzgerald, writing about the tensions between new and old money, used this as a backdrop to explore the issues of power, justice, and greed. Most characters in the novel appear to place their superficial needs above all else, using things like social boundaries as the measure for defining self-worth. They pursue and reinforce these qualities in a way that damages everything else, leading to actions that lack cautiousness and care. The author’s take on this behavior is laid out clearly throughout the novel, as the characters’ selfishness and carelessness are demonstrated to lead to depression and, at times, death.
The selfishness of the characters is demonstrated consistently throughout the story. Starting with the character presented with no actual authority, Gatsby shows an unhealthy desire for wealth and power from an early age. Described as being ‘extravagantly ambitious’, he views money as being ‘crucial to his attempt to realize his dream’. Therefore, when he achieves his wealth, he believes that it should be enough to bring him everything that his heart desires, including Daisy. This claim gives him an unrealistic idea of how Daisy should act, ‘He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you.’ After she had obliterated four years with that sentence, they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken. One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house – just as if it were five years ago’. Different characters demonstrate selfishness in their unique ways. Some figures, like Daisy and Jordan, show a kind of self-motivated acceptance of their self-interest. Tom displays himself as a self-absorbed person who has seemed to forget how to differentiate between his feelings and others. While Tom cannot tolerate the thought of his wife cheating on him, he cheats on her whenever he wants, justifying his behavior by saying, ”And what’s more I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time”. Thus, the characters are showing their way of selfishness.
Carelessness is shown repeatedly throughout the pages of The Great Gatsby. Both Tom and Daisy are excellent examples of this; their selfishness changes their vision so that their inconsideration of the consequences of their actions towards other people appear fully justified from their perspective. As stated in the novel, ‘I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made’. Another example of a careless attitude based on self-centeredness is seen in an enlightening conversation between Nick and Jordan. When Nick tells Jordan that she is driving badly and must be careful, she claims that she does not need to be alert and instead, other people will be cautious in her place. When Nick asks her what she means, she says, ‘They’ll keep out of my way. It takes two to make an accident’. In this manner, the carelessness of different characters, caused by their egocentric mentality, is demonstrated.
These selfish and careless attributes destroy the characters’ lives, leading to depression and death. One of the most crucial moments of the novel, the hit-and-run accident which ends up killing Myrtle Wilson ‘shows Daisy’s carelessness behind the wheel and her carelessness with human relationships… Not only does Daisy’s careless driving directly result in a fatality, but it leads to other deaths that could have been prevented had she claimed responsibility for the accident’. When Gatsby is unable to charm Daisy with his clear display of wealth, he feels an ‘unutterable depression’. Daisy herself also repeatedly feels depressed and lonely. The cause of this is Tom’s frequent abandonment and unfaithfulness towards her, along with a selfish desire to live in a high society, which prevents her from leaving him. This issue is demonstrated when she recalls the birth of her daughter, where she says ‘she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool’. These details show that it is the characters’ faults that lead to their feelings of depression and the deaths that come after.
As seen from the essay, the tragedy of The Great Gatsby is that most of the pain, suffering, depression, and death experienced by the characters in the novel are directly or indirectly caused by their failed attempt to meet a certain standard, their selfishness and their carelessness. Whether it is the depression that characters such as Gatsby and Daisy suffer, or ultimately Gatsby’s death, it all could have been avoided if the characters had just learned to step outside their egocentric bubble, treated others with respect, and took the blame for their actions. Fitzgerald hammers in these lessons and by the end, does a good job of convincing the readers of the uselessness of the characters approach and way of life. These experiences are truly worth taking away and remain as unaffected as the day they were put to paper.
Works Cited
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Scribner, 2004.
- Lance, Jacqueline. The Great Gatsby: Driving to Destruction with the Rich and Careless at the Wheel. Vol. 23, no. 2, October 2000, p. 29. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23414542.
- Tredell, Nicolas. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Continuum, 2011, p. 52.
