The Great Gatsby, a 20th century American classic that you were probably forced to read in high school English class. At a first glance, Fitzgerald's work entails an outrageous love story (because ladies, as we all know, real men aren’t sculpted to perfection like DiCaprio’s charming smile). A psychoanalytical lens, however, can help readers see the thought-provoking message of the story and the underlying thematic components of the text. Beneath the flamboyant love story, the novel shows that Gatsby is much more than a sappy, hopeless romantic; in fact, love hasn’t got much to do with it at all. With human emotion manifested perfectly into an enticing persona, Fitzgerald realistically depicted human flaws in Jay Gatsby – a representation of hope and destruction.
Although we cannot directly read Gatsby’s thoughts, emotions, and motives, Nick Carraway somewhat omnisciently narrates Gatsby’s character so that it becomes tangible, and hopefully fathomable, to us. Thus, Nick’s interpretation of Gatsby cannot be complete and absolute; despite his inclination “to reserve all judgments,” he unconsciously takes a biased stance that favors his companion as someone with a “gift of hope” and a “romantic readiness” like no other (Fitzgerald). His paradoxical acclaim becomes our first impression of the author’s creation: Gatsby.
Gatsby is a symbol of repetition – the cycle of man’s demise when he lets the specks of his shortcomings get in the way of his success. He suffers from various psychological theories that are distinctly present in his state of mind: obsessive compulsive, denial, feelings of inferiority, and fear of intimacy. He is known for being adamantly and fervently idealistic about pursuing his dreams and reliving a love with Daisy; his inability to awaken to reality was the ultimate factor that led to his own destruction. His obsession over his one love and the American Dream inevitably consumed him and cost him his life.
Reoccurring in his thoughts and behavior, bringing back the past was the goal he fidgeted about. He lived with no concept of time, believing that he can control it as he wishes with his own hands: “’Can’t repeat the past?’…’Why, of course you can!’” The broken clock symbolized the corruption in his dream and foreshadowed his failure, a consequence of tempering with the inevitable. His obsessive-compulsive disorder was evident in his desperate actions to achieve a life of luxury and status, which included bootlegging and illegal businesses. He was always throwing these extravagant parties so that Daisy might walk in one day, always looking out the dock at the green light across Daisy’s mansion, always talking about Daisy to anyone who cared to listen, always making sure everything was perfect in Daisy’s eyes. All of the attained wealth in his mansion was promised for this one woman: Daisy.
Thus, it is safe to say that Gatsby was head-over-heels crazy about his love and his dream. Moreover, his plans to become the great, self-made man were reflected in his planner of self-improvement, based off of Benjamin Franklin’s philosophy. This suggests his determination and aspirations to become a millionaire like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller in a famous “rags-to-riches” story. His burning passion for wealth and for Daisy shows off qualities of obsessive compulsion, both a charming and corrupt characteristic of our hopeless Gatsby.
Gatsby is also in a state of heavy denial – a denial of his own past. His obsession with the past is ironic because he yearns to go back to his former love, and yet at the same time, he abandons his roots and where he comes from. Seeming to want to reach on forward, while being “borne back ceaselessly into the past,” Gatsby is stuck and unmoving in his own world. As the novel progresses, we learn that Jay Gatsby’s identity was formed from the “Platonic conception of himself,” which used to be none other than James Gatz.
Born into a poor family of Mid-western farmers, Gatsby hated his past and blamed his parents for their misfortune. His desire for wealth and cool status was driven by feelings of inferiority. Gatsby’s break-through was necessary to win approval from Daisy, whom he probably felt was way out of his league. Caught up in an “inferiority complex,” as Alfred Adler describes lack of self-esteem/worth, Gatsby unconsciously felt the pressure to measure up to the rich’s standards to be recognized. This is when he obtains his conscious desire to move up the socioeconomic ladder and become “so cool." His made-up identity was not just a mask for him to wear and pass as an upper-class elite; more importantly, it was a form of denial – a psychological defense – to help him repress the real memory of the past. The hardships suffered in his youth were sufficient to reject an emotional relationship with his parents; after all, they were pretty much dead in Gatsby’s imagination. What Gatsby might not be as aware of, however, is that his psychological fulfillment to escape the hot scorches of poverty was completed not by luxuries, but by his idealization of Daisy.
Used as an escape from his past, Daisy was infused with Gatsby’s own personal meaning and desires; she, too, formed from his Platonic conception. The real Daisy Buchanan in human-flesh no longer existed to Gatsby; he might as well never knew her. When we substitute an ideal for a human being, that’s all that left of what we can see. Perhaps we’re always searching for something or someone better than us, to improve and perfect so that we feel empowered and accepted. Gatsby’s idealization of Daisy also reflects his fear of intimacy, which might at first sound unfit to describe such a man who was so devoted to following the Holy Grail.
Yet, an analysis of Gatsby’s motives can prove how he tried to avoid intimacy with others. As a result of his broken past, Gatsby not only wanted materialistic achievements, but also some sort of emotional protection. The best way to obtain this shield is avoiding intimacy with others. No attachment, no exposure, no getting hurt. Everyone knew Gatsby, but no one was significantly close to him. In that sense, Daisy pretty much served as an “emblem of the emotional insulation he unconsciously desires,” since it is impossible to become intimate with an ideal. She made him feel like he was truly someone else, concealing his scars. His obsession with Daisy prevented him from nearing any dangers of intimacy with other women, and when she left him, he grew hysterical that his one and only cover-up of his real inner damage was now gone. As some scholars have inferred, Daisy was merely “a key to his goal rather than the goal itself." Even Fitzgerald himself admitted to being unsure about the emotional relations between Gatsby and Daisy in a letter to Edmund Wilson.
A psychoanalytical lens reveals a much different story than what The Great Gatsby is usually depicted as: an overly romanticized book in an ethereal setting with fleeting characters. Rather, it was an insightful work of art that surprised me with the parallels I found in society today. Because adversities exist, we can all relate to some part of Gatsby’s flaws. Underneath the charismatic tuxedo lies a troubled man with real problems and corruption. On the outer appearance, Gatsby seemed invincible and put together, but unknowingly had a faulty spot – an Achilles’ heel–that would lead to his downfall.
Everyone has a unique power to cover up his or her weaknesses and vulnerability to seem "cool", but Fitzgerald has clearly demonstrated how attempts to repress psychological wounds will not set us free – instead it will keep us chained to repeat. In the words of renown literary critic Harold Bloom, "Gatsby is great, not just in Carraway’s vision, but in ours, because Fitzgerald brilliantly represents in Gatsby both the failure of the American Dream and its perpetual refusal to die."
Whether it is obsessive compulsive, denial, feelings of inferiority, fear of intimacy, or even the inability to distinguish reality, everyone has a bit of Gatsby in them, and Fitzgerald captured this unmistakable truth for all people. He showed us destruction, and gave us a hope; we’re all reaching forward for that green light, indeed. It was a story intended to expose the corruption of the 1920s, but it seems to be that the author gave us much, much more. Perhaps Fitzgerald was trying to share something greater about Gatsby.
