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New Criticism
it, Gatsby “survives sound and whole in character, uncorrupted by the corrup‑ tion which surrounded him” (105).2 For these critics, the protagonist’s innocence serves to indict further the society that destroys him. This critical focus, however, overlooks a more central tension in the novel than that between Gatsby and the world in which he lives. For we cannot ignore the obvious textual evidence, even if we want to contrast Gatsby with the soci‑ ety he inhabits, that he shares at least some of its corruption: for example, he was Wolfsheim’s protégé and has made his fortune by selling bootlegged liquor and fake bonds.3 It seems to me that the text’s central tension is, instead, that between the world of corrupt, vulgar materialism portrayed in the novel and the lyric imagery—the wistful beauty and emotional force of which make it the most memorable and revealing dimension of the novel—so frequently used to describe that world. This tension structures the narrative regardless of how we measure the relative innocence or corruption of any particular character, and it is resolved by a theme of universal human significance that transcends the historical period in which the novel is set: the theme that unfulfilled longing is part of the human condition, common to all and inescapable. As we’ll see, the imagery of unfulfilled longing is used to describe characters and settings regard‑ less of the wealth or poverty, refinement or vulgarity, corruption or innocence they represent. In addition, the imagery of unfulfilled longing is often linked with nature imagery, which suggests that unfulfilled longing is as inevitable as, for example, the change of the seasons. Finally, the imagery of unfulfilled long‑ ing often has a static, timeless quality in the novel, which underscores both its universality and its inevitability: unfulfilled longing has always been and will always be a part of the human condition. Let’s begin by examining how the imagery of unfulfilled longing weaves a com‑ mon thread through characters who represent very different elements of society. To accomplish this task, we’ll analyze Fitzgerald’s lyric imagery in terms of the three ways in which it informs characterization in the novel: (1) as nostalgia for a lost past; (2) as dreams of future fulfillment; and (3) as vague, undefined long‑ ing that has no specific goal. We see the imagery of longing for a lost past in the idyllic description of Daisy and Jordan’s “beautiful white . . . girlhood” (24; ch. 1) in Louisville, where Jordan “first learned to walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings” (55; ch. 3). This is a romantic past where, Jordan recalls, she walked on “soft ground” in her “new plaid skirt . . . that blew a little in the wind” and where Daisy dressed in white and had a little white roadster, and all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night. “Anyways for an hour!” (79; ch. 4)
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