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Structuralist criticism
It might be interesting to think of the seek-find-lose grammar of The Great Gatsby as the modern novel’s rejection of the traditional quest formula. The traditional quest is structured by a seek-and-find grammar. Even if the hero dies achiev‑ ing the goal of his quest, or attempting to achieve it, the world is transformed in some way by his effort: something important is found. Thus, the basic plot formula Todorov isolated consists of an attribute transformed by an action: (1) attribute (for example, the protagonist is unsuccessful), (2) action (he seeks suc‑ cess), (3) attribute (he is successful or, at least, has learned something important as a result of his quest). The traditional quest is thus redemptive in some way. As we have seen, in Fitzgerald’s novel, the characters’ attributes are not trans‑ formed by the hero’s action nor by their own actions. At the novel’s end the characters have the same attribute—the same lack—with which they began, and apparently nothing is learned in the process. Gatsby is dead, presumably without having admitted to himself that Daisy has abandoned him and with‑ out living long enough to benefit from that insight had it occurred. Myrtle and George are dead, without having learned anything from their experience. The last time we see Jordan, she’s putting up her usual false front, lying to Nick that she is unmoved by his withdrawal from their relationship and is engaged to someone else. Finally, Tom and Daisy, true to form, flee the chaos they helped create, “retreat[ing] back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together” (188; ch. 9). The only exception to this rule is Nick, who is transformed by his experience in New York. As the narrative opens, he is very optimistic, feeling that “life was beginning over again with the summer” (8; ch. 1). He’s excited by his new job and his new life in New York. By the end of the summer he is utterly disil‑ lusioned, abandoning his plans for a new career and a new life in the East: “When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart” (6; ch. 1). However, Nick’s transformation is not redemptive. Although he certainly learns some‑ thing important about human nature over the course of that summer, the lesson produces in him a dark vision of human life. His attitude, as the novel closes, is hopeless and despairing: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (189; ch. 9). If the traditional quest formula—seek-and-find (or seek-and-be-transformed)— can be associated with a worldview that includes the possibility of redemption, then perhaps the seek-find-lose (or seek-but-don’t-find) grammar can be associ‑ ated with a worldview in which redemption is impossible or highly unlikely. This more pessimistic, or some would say realistic, vision of human experience is the vision associated with the modernist worldview, which dominated Anglo-
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