Affective stylistics

and fresh (“seen for the first time”), exciting (“first wild promise”), and extrava‑ gant (“all the mystery and the beauty in the world”). We see the same kind of vague longing in the novel’s numerous images of people looking through windows. For example, on Nick’s frequent evening walks along Fifth Avenue he gazes in the windows of throbbing taxi cabs, bound for the theatre district. . . . Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside. (; ch. ) Of course, Nick longs to be a part of what he sees, to belong, to share in the excitement visible through the cab windows. But he experiences the same kind of longing when he is one of the people inside the window, looking out. As he looks from the window of Tom and Myrtle’s apartment during their party, he muses, high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life. (0; ch. ) I’m not suggesting that the gathering at Tom and Myrtle’s apartment should satisfy Nick or make him feel less lonely. As this passage indicates, it makes him feel, yet again, that he is on the outside looking in. My point is simply that, in his thirty years of life, Nick has yet to meet people for whom he can sustain the desire to belong. His longing is a form of loneliness, but he doesn’t quite know what it is he’s lonely for. He knows only that he is like the young clerks in one of the novel’s most touching images of vague, unfulfilled longing: “poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner—young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life” (62; ch. 3). Furthermore, the image of Nick looking out of Tom and Myrtle’s apartment window, imagining that he is “the casual watcher in the darkening streets . . . looking up” at its yellow light, universal‑ izes the image. Nick is not merely describing his own vague, unfulfilled longing, but the vague, unfulfilled longing of an “Everyman” figure, as well—the “casual watcher”—thus evoking the vague, unfulfilled longing experienced by us all. It is interesting to note that the image of outstretched arms, which, as we have seen, embodies the longing for both past and future, occurs a third time as an image of nonspecific longing at the end of the novel. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. (1; ch. ) Here the novel insists on the universal nature of Gatsby’s longing. Gatsby’s green light and outstretched arms become ours: The future “recedes before us,” “eluded us,” but “we will run faster” and “stretch out our arms farther.” And in becoming universal, Gatsby’s longing also becomes nonspecific: for the protago‑ nist, the green light represents Daisy; for us, it could represent anything. But whatever it represents, we will pursue it despite the fact that our longing will never be fulfilled. Although we’re longing toward the future, with the prow of our boat facing forward, we are, in fact, like Gatsby, “borne back ceaselessly into the past.” For in the timelessness of human longing, past and future are one, and our own unfulfilled longing is the “current” against which we “beat on” in vain. Thus, while few of the characters in The Great Gatsby are sympathetically portrayed, their unfulfilled longing—the experience they have in common with one another and, as this final passage underscores, with us—is portrayed with great poignancy. The imagery of unfulfilled longing is also pervasive in the novel’s evocation of setting, and here, too, it weaves a common thread through disparate social strata. The first notable example occurs in the description of Gatsby’s mansion, “a colos‑ sal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy” (9; ch. 1). Before we even meet Gatsby, the setting in which he lives suggests the unfulfilled longing that is at the core of his existence. Like Gatsby, the man‑ sion is larger than life, “a colossal affair,” that is trying to be something it’s not, something it can only imitate—a Hôtel de Ville in Normandy—just as the “thin beard of raw ivy” evokes the image of an adolescent boy trying to be a man. The tower, reaching toward the sky, also suggests a yearning for something beyond the immediately available. Furthermore, the mansion looks out over the bay, again as if yearning for something beyond itself, and as we saw earlier, it faces the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock, the novel’s icon of unfulfilled longing. More frequently, an atmosphere of unfulfilled longing is created in the novel by settings that evoke a romantic ambience opposite that experienced by the char‑ acters who populate those settings. For example, in the midst of the tension and strife at the Buchanans’ home during Nick’s first visit there—Tom and Daisy have obviously been fighting, insistent phone calls from Myrtle intrude during lunch, Jordan shamelessly tries to overhear the Buchanans’ quarrel in the next room, Tom pontificates about his racist views—the setting is described with keen appreciation for the idyllic fulfillment promised, though not delivered, by the setting.

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea. (1; ch. 1) Everything about this setting suggests newness, hopefulness, and fulfillment. The space Nick enters is “rosy‑colored,” the traditional ambience of romantic fulfillment. The “gleaming white” open windows, the “fresh grass,” and the description of the ceiling as a “frosted wedding cake” evoke the hopefulness of new beginnings: virginity, springtime, weddings. In addition, the references to wedding cake and wine suggest celebration and the fulfillment of hopes. The net result of the dissonance between the fulfillment promised by the setting and the dissatisfaction experienced by the characters within that setting is an atmo‑ sphere of unfulfilled longing, such as Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner describes, though far less romantically, on his becalmed boat: “Water, water every where, / Nor any drop to drink” (II. 121–22). Settings described with images of harmony, refinement, and plenitude imbue even the most vulgar scenes with a sense of unfulfilled longing that yearns toward a paradisal beauty ironically at odds with the current action. For exam‑ ple, the apartment Tom keeps for his adulterous trysts with Myrtle, where the couple also entertain Myrtle’s noisy, vulgar, hard‑drinking friends, is in a “long white cake of apartment houses” (32; ch. 2) and filled with tapestried furniture displaying “scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles” (33; ch. 2). When Nick accompanies Tom and Myrtle to their apartment, he notes that Fifth Avenue looks “so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner” (32; ch. 2). “[L]ong white cake,” “ladies” on swings, “gardens,” “Versailles,” “warm and soft,” “pastoral,” “summer Sunday afternoon,” “great flock of white sheep”—this is an idyllic language, a language of plenitude, ful‑ fillment, pleasure, and harmony. Again, the dissonance between the drunken, violent vulgarity of the party scene—guests stumble about; Myrtle and Mrs. McKee make anti‑Semitic, elitist, and obscene remarks; Tom and Myrtle quar‑ rel; Tom breaks Myrtle’s nose—and the pastoral plenitude of the descriptive language noted above creates an ambience of unfulfilled longing for life the way it should be, life the way we want it to be, life the way it isn’t. The sense of unfulfilled longing created by the dissonance between vulgar characters and a setting that bespeaks harmony, refinement, and plenitude is especially interesting in the description of Gatsby’s parties. Like the money