Deconstructing language

Some questions structuralist critics ask about literary texts

The following questions are offered to summarize structuralist approaches to literature. Keep in mind that structuralists don’t try to determine whether or not a literary text constitutes great literature. Their focus is on the structural systems that underlie and generate literary meaning. 1. Using a specific structuralist framework (such as the ones we examined by

Frye and Scholes), how should the text be classified in terms of its genre? 2. Using a specific structuralist framework (such as that of Greimas, Todo‑ rov, or Genette), analyze the text’s narrative operations. Can you speculate about the relationship between the text’s “grammar” and that of similar texts? Can you speculate about the relationship between the text’s gram‑ mar and the culture from which the text emerged? 3. Using Culler’s theory of literary competence, what rules or codes of interpretation must be internalized in order to “make sense” of the text?

Depending on the text in question, it might be necessary to identify codes in addition to those specified by Culler. (In other words, what does a given text contribute to our knowledge of literary competence?) 4. What are the semiotics of a given category of cultural phenomena, or

“texts,” such as high school football games, television and/or magazine ads for a particular brand of perfume (or any other consumer product), or even media coverage of a historical event, such as Operation Desert Storm, an important legal case, or a presidential election campaign? In other words, analyze the nonverbal messages sent by the “texts” in question, as well as the semiotic implications of such verbal “tags” as “Desert Storm” or

“White Diamonds” (a brand of perfume). What is being communicated, and how exactly is it being communicated? Depending on the literary text or texts in question, we might ask one or any combination of these questions. Or we might come up with a useful question not listed here. These are just starting points to get us thinking about produc‑ tive ways to approach literature from a structuralist perspective. Remember that not all structuralists will interpret the same texts in the same way, even if they use the same approach. As in every field, even expert practitioners disagree. Our goal is to use structuralism to help us see some fundamental connections among the structures of literary texts, between the structure of literature and that of language, and among the structures of cultural phenomena of every sort, including, for example, literature, mythology, art, social rituals, sports, forms of entertainment, and advertising. The construction of a systematic, univer‑ sal terminology to describe the fundamental structures of literature offers us the opportunity to make clearer and more rigorous comparisons as we try to increase our understanding of the processes at work in literary production and literary history.

The following structuralist reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is offered as an example of what a structuralist analysis of that novel might yield. Drawing on Todorov’s notion of narrative “grammar,” I will argue that all of the action in the novel can be reduced to three verbs: to seek, to find, and to lose, which grammar can be interpreted, I think, as the modern novel’s rejection of the traditional seek‑and‑find quest formula. In addition, I will suggest that The Great Gatsby’s seek‑find‑lose grammar offers us an interesting way to use Frye’s theory of mythoi to analyze the relationship between the novel’s two principal plot‑lines, those concerning Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway.

“Seek and ye shall find”. . . and then lose: a structuralist reading of The Great Gatsby

In many ways, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) is so carefully organized that the novel’s structure seems to draw attention to itself. A brief description of the text’s structural symmetry should illustrate this point. The narrative revolves around Jay Gatsby’s pursuit, attainment, and loss of Daisy Fay Buchanan. As we learn in flashback, this failed quest is a replay of the same pur‑ suit, attainment, and loss of the same beloved that occurred in Gatsby’s youth, before the novel opens. Each failed quest occurs during the compressed period of a few months, and in both instances Gatsby disguises his true origins, so there is a kind of narrative symmetry between the structure of fictional past and fictional present. Another kind of structural symmetry is produced when Gatsby is reunited with Daisy in chapter 5, which is at the physical center of the novel’s nine chapters and at the temporal center of the narrative action: it is late July, the midpoint between Nick’s first visit to the Buchanans’ new home in early June, when “the history of the summer really begins” (10; ch. l), and Gatsby’s death in early September. In addition, the narrative unfolds in a pattern of similarly structured triads, bounded at the beginning and end of the novel by narrator Nick Carraway’s meditative reflections on the events he recounts: Opening: Narrator’s opening meditation (ch. 1)

I: The world of wealth described (ch. 1)

II: The world of poverty described (ch. 2)

III: Intersection of I and II—rich and poor mingle at Gatsby’s party (ch. 3)

I: Nick hears story of Gatsby’s past (ch. 4)

II: Nick hears story of Daisy’s past (ch. 4)

III: Intersection of I and II—Gatsby and Daisy reunite at Nick’s house (ch. 5)

I: The eternal triangle appears—Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby at Gatsby’s party (ch. 6)

II: The eternal triangle explodes—the confrontation scene in the New York hotel room (ch. 7)

III: Intersection of I and II—three disasters result A. Myrtle Wilson’s death (ch. 7) B. Gatsby’s death (ch. 8) C. George Wilson’s death (ch. 8) Closing: Narrator’s closing meditation (ch. 9) Of course, any of these narrative patterns could serve as a starting point for a structural analysis of The Great Gatsby. The particular structure I want to focus on, however, is the one I believe is at the foundation of all the others: the novel’s narrative “grammar,” which is illuminated, I think, by the use of Tzvetan Todo‑ rov’s schema of propositions. As you’ll recall, according to this framework we try to discover how the text is structured by the pattern of relations among recurring actions (which are analogous to verbs) and attributes (which are analogous to adjectives) associated with particular characters (which are analogous to nouns). In other words, we try to discover how the text is structured by the repetition of the same grammar, the same formula, the same “sentence,” so to speak. In the case of The Great Gatsby, I think all the action can be reduced to three verbs: “to seek,” “to find,” and “to lose.” These three verbs produce, in turn, the repetition of two related “sentences,” or narrative patterns: (1) “X seeks, finds, and then loses Y,” or simply (2) “X seeks but doesn’t find Y.” (X = the character in question; Y = a desired person, object, state, or condition.) In both cases, of course, the overall narrative formula is the same: 1. Attribute: X lacks Y 2. Action: X seeks Y 3. Attribute: X lacks Y (either because X doesn’t find Y or because X finds but then loses Y) I’d like to begin my analysis of the novel by revealing how this formula structures the text as a whole by structuring the narratives of the main characters. Then I will suggest that the seek‑find‑lose grammar can be seen as the modern novel’s rejection of the traditional seek‑and‑find quest formula. Finally, I will argue that this narrative grammar offers us an interesting application of Northrop Frye’s theory of mythoi. For in The Great Gatsby, this grammar produces a narrative that embeds the mythos of summer (Gatsby’s story, the genre of romance) within the mythos of winter (Nick’s story, the genre of irony). And although the mythos of summer is eventually overridden by the mythos of winter, the latter structure remains “haunted” by the former.

Of course, the “master plot” of the novel’s seek‑find‑lose formula is the story of its title character, Jay Gatsby. As we noted above, he seeks, finds, and loses Daisy twice: once in his youth, before the novel begins, and again during the sum‑ mer that Nick lives next door to him on West Egg. In addition, the narrative of Gatsby’s pursuit, attainment, and loss of Daisy is accompanied by the narrative of his pursuit, attainment, and loss of the new life he sought when he changed his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby. His seek‑find‑lose story is thus repeated not merely in two different time periods but in terms of two different goals: love and social status. Both are lost to him, of course, when he dies. Furthermore, Gatsby’s narrative provides the framework on which the narratives of the other characters are “strung,” so to speak: it is in the unfolding of Gatsby’s story by Nick that the other stories are told. Daisy’s story mirrors not only the seek‑find‑lose pattern of Gatsby’s narrative but its repetitive quality as well. As we learn in flashback, the young Daisy Fay sought excitement, found it in the form of her love for Lieutenant Jay Gatsby, then lost him to the war. Next she sought emotional security, found it in the form of marriage to Tom Buchanan, then lost it when she soon discovered that he was chronically unfaithful to her. Finally, she craves the attention that she isn’t get‑ ting from Tom, finds it in Gatsby, and loses it when he dies (or, perhaps more precisely, when Tom reveals that Gatsby isn’t the man Daisy thought he was). Similar seek‑find‑lose grammars structure the narratives of Tom Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and her husband George. As a young man, Tom sought ego gratification, found it in his career as a college football hero, then lost it when he graduated from college. As a married man, Tom seeks a similar kind of ego gratification—the adoration of “inferiors”—by seducing a series of working‑class women, the latest incarnation of which is Myrtle Wilson. In each case, however, the ego gratification lasts only as long as the affair, so Tom continually returns to the position of the unfulfilled seeker. Analogously, Myrtle Wilson seeks escape from the boredom and economic pov‑ erty of her marriage, finds it in Tom Buchanan, then loses it when she is killed in the hit‑and‑run accident. Of course, even if she had lived she would not have succeeded in marrying Tom. His intention to avoid a permanent commitment to Myrtle is evident in his lie to her that Daisy’s Catholicism would never per‑ mit her to divorce him. Operating as a shadow behind Myrtle’s seek‑find‑lose narrative is that of George Wilson, who sought love, found it in his marriage to Myrtle, and lost it when she became unfaithful to him with Tom (or, perhaps more precisely, when she learned that George didn’t own the suit in which he was married). As a backdrop to these seek‑find‑lose grammars is a subset of seek‑find‑lose: seek‑but‑don’t‑find. We see this pattern operating in George’s pursuit of financial

security, which is an impossible dream, and in Jordan’s pursuit of social and financial security, which seem ever to elude her grasp just as the winning putt remains, of late, just beyond her reach. The grammar of seek‑but‑don’t‑find also structures the setting in the form of the numerous minor characters who popu‑ late it. Mr. McKee seeks but doesn’t find success as a photographer. Myrtle’s sister Catherine seems a permanently dissatisfied seeker: her trip to Monte Carlo was a financial disaster; her “solid sticky bob of red hair,” “complexion powdered milky white,” and “rakish” painted eyebrows “blurred” by the plucked hairs growing back (34; ch. 2) are a fashion disaster; and her search for a good time seems merely to take her from one scene of drunken chaos to another. Even Gatsby’s innumerable party guests have the air of dissatisfied wanderers, coming to his mansion from parts unknown, seeking something new in the latest dances, and seeking excitement, or perhaps just escape from their dissatisfaction, at the bot‑ tom of a bottle. Certainly the most well‑developed seek‑but‑don’t‑find narrative in the novel is that of Nick Carraway. Nick’s summer in New York is just the latest in a series of unsuccessful pursuits. His experience in World War I apparently involved the pursuit of excitement from which he returned more empty‑handed than when he left: “I enjoyed [World War I] so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle‑west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go east and learn the bond business” (7; ch. 1). As his narrative reveals, of course, his venture in the bond business, and in the East in general, also follows the seek‑but‑don’t‑find pattern: he abandons both within a few months of his arrival in New York. Neither is his search for the right woman successful. He leaves his hometown, in part, to escape a woman he was feeling pressured to marry. He apparently cares so little about the woman at work with whom he has an affair that he allows her brother’s “mean looks in [his] direction” (61; ch. 3) to drive him off. And his relationship with Jordan Baker is rather clearly an infatuation with no staying power: he tires of her as soon as he tires of the Buchanans. Nick’s most important seek‑but‑don’t‑find pattern, however, seems to be his unfulfilled search for a purpose in life. Throughout his narrative, Nick seems “at loose ends.” At the age of thirty he is still without a stable career, without a seri‑ ous love interest, and without a home of his own. And he feels their lack acutely: “Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair” (143; ch. 7). In fact, he’s still being supported by his wealthy father, who “agreed to finance [him] for a year” (7; ch. 1) while he learned the bond business. It’s no wonder he seems so fascinated by Gatsby, for Gatsby has, to an extreme degree, the quality Nick lacks most, the quality he is unable to acquire despite his best efforts: purpose.