Cultural criticism

for Gatsby’s house”—that is, was obliterated by civilization—Nick also associ‑ ates this “enchanted” dream of the Dutch sailors with Gatsby’s dream, which Gatsby attempted to fulfill through the criminal means of the corrupt civiliza‑ tion of which he was a part. For Nick says, “[A]s I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock” (189; ch. 9). In other words, the text associates the “fresh, green breast of the new world” with the “green light at the end of Daisy’s dock,” thus tying the romantic sublime of pristine nature to the corrupt civilization that replaced it—in the form of Gatsby—in a way that makes the two, emotionally if not logically, almost impossible to untangle. Furthermore, the “vanished trees,” the pristine past, “pandered in whispers” (my italics). To pander means to pimp, to sell one’s services to help satisfy another’s vices. Thus, pristine nature, the innocent past, cannot be separated in this passage from the civilization that exploits it, just as Jay Gatsby cannot be separated from the cor‑ rupt world that exploits and is exploited by him. The Great Gatsby condemns the modern decadence that, the novel suggests, replaced the innocent America of the past, an America associated with the unspoiled West. But this ideological project is undermined by the inseparability in the text itself of past and present, innocence and decadence, and West and East. Nevertheless, the novel’s nostalgia for a lost past, an innocent past, a hap‑ pier past, is a nostalgia shared, at least according to Western literature of the last several hundred years, by people from every age. Although our deconstructive reading of The Great Gatsby surely will not eliminate an emotional investment of such long standing, it can help us understand the ideological limitations of that investment. In addition, our analysis of Fitzgerald’s novel illustrates the validity of deconstruction’s view of fiction. According to deconstruction, fiction, because it is made of language, embodies the ideologies of the culture that produces it. Fiction can therefore show us the various ways in which our ideologies operate to create our perceptions of the world. In other words, as our deconstructive reading of The Great Gatsby demonstrates, fiction doesn’t represent the world as it really is; it represents the world as we perceive it to be. And for deconstruc‑ tion, the world as we perceive it to be is the only world we know.

Questions for further practice: deconstructive approaches to other literary works

The following questions are intended as models. They can help you use decon‑ structive criticism to interpret the literary works to which they refer or other texts of your choice.

1. The overt ideological project of Luis Valdez’s “Los Vendidos” (1967) seems to be to ridicule the ethnic stereotypes that have been imposed on Mexi‑ can Americans. First, show how this one‑act play accomplishes this ideo‑ logical project. Then, show how the text deconstructs its own project by inadvertently reasserting, at the end of the play, some of the same ste‑ reotypes it has worked to undermine. What does this ideological conflict suggest about the difficulties involved in the attempt to avoid stereotypes or about the difficulty any oppressed group might have asserting its own identity in the face of prejudice? 2. How does Kate Chopin’s “The Storm” (1898) forward its theme of the importance of sexual fulfillment for women, which seems to be the story’s overt ideological project? How does the text’s use of nature imagery and the standard fairy‑tale happy ending both promote and undermine this project?

What does this ideological conflict imply about the story’s attempt to tran‑ scend the nineteenth‑century social values of the culture it represents? 3. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (1916) has become an American icon of the value of nonconformity: “I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” Deconstruct this assumed ideological project by finding all the evidence in the poem that seems to undermine the value of nonconformity, for example, the ways in which the two roads are the same and the speaker’s own apparent conformity at various points in the poem.

You may find that there is, in fact, not as much support in the poem as you expected for the ideology of nonconformity. How might we account for the apparent failure of the American public to recognize this very different read‑ ing of the poem? 4. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), which was produced during England’s romantic period by an author who associated with some of the leading romantic poets of her day, frequently represents nature as romantic sub‑ lime: the contemplation of nature’s awesome grandeur—great mountains, storms at sea, huge trees blasted by lightning, and the like—can produce in human beings lofty, noble thoughts and feelings that take them beyond the finite boundaries of mundane experience. Find textual evidence to support this claim. Then show how the novel deconstructs this ideological project by finding, in the text, the ways in which nature does not live up to this definition. Speculate on the reasons why this ideological conflict is present in this text. 5. How might William Blake’s “The Little Black Boy” (1789) provide an example of deconstruction’s notion of undecidability? Specifically, how does the poem seem to promote the mutually exclusive themes of racial equality, the superiority of white people to black people, and the superi‑ ority of black people to white people? What are the implications of this apparent ideological conflict?