The popularity of (and critical admiration for) the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby it has grown, shrunk, and grown again since its publication in 1925. It was modestly successful at first, then almost forgotten, and finally recognized by scholars as one of the great novels of the English language. The book’s rebirth and survival at the top of American literature is no doubt due to Fitzgerald’s ability with words, but it is also the result of his creation of a character that is particularly appealing to Americans. The book also has a theme that we instinctively understand.
At the beginning of the book, Jay Gatsby is in the process of self-reinvention. He has made a great deal of money in a criminal business, a business that was never identified but is presumed to be smuggling. He downplays his criminal past and gambles with his great wealth to win back Daisy Buchanan, a girl who had rejected him years before due to her poverty.
Gatsby embodies much of what we Americans admire. He has been successful in his business, has become extremely wealthy, years for a rise in social status and has not forgotten an early love. He checks all the boxes. So, even though he is a criminal who is using his ill-gotten money to steal another man’s wife, we tend to like him and are saddened by his death. Victimless crime is not something we particularly guard against. Gatsby not only made himself, but he also remade himself, and we admire him for it.
American history is full of men (and usually they are men) who can be called “like Gatsby” or “Gatsbyesque”. They have made money in a nasty business and want to hide that fact in order to be accepted by respectable society. Sometimes they have gone straight away, while sometimes, like Gatsby, they have not completely left the old life behind. But they have learned to compartmentalize and want to be recognized as something they are not. The Gilded Age, the decades before and after the turn of the century, was filled with self-made businessmen who hoped people would forget their cutthroat business practices and remember their charitable work and lavish lifestyle. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, the Robber Barons became the American aristocracy.
Scott Fitzgerald was probably thinking of all of them while hatching gatsby and its title character in 1923 and 1924. The Robber Barons were not necessarily criminals, but willing to push the boundaries of ethics to make their millions, but each hoped that their lavish homes and generous donations to worthy causes would mask the origins. of your money. But Fitzgerald also had in mind a character whose scale was somewhere below the baronial level, a man who could not only minimize but completely obscure the origin of his money.
When I was researching my book The Best There Ever Was: Dan Patch and the Dawn of the American Century I quickly realized that the great pacemaker’s second owner, Manley E. Sturges, could easily be described as “Gatsbyesque.” He hid his early origins and the source of his money (illegal gambling casinos) so well that even his ownership of a famous racehorse resulted in completely inaccurate biographical information about him. As I discovered more about his background, I came to the conclusion that not only was he “Gatsbyesque”, but that he could have been a model for the character of Fitzgerald. See my previous article “The Connection Between the Real Gatsby and Dan Patch” for more information, see the book’s website, or read the book for details.
