Great Gatsby as a Modernist

¶ … Great Gatsby as a Modernist Text: Illusions, Realities, and the American Dream Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom. -Arthur Erickson As noted by Arthur Erickson, Modernism, as a literary movement, oftentimes contains poignant reactions of writers to the limitations and the loss experienced in association with the past. Specifically, in the United States, Modernism in the 1920's revealed the sense of disillusionment felt throughout America following the devastation and death tolls of World War I.

In literature, Modernist plots, characters, and themes revealed a sense of disillusionment with the American Dream as well as a tendency to dwelve into illusion as opposed to facing reality (Reuben). In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the narrator, Nick Carroway, provides an innocent glimpse into the lives of the privileged in the 1920's, as they seek to come to grips with the disillusionment of their individual lives and, accordingly, oscillate back and forth between illusion and reality.

Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, and Daisy Buchanan all present an illusory positive image to the outside world; however, beneath the surface, it is apparent that each individual's reality is much different and much less reflective of the American Dream than the image that each sought to portray to the outside. For example, Jay Gatsby personifies the individual's desire to attain the American Dream.

Unfortunately for Gatsby, in order to achieve the Dream, he creates a different persona based solely upon the illusion and the dreams of a seventeen-year-old heartbroken dreamer: The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God -- a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that -- and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.

So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end (Fitzgerald 104). Nick's description of Gatsby's facade reveals that in Gatsby's attempt to acquire the essence of the American dream, he had to sacrifice himself and create a new identity. As such, an aura of sadness and loneliness lingers about Gatsby's existence as he lets go of his past and his own identity in the hope of finding happiness.

In fact, on an individual level, while this represents the Modernist element of the dichotomy between illusion and reality, Gatsby's character is also doing that which Modernism as a genre seeks to do: create a disconnect with the past. Since Jay Gatsby is not even his real name, one wonders what other elements of this man, whose real name is James.