The Great Gatsby as a Modernist Text: Illusion and Reality

Modernism and Disillusionment in 1920s America

As noted by Arthur Erickson, Modernism, as a literary movement, often contains poignant reactions of writers to the limitations and losses associated with the past. Specifically, in the United States, Modernism in the 1920s revealed the sense of disillusionment felt throughout the country following the devastation and death tolls of World War I. In literature, Modernist plots, characters, and themes exposed a sense of disillusionment with the American Dream, as well as a tendency to dwell in illusion rather than face reality (Reuben). In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the narrator, Nick Carraway, provides an innocent glimpse into the lives of the privileged in the 1920s 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: Identity, Illusion, and the American Dream

Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, and Daisy Buchanan all project an illusory positive image to the outside world; however, beneath the surface, it is apparent that each individual's reality is far less reflective of the American Dream than the image each seeks to portray. Jay Gatsby, for example, personifies the individual's desire to attain the American Dream. Unfortunately for Gatsby, in order to achieve that Dream, he creates a different persona based solely upon the illusions and 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 façade reveals that in his attempt to acquire the essence of the American Dream, Gatsby 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. On an individual level, this represents the Modernist dichotomy between illusion and reality; Gatsby's character is also doing precisely what Modernism as a genre seeks to do: create a disconnect with the past.

Since Jay Gatsby is not even his real name — his actual name is James Gatz — one wonders what other elements of this man are rooted in illusion. Sadly, Gatsby had believed in his dream of Daisy and the happiness she might bring for so long that he could not face reality, even when doing so might have served his best interests:

There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams — not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion (101).

Gatsby truly believed that if he could only live up to others' expectations of what he should be and what he should have — that is, if he could successfully inhabit his self-invented illusion — then the life he dreamed of would follow. The tragedy of his character lies in how completely he surrendered his authentic self to this fabrication, and how little the illusion could ultimately sustain him.