Julia Schwartz

October 1, 2004

Power of the Purse

The words with which a story is opened set the literary path of the work, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby certainly holds no exception. In The Great Gatsby, these opening words that instruct the book as to its nature are the retelling by Nick Carraway of some advice his father once gave him. By opening his narrative with the words of advice his father gives him regarding the advantages afforded by a specific socioeconomic status and what that status should teach him about interactions with others, Nick identifies the importance of wealth and social position in The Great Gatsby as it relates to the way people are able to live their lives.

The “advantages” that Nick’s father speaks of directly imply economic advantages, but with this economic edge comes a slew of social benefits that allow Nick into the upper crust of society that is occupied by the likes of Daisy and Tom Buchanan, and Jay Gatsby. The irony here is that Nick’s father intends his advice to discourage Nick from “criticizing” (5) people of lower socioeconomic status because they don’t have the capacity to make as sound judgments as the wealthy, but the judgments we see in The Great Gatsby – the judgments of the wealthy – are far from sound; in fact, they are described by Nick as “careless” (187) and “child[-like]” (188), people who have no need to have genuine responsibility because money can buy it for them in the form of servants and laborers.

In his initial social encounter – his venture to the Buchanans’ house where he meets Daisy and Tom and Jordan for the first time – Nick reveals to the readers that “almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from [him]” (13). Nick, through his own beliefs as cultivated by his highfalutin father, expects that no one should be entirely self-sufficient; instead, everyone would partially rely on either money or intent to fuel their life’s fulfillment. Thus, when he sees someone of social status equitable to his own in the upper tiers, in this case Jordan Baker, Nick is astounded to find self-sufficiency implicit within her personality.

His expectation of a woman would be of a helpless being, much like his cousin Daisy, who is unfit to live on her own. Indeed, Daisy is constrained by the mores of 1920s society to allow her husband, Tom, to take care of her financially, but socially she cannot stand alone due to her own faults – she is always attached to Jordan at parties, or one of the men: Nick, Tom, or Gatsby. However, beyond this, she is unfit to make a sincere emotional choice on her own, as she requires alcohol to aid her in her walk down the aisle to meet Tom in matrimony, and later in life can make the solid decision between Gatsby and Tom only when one of them dies. And though Daisy has a daughter, she is unfit to maintain any sort of meaningful relationship with her daughter, something astounding when one considers the innate capacity for motherhood women are expected to carry.

Daisy’s daughter Pammy appears once in the novel, a “bless-ed pre-cious” (123), who must be reminded of her mother’s love because she can’t possibly see her mother enough to know. The child is “relinquished by the nurse” (123) to partake in a scene of mechanized cordiality with her mother. Though the words spoken by Daisy are tender enough, Daisy doesn’t see Pammy as a real child, only as a toy – an “absolute little dream” (123). No one, from Gatsby to Daisy herself, ever expects her to exist, and they deny the reality of her existence by referring to her as “the child” or “it.” In an age where motherhood is still the paramount concern of women, Daisy’s inability to even realize the truth of her child is the most glaring evidence of her ability to prove her self-sufficiency – indeed, Daisy has barely proven she isn’t a child herself who can be swayed by expensive toys like those Tom gives her to provide evidence of his devotion to her.

As much as Nick’s narrative focuses on money and wealth, the person most motivated by the dollar sign is clearly Gatsby. His entire life’s focus has been the full legitimatization of the character Jay Gatsby, a powerful socialite who inspires “romantic speculation” (48) and whose presence warrants wonder. Once Gatsby realizes that Daisy is the final piece in his puzzle of dazzling wealth and success, he fights to obtain his dream solely in order to enter a status of wealth that will exceed Daisy’s wildest dreams because he knows that she will be swayed by wealth in making her marital choice: she needed “her life shaped… immediately—and the decision [needed to] be made by some force—of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality—that was close at hand” (159). Gatsby builds his own “world’s fair’” (86) of society – his dancing menagerie of stars – in order to create an economic wall of safety for himself. To his belief, if he can gather enough money, he can attract everyone of relevance in the upper crust of society, which includes Daisy, whom he is obsessed by once he realizes how unattainable she is to him, and how he has “no real right to touch her hand” (156). Winning Daisy over all the other wealthy beaux who sought to gain Daisy’s hand proves that he has real, legitimate wealth, and wealth in this age is power.

Therefore, when Gatsby sees that Daisy has been married to Tom Buchanan, a man whose wealth is initially incomprehensible to Nick, he seeks to not only match that wealth that gives “a man in [his] own generation… [such freedom with money]” (10), but dwarf it. As soon as Gatsby comes into the picture of the novel, Tom’s wealth is forgotten. Gatsby’s wealth becomes the symbol of decadence. In fact, Daisy’s climactic breakdown at the sight of all of Gatsby’s shirts imported from England is prompted by her realization that she has never seen “such beautiful shirts before” (98) – she has been introduced to a new sort of wealth, a wealth that surpasses her husband’s.

Even though Nick is wealthy enough to inhabit the upper ranks of society along with Gatsby and the Buchanans, he constantly derides his economic state of affairs, from when describes his new home in West Egg as a “weather beaten cardboard bungalow” (8) to his goodbye to Tom Buchanan, when he cites his own “provincial squeamishness” (188). Therefore, from Nick’s narrative, one would assume that Nick is of the dregs of the upper society, wealthy enough to come from “prominent, well-to-do people” (7) in the middle West, but perhaps not prominent enough or well-to-do enough to rival the standards of the wealth of the East. If this were true, Nick’s “snobbish” (6) mentality is perhaps a way of fitting in and asserting his qualifications to be in the upper class of society inhabited by the likes of the Buchanans and Gatsby—the “remotely rich” (24)—and his constant derision of others, as well as his perception that he is a notch above everyone else surrounding him, is merely a way of masking his sense of never being a true part of society. He says he has an “unaffected scorn” (6) for Gatsby and the world he represents, but in truth, it seems more that he has a fear of this society for what it might to do reveal his own shortcomings. Among a sea of men whose wealth at a young age is unimaginable, Nick’s heritage in coming from a family launched off a self-made man and his need to maintain a job for money (instead of living a life of luxury and leisure) perhaps makes him uneasy. The only way that he can substantiate his being a part of this group is to separate himself from it, and rise above it.

To his own way of thinking, Nick is superior to everyone around him because somehow he is able to possess a greater share of “fundamental decencies” (6) than is normal. In some cases, like in relation to servants or minorities such as the “Negroes… two bucks and a girl” (73) he passes on the road to New York or Meyer Wolfsheim, Nick thinks he is better than others because he was born into a family of greater privilege; here, the “advantages” (5) he had automatically made him a better person at birth. He thinks he is better than drunks like Owl Eyes and eccentrics like Klipspringer because he believes he has the ability to be “privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men” (5) and his ability to understand these men, when they are unable to understand themselves, makes him better than them. And in relation to the sane of high socioeconomic status – namely, the Buchanans, Jordan Baker, and Gatsby – Nick believes he is better because he is “honest” (64), where they all lie: Tom lies about his affair with Myrtle and to Wilson when he tells him Gatsby killed her; Daisy lies to others by having an affair with Gatsby; Jordan lies on the golf course, specifically in that instance where she moved a ball (62), and about leaving a “borrowed car” out in the rain (62) and not confessing to having committed the deed; and finally, Gatsby lies to the world with his new identity he created out of the truth of “James Gatz” (104), and to himself about his motives and his true feelings for Daisy.

The irony of the whole situation is that Nick too lies, and therefore we can faithfully believe none of his narrative. It is apparent that though Nick thinks he is better than “the whole damn bunch [of them]” (162), he really isn’t. Though he feels sick at their petty actions, he partakes in the frivolity with the rest of the group, whether it’s going to the parties or into New York . He says he is too old to “lie to [himself] and call it honor” (186), but this doesn’t mean he doesn’t lie to himself just like everyone with whom he associates. There is only one point in the whole of The Great Gatsby where Nick admits that, to a certain degree, he made the same mistakes as his cousin and her friends: when he grants the readers the concession that the belief in the “green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes” (189) was something everyone he knew except Gatsby forgot.

            In the end, those “advantages” (5) Nick’s father spoke of, which were supposed to lend Nick some birthright of perception and understanding, are really valued at naught. Nick never shows any deeper perception or understanding that he possesses, as a result of his breeding or otherwise. In fact, the only product that can be perceived as a result of his economic stature and class position is the combination of despicable attributes that he and his friends possess. Though Nick continually derides his companions for their actions, calling them “careless” (187) and “deficien[t]” (184), he too is guilty of these sins of humanity. He muses that perhaps he and his friends were perhaps “subtly unadaptable to Eastern life” (184), but the truth of the matter is that they were simply unadaptable to the realities of human life. The only advantages that were bestowed upon Nick by his wealth are those which allowed him to live in that world of Gatsby’s parties and the Buchanans’ affairs, those that allowed him to cavort about with people and not worry about the consequences, and those that denied him any true friendships or emotions for life. He has no appreciation for life, which is what he envies in Gatsby in the end. Though Gatsby did inhabit the world of the wealthy, he knew what it was like to not be so, and this is what allows him to continually seek the orgastic future, to know love and desire. By being born into a position of wealth, Nick is never lucky enough to know this, and spends his life living in an “obliging and indifferent sea” (185). His economic advantage is his life’s disadvantage.