This research will explore the topic of self-love in the book, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which narrates a story about the main character, Jay Gatsby, who finds wants material wealth to get the girl of his dreams. In the introduction, the author does not tell the reader who Gatsby is. Instead, he focuses on the main narrator, Nick Carraway, who is increasingly drawn to Gatsby’s world. From Nick’s narrative, the reader knows that Gatsby wants his cousin, Daisy, even though she is married to Tom. The novel reveals the self-centered love that builds in Gatsby as he engages in antagonistic wars with anyone who tries to come between him and Daisy. He even engages in conflict with Tom, Daisy’s husband, over a variety of abstract concepts such as societal expectations and class differences. This novel demonstrates that material wealth makes Gatsby develop self-love instead of true love. Consequently, Gatsby appears to be a semi-delusionally hopeful dream, whose self-love is heightened by money-colored promises of life. It is as if the author wants to show the reader that for one to become successful in possessing material wealth, the best way is to cultivate a culture of self-love inside people’s minds. This lifestyle is based on material love where everything that Gatsby wants believes that he can achieve it by being the wealthiest person, including love. Therefore, this research paper will focus on the theme of self-love and show how material wealth heightens it through treacherous and greedy engagements, as revealed in Gatsby’s character traits. This research attempts to show that if people gain riches, they can buy anything with it, including love.
The following will be the research question for the study: -
Research question: How is self-love connected to material wealth and what are the results of prioritizing self-love.
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Literature Review
The theme of self-love is manifested in the book from the perspective of the decline of the American Dream, which started in the 1920s. This book portrays a story of the thwarted love between Gatsby and Daisy. This is just a tip of the underlying theme of self-love, which encompasses a much broader, less romantic perspective. The Great Gatsby records actions that took place during the 1920s, which was an era of a significant disintegration of America as a whole, as people sought to acquire unprecedented prosperity and material excess. Fitzgerald portrayed the 1920s as a period when there was a decay of social and moral values, which were characterized by exceeding greed, cynicism, and empty pursuit of pleasure. For example, Fitzgerald describes Gatsby’s reckless desires, which lead to decadent parties and jazz music that Gatsby listens every Saturday night (Fitzgerald, 2007). This example indicates the idea of self-love and the way it prevailed during 1920 and led to the corruption of the American dream. The way Fitzgerald described Gatsby’s empty pursuit for pleasures shows how much he was engulfed in the unstrained desire for money and pleasure, which exceeded noble goals. This is the same concept that is described by Peck (1978) by claiming that one reason that people need money is to put themselves at the top of others by attracting all the attention to themselves. As Peck (1978) explains, people go the extra mile to work against the inertia of their minds to impress others. This is the reason; people spend much time trying to be famous by engaging in unproductive activities, such as partying too much.
Self-love is demonstrated by newfound materialism that escalated among young Americans after the end of World War I. Fitzgerald illustrates that the war had caused a social disintegration among young Americans by making them to seeking materialistic wealth. Gatsby dreamt that he would have a life of passion and courage which a few people possessed. However, the story reveals that his dream was a tragedy since it collided with the reality that facing young Americans at the time; illusions and escape. As Fitzgerald reveals, even the most courageous dreamers could not avoid the frustrations of living in a material world. This is indicated in one of the most famous closing lines of the novel. Fitzgerald (2007) indicates that “Gatsby believed that he would reach the green light; a brighter future was so close to him. Even though it eluded him, he still had hope that he would run faster tomorrow, stretch out his arms until one morning, he acquires the material wealth.” From this phrase, Gatsby believed that he could conquer his American Dream and that he would not stop until his dreams turned into reality. At this point, the theme of self-love is shown when he asserts that he will reinvent himself with the drizzling strength to become a part of the few rich people in the society. As Bunce (2015) reveals, the tragedy of Gatsby can be understood as the love of a man who is obsessed with wealth and social standing. The adversity that Gatsby faced was equating his dream with money and money with love and happiness. Honestly, given the world in which he lived according to the novel, he was not that far from getting everything he wanted, including the love that relies on money.
Bunce (2015) argues that Gatsby’s entire life revolves around trying to make more for himself, in terms of getting all material wealth and buying love. Gatsby believes that he would not be satisfied that he was confident in life until he accomplished all the goals that he had in his mind. He first needed to become wealthy, and then get his dream girl, Daisy, which was simply a necessity in his mind. Bunce explains that Daisy was not only a Gatsby’s plan to make her an integral part of his life, but owning her would also increase his self-confidence and confirmation. Fitzgerald (2007) reveals that Gatsby is a man who suddenly rises to fame and wealth, while amassing wealth for the sake of winning the heart of the golden girl, Daisy. The book reveals that people are ingrained in a society that promotes self-love since Gatsby is a story of lavish excesses, which are meant to make a man enjoy little whim of the rich, and leave him unsatisfied with his shallow emptiness for love. Peck (1978) explains that falling in love among materialistic individuals is more about ego boundaries, which is an illusion of love that in no way constitutes real love. Peck adds that love is sometimes expressed as a form of a dependency relationship in which the man seeks wealth as proof that he can provide the needs of a woman. However, Peck argues that there is a problem with this kind of love since it always leads to one person feeling that “there is something that is missing” in the relationship. This leads to a person feeling suffocated by material lifestyles, as well as experiencing a state of uselessness and unexpected, elusive desires to stand out from the rest in terms of fame. Thus, Gatsby’s story is about disillusionment with dreams that end up being unworthy to the dreamer even after he firmly believes in the ability to dream big to impress a woman.
Fitzgerald positions characters in his book to portray social trends of the postwar American society, during was characterized by the newfound cynicism and cosmopolitanism. Characters from various social levels competed against each other to climb up the social ladders, such as Gatsby who demonstrated his greedy scramble for wealth. This is an extension of the concept of self-love at a societal level where the book reflects the conflict between “old money” and “new money (Bunce, 2015). This conflict is represented as symbolic geography where there is the East Egg, representing the formal aristocracy. There is also West Egg that represents the self-made rich, such as Gatsby’s wealth. Bunce (2015) explains that Fitzgerald had seen that this would come to happen in American society, such that people will be achieving wealth through organized crime and bootlegging. Before individuals were greedy, the American Dream was all about discovery, the pursuit of happiness, and individualism. However, as depicted by the novel, the 1920s were an era in which people sought easy money and loose social values, which eventually corrupted the American Dream. As Bunce argues, the main plotline of this novel was to assess Gatsby’s dream of loving Daisy based on how important it meant for a man to prove his material worth. Consequently, Gatsby resorted to crime to make money to impress her.
Furthermore, Fitzgerald shows that women during this era focused on rampant materialism, which is characterized by Daisy’s lavish lifestyle. Moreover, some of the places in the novel elicit precise meanings which help to exemplify the theme of self-love. For example, Nick compares the green color that arises from the ocean to the green light that is at Daisy’s desk. To him, the color represents dreams that people have given to America in their lives. To Gatsby, he sees Daisy to be a woman who deserves an idealized perfection that can only be accentuated with the material wealth that he possesses. When his dream shatters, all that is left is for him to die, while Nick decides to go back to Minnesota where American values have not been broken by the materialistic society.
The Research Gap
One of the significant topics that are examined in The Great Gatsby is the concept of material wealth and how it is tied to individual selfishness. This is illustrated by the depiction of the old aristocracy and the newfound materialism society in which young people seek fast wealth to gain social standing. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich young people as being vulgar and lacking social graces. For instance, Gatsby lives in a monstrous mansion, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not mingle with individuals from low-level social class. While much of the ideas in this book center on self-love and material greed, Fitzgerald warns that this wealth attracts negative consequences, such as organized crime, psychological dissatisfaction, and loneliness. This gives a clue that Fitzgerald also wanted to show the negative side of material wealth, but did not explore this viewpoint in detail. Gatsby is relevant in the present world in which society is characterized by full-scale capitalism and materialism. Thus, Fitzgerald’s novel provides a new topic of discussion in research: the concept of egocentrism in the present-day, which is demonstrated in the way people worship money as the substitute of the American Dream. Thus, this research will focus on the negative consequences of materialism in the context of the present world.
Research Methodology
Sources of Data
The sources for this study will specifically be secondary materials, which are studies that have been done by other researchers and published in the form of books, journal articles, online sources, and magazines. In this case, this study will include the three references mentioned earlier. These sources include Bunce (2015)’s analysis on The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald (2007)’s novel, The Great Gatsby, Hooks, B. (2018)’s book on love, and Peck (1978)’s book on the analysis of the concept of love. The study will also include additional sources, which might be relevant to the topic of discussion.
Data Collection Method
The study will rely on a systematic review, which is a research tactic that involves summarizing all empirical evidence that has previously been done by other scholars on the same topic. This method summarizes the results of previous studies and the validity of the collected data depends on the quality of the sources. In this case, a systematic review will include the three earlier references and other materials that contain information that will be relevant to the problem that is under investigation.
References
Bunce, S. (2015). Love and money: An analysis of The Great Gatsby. Strength for Today and
Bright Hope for Tomorrow, 15(6), 164. Fitzgerald, F. S. (2007). The great Gatsby . New York, NY: Broadview Press. Hooks, B. (2018). All about love: New visions. New York: William Morrow Paperbacks.
Peck, M. S. (1978). The road less travelled. New York: Simon and Shuster.
