The ‘Hero’ In Disguise – Jay Gatsby
Name: GATSBY, Jay
Occupation: Yachtsman/Soldier/Entreperneur/Bootlegger
Significant others: Daisy Buchanan, Nick Carraway
Origin: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald | NYC & Long Island
Type: The ‘Hero’ In Disguise
Heroic features that he lacks: Selfish intention
Next, let us talk about Jay Gatsby – the dreamboat of all flappers.
In case if you forgot, The Great Gatsby was actually taken place in summer. As Nick Carraway stated in Chapter One, P 9-10:
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I (he) had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again this summer.”
Summer, as we all know, is the only season that we have longer daytime. It symbolizes party, joviality & whole-hearted action. Most importantly, its sunlight is finally capable to dissolve shadows from every one’s lives.
And these summer vibes remind me of Gatsby exactly. He is determined. He became a tycoon regardless of his humble background. He is the symbol of ‘new money’. He always holds parties & ‘in his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars’ through summer nights. In short, he is the definition of glamorous.
These illusions made Gatsby look like the hero of American Dream. After all, unlike Tom Buchanan, Gatsby stands out as the only person with a pure, sparkling dream in such an unmoral, gloomy world. Furthermore, he is also not as ‘selfish’ as the ‘old money’ did – he didn’t look down on others – he is willing to share his wealth, great mansion with others.
However, it is also worth mentioning that Gatsby is not that heroic at all – he has his own selfish intention: He wanted to win Daisy over Tom; He wanted to repeat the past. He does everything to satisfy his personal quest.
I know some of you may challenge me that even though he is a hopeless romantic, it doesn’t make him a bad person or an anti-hero. But in my opinion, Gatsby is more than a boy who falls his head over heels; I think he knows exactly what he is doing.
As a matter of fact, his ultimate goal to win Daisy (a woman) over Tom is really the quest of the mythic ideal. Woman, in her mythic concept, is the ultimate quest of the hero. She is the symbol of all that is worthy of being conquered or won over. As Joseph Campbell asserts: Woman is the guide to the sublime acme of sensuous adventure.
With this in mind, we can see that Gatsby is not the romantic hero that most of us are expecting – but he is only a ‘hero’ in disguise that chasing after his own mythic ideals.
