A Society-Created Transient Greatness

As Francis Scott Fitzgerald is one of the giants in American literature, his work The Great Gatsby is widely accepted as a classic of American literature. It shows a contradictory mood and a sense of failure about the life of the Jazz Age Fitzgerald perceived. Through the glittering world of The Great Gatsby runs the themes of moral waste and decay and the lack of personal responsibility which is characteristic of the Jazz Age. Living in this phenomenon, Gatsby's fate is inevitably marked by the social ideologies. In terms of social criticism, Gatsby's fate is a process full of alienations.This paper is intended to analyze that Gatsby's transient greatness is both created and ruined by the society in which alienation plays a key role in Gatsby's fate. It is divided into five parts: introduction, prelude to alienation, process of alienation, the completion of alienation, and conclusion.In the introduction, the theme of the novel is illustrated for the further discussion in which the alienation factor in the theme is emphasized. As the novel has been considered as an semi-autobiographical one, it is important to explore the author's biography from the social point of. view and emphasize the connectedness between the. author's biography and the novel. Through the literature review, the theoretical feasibility isexplored and structure for this paper is included.In the second chapter, the aura for the alienation production is illustrated. The unprecedented prosperity and material excess lure people into an illusion that everyone can get rich overnight. Only if you possess material wealth, you can do whatever you like. Gatsby is living in this phenomenon. And what he is culturally educated is the American values and Christian ethics which are the constituents of false consciousness. They pave a seemly bright road for Gatsby's future. But under the glittering world is hidden the dominant ideology of bourgeoisie. It seems that the only goal in the life is the pursuit of money and pleasure. What Gatsby sees is the possibility of the American dream, the corruption of money and the decay of moralities after World War I.In the third chapter, the discussion is mainly about the process of alienation embodied in Gatsby's fate. Gatsby, a farmer's son, who is misled by the false consciousness, wants to win back his lost lover, Daisy Fay, who has an aristocratic birth. He is doomed to fall into the trap of bourgeoisie ideology and become its victim. He works honestly and hardly, but he does not get riches as what the values and ethics tells him; on the contrary, he employs illegal means of getting riches, he succeeds in material wealth. What he is doing is pursuing his ideal, which embodies in ontological form of Daisy but virtually does not exist. When they first meet, what really attracts Gatsby is Daisy's aristocratic beauty. To Gatsby, Daisy represents the paragon of perfection. She has the aura of charm, wealth, sophistication, grace that Gatsby has been longing for from a child. When he is 17, he alienates himself from James Gatz into Jay Gatsby and begins his process of going from rags to riches. Then he does five years of wage labour, but remains poor. When he meets Daisy, he actualizes Daisy into his ideal. But Daisy, like Zelda Fitzgerald, is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. But she gets married to Tom Buchanan who is a representative of the old money, the opposite class of Gatsby. In order to win Daisy back, Gatsby resorts to illegal bootlegging to amass great money. In this way he appears as a mysterious new money in the beginning of the novel. In the confrontation with Tom, due to the social conflicts and his own personality defects he becomes a loser again.In the fourth part, the alienation is completed in the process of the confrontation . between Gatsby and Tom, On the surface, Gatsby's reunion with Daisy is glorious, but infact, it is the beginning of Gatsby's end. The conflict between Tom and Gatsby is virtually a conflict between the two classes: the new rich and the old money. The result of the co...