Recognizing a century of boats against the current
Top image: Warner Bros.
The Great Gatsby remains relevant for modern readers by shapeshifting with the times, says ·¬şĹżâapp scholar Martin Bickman
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
The final words of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby—published 100 years ago this month—are among the most known and appreciated in American literature.
Martin Bickman, a ·¬şĹżâapp professor of English, notes that the intentional vagueness of The Great Gatsby helps readers of all generations connect with the characters.
And according to Martin Bickman, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of English, this line and the novel’s conclusion reflect the age in which it was written and neatly ends a novel that seems to capture the American psyche.
But why is The Great Gatsby considered the Great American Novel? Not because it’s great or because it’s American, Bickman explains—although it is both. This novel has remained relevant from generation to generation because it shapeshifts with the times, continuing to carry themes that Americans are bred to notice.
Questions of the American dream, wealth, class standing and ambition are central to American values in both 1925 and today. And while these themes look very different to the modern American, Bickman says the intentional vagueness of the novel helps readers of all generations connect with the characters.
To understand this, Bickman, a CU President’s Teaching Scholar who has taught a course called American Novel, cites “reader response theory,” a framework he emphasizes is critical in the study of literature. According to reader response theory, the reader of a text to take must take an active role in constructing the meaning within the text; if readers look only at a novel through the perspective of the author, that neglects much of the text’s meaning.
For this reason, no text can be interpreted the exact way by two different people. Readers approach texts differently as a result of their position in the world, and the experiences that have shaped them inform their understanding of what they read. The text then becomes a blank canvas for what readers project onto it, Bickman says
Seeing ourselves in Gatsby
What does this have to do with Gatsby? According to Bickman, the title character is just two-dimensional enough to serve as a perfect projection screen for readers of the novel. He’s mysterious, allowing the narrator, Nick Calloway, to cast his own assumptions about the world and the wealthy onto him, as well as vague enough to allow the reader to project their own internal thoughts and biases onto him.
As well as having characters that reflect the reader in personality and perceptions, The Great Gatsby also reflects classic American messages that are relevant today.Ěý
Because of his intentional ambiguity, Gatsby as a character can reflect what the reader thinks of many different things, including the elite, the rich and even the quintessential American dreamer.
This is how The Great Gatsby becomes a chameleon, remaining relevant in era, despite its age, Bickman says. As well as having characters that reflect the reader in personality and perceptions, the novel also reflects classic American messages that are relevant today.
The green light on Daisy’s dock, for example, represents the unattainable hopes for the future that stem from the inability to transcend the past. This feeling is still present, and most likely always will be in a country that believes in the possibility of a glowing future as long as we just work hard enough to get there—such is, in essence, the American dream, Bickman says.
It also showcases the all-to-frequent pain of the American dream. Although Bickman says the billionaires of today had no equal in Fitzgerald’s time, the uneasiness surrounding the callousness of the rich is on full display in Gatsby. Daisy, for example, named for the beautiful and delicate flower that Gatsby sees her as, is just as cruel and selfish as any of the men around her. She was the one driving the car, after all.
However, as she comes from “self-earned” money, and as someone who has seemingly “won” at the American dream, does she get a pass for her selfishness? In a way, she seems to, at least for the moment. And as time moves on, and the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, it seems that the original questions of whether the rich can be callous changes to whether the rich can be cruel—a key difference in how the world works, according to Bickman.
“It’s a real pathology now,” he says, “I mean, these people are cruel. The richest of the rich in the 1920s were nothing like today’s billionaires.”
So the lessons of The Great Gatsby remain relevant, Bickman says, suggesting that modern readers should take a deep look between the lines and wonder what Gatsby can show us about ourselves.
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