Ambiguity In The Great Gatsby

Written by Scott F. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby is considered one of the greatest American novels. Published at the height of the Roaring Twenties, the novel brought societal issues to the spotlight, conveying that the American dream is unattainable and unveiling the nightmare behind it. The Great Gatsby recognizes various issues in American society during the 1920s: racism, classism, sexism, and privilege. Fitzgerald critiques the societal norms of his times through the eyes of the main protagonist, Nick Carraway, rebelling against the standards of 1920s society utilizing Carraway’s sexual ambiguity and characters representing toxic masculinity and fluctuating gender roles, such as Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald makes Carraway an unreliable narrator to substantiate his sexual ambiguousness, which is idiosyncratic considering the stigma surrounding homosexuality in the 1920s. Homosexuality –– a naturally occurring phenomenon –– was highly denounced during the 1920s due to it being outside of the social “norm” (Berard 6). Whenever a male character is introduced, Carraway characterizes them based on the physical features that he fixates on, such as when he describes Tom’s attributes, “Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face…not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body…you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage––a cruel body” (Fitzgerald 10). Uncertainty regarding Carraway’s sexuality challenges how society viewed gender and sexuality during the 1920s –– his ambiguity represents widescale, cultural disapproval of homosexuality in American society. Carraway repeats this pattern of distinguishing men through physical features when he meets Jay Gatsby. The moment he sets his eyes on Gatsby, Carraway is mesmerized by his smile, “He smiled understandingly¬¬––much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or

Contrarily, Fitzgerald also outlines the changes for women during the Roaring Twenties, both positive and negative. At the beginning of the 1920s, women were given the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment. With the 1920s came shifting gender roles and dynamics for women, inspiring the flapper: a woman who broke feminine expectations, wore knee-high dresses, and sexual liberation (Pruitt 2). Illuminating new freedoms for women, Jordan Baker is a character representative of a flapper during the Roaring Twenties, “Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body” (Fitzgerald 39). Jordan is unlike the typical American woman prior to the 1920s––she is flirty and secretive, bringing attention to the rise of flappers and women defying standard gender expectations during the Jazz Age. While Fitzgerald draws awareness to the social and political changes for women during the 1920s, he also