Clare Wald's Guilt In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Clare Wald is an internationally recognised and respected author. Many believe that she’s lived a long and rewarding life which is a common misconception that we make, visualize successful individuals as having “perfect lives”. Now, an elderly woman, she’s plagued by guilt and grief that leads to bad dreams and hallucinations due to her actions many years ago. Many authors today are brilliant due to their daunting past, this is a positive attribute to her writing but very few, like Clare, result in demons from her past having a negative effect on her. It is apparent that guilt is a force to be reckoned with, the longer it stays with you, the deeper it manifests on your emotions. This leads to severe emotional pain and the best solution would

One person who plays a significant role in her guilt is her daughter, Laura. The relationship between Laura and Clare took strain, especially towards the end of Laura’s disappearance. Generally speaking, the relationship between mother and daughter is a good one but not in Clare and Laura’s case. Clare is convinced that she has failed to be a good mother towards Laura. We see this throughout the novel; she blames herself for her disappearance or most notably, her presumed death. She seeks forgiveness and continuously begs Laura for it and this may be pointless because Laura is thought to be dead. Clare continuously writes to Laura, at times confessing (pg. 168), or her imagining the last few days before her death. All this is a way of reconnecting with her daughter, filling a void she left in her heart many years ago, a way of showing she could be a good maternal figure, something she has failed to be. “Come back. Come back that I may say it all to your face, that I may rethink my ethics, beg for absolution from you, prostrate myself in the name of reconciliation and love. You are all that I love now. I want only you.”(pg.

Clare and Nora were never the best of sisters. We see this in Clare’s, “True Confession,” to Laura, telling her of a “story about sisters.” Clare does admit she stopped feeling sisterly love for Nora when she was at least eight years old. But nevertheless, her actions against Laura are not justified. Nora and Stephan, Nora’s husband, were assassinated and Clare was complicit in this act by revealing the name and location of the guest house where they were staying at that point in time. This is enough to bring guilt to even the coldest of hearts and in confessing to Laura, she feels less guilty for her actions.

Clare’s book or memoir, Absolution, allows her to publically confess her crimes through a fictional medium. Her memoir will be seen as entirely a work of fiction and any resemblances are entirely coincidental. This allows her to speak freely of her actions in the past. Speaking of how she felt once again being in a waiting room (pg.