Written and set during the post-World War I economic boom of the 1920s, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1920) can be seen as a chronicle of the American dream at a point in this nation’s history when capitalism’s promise of economic opportunity for all seemed at its peak of fulfillment. It was a time when stocks could be bought on a 10 percent margin, which means that a dollar’s worth of stocks could be purchased, on credit, for ten cents. So even the “little man” could play the stock market and hope to make his fortune there.
The Great Gatsby does not celebrate the thrilling capitalist culture it portrays but, as a Marxist interpretation of the novel makes especially clear, reveals its dark underbelly instead. Through its unattractive characterization of those at the top of the economic heap and its sharp examination of the ways in which the American not only fails to fulfill its promise but also contributes to the decay of personal values, Fitzgerald’s novel stands as a mocking critique of American capitalist culture and the ideology that promotes it. One of the most effective ways The Great Gatsby criticizes capitalist culture is by showing the devastating effects of capitalist ideology even on those who are its most successful products, and it does so through its representation of commodification. Nowhere The Great Gatsby is commodification so clearly embodied as in the character of Tom Buchanan. The wealthiest man in the novel, Tom relates to the world only through his money: for him, all things and all people are commodities. His marriage to Daisy was certainly an exchange of Daisy’s youth, beauty and social standing for Tom’s money and power and the image of strength and stability they imparted to him. The symbol of this “purchase” was the $350,000 string of pearls Tom gave his bride-to-be. Similarly, Tom uses his money and social rank to “purchase” Myrtle Wilson and the numerous other working-class women with whom he has affairs. Tom’s regular choice of lower-class women can also be understood in terms of his commodified view of human interaction. Tom’s works of commodification are not limited to his relationships with women. Because capitalist promotes the belief that “you are what you own”- that our value as human beings is only as great as the value of our possessions- much of Tom’s pleasure in his expensive possessions is a product of their sign-exchange value, of the social status their ownership confers on him.
A result of Tom’s commodification of people is his ability to manipulate them very cold-bloodedly to get what he wants, for commodification is the treatment of objects and people as commodities. In order to get Myrtle Wilson’s sexual favors, he lets her think that he may marry her somebody that his hesitation is due to Daisy’s alleged Catholicism rather that to his own lack of desire. While a character such as Tom Buchanan is likely to make us sympathize with anyone who is dependent upon him, Daisy is not merely an innocent victim of her husband’s comodification. In the first place, Daisy’s acceptance of the pearls is an act of commodification. Daisy’s extramarital affair with Gatsby, like her earlier romance with him, is based on a commodiefied view of life. The Buchanan’s’ commodification of their world and the enormous wealth that makes it possible for them to “smash up things and creatures and then retreat back into their money” are rendered especially objectionable by the socioeconomic contrast provided by the “valley of ashes” near which George and Myrtle Wilson live. The “valley of ashes” is a powerfully chilling image of the life led by those who do not have the socioeconomic resources of the Buchanan’s.
Jay Gatsby reveals the hollowness of the American dream. In true rags-to-riches style, Gatsby has risen from extreme poverty to extreme wealth in a very few years. His boyhood “schedule” resonates strongly with the American dream’s image of the self-made man. If Gatsby is the novel’s representative of the American dream, the dream must be a corrupt one. Gatsby is certainly more charming than Tom and Daisy, and more sympathetically portrayed by Nick, he commodifies his world just as they do. Gatsby’s commodification of his world is linked to the cold-blooded aggression with which he purses what he wants. The lap of luxury in which Gatsby lives does not exist in a vacuum. It is supported by a very dark and threatening world of corruption, crime, and death. The underworld activities from which his wealth derives include stealing and the selling of false bonds. Gatsby is not excused from the novel’s unattractive portrait of the wealthy. Indeed, his characterization suggests that the American dream does not offer a moral alternative to the commodified world of the Buchanans but produces the same commodification of people and things as does Tom and Daisy’s innate wealth. The Great Gatsby’s representation of American culture reveals the debilitating effects of capitalism on socioeconomic “winners” such as Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby, as well as on “losers” such as George and Myrtle. Operating against The Great Gatsby’s powerful critique of capitalism is the novel’s reinforcement of capitalism’s repressive ideology. This counter-movement operates in three ways. First, the unattractive portraits of George and Myrtle Wilson deflect our attention from their victimization by the capitalist system in which they both struggle to survive. Second, because Nick is seduced by the American dream Gatsby represents. Third, the lush language used to describe the world of the wealthy makes it attractive despite the people like the Buchanans who populate it.
The Great Gatsby’s most obvious flaw, from a Marxist perspective, is its unsympathetic rendering of George and Myrtle Wilson, the novel’s representatives of the lower class. George and Myrtle try to improve their lot the only way they know how. They are victim of capitalism because the only way to succeed in a capitalist economy is to succeed in a market. Their characterizations are so negative that it is easy to overlook the socioeconomic realities that control their lives. George and Myrtle are negative stereotypes of a lower class couple. The novel is also flawed, from a Marxist perspective, by Nick’s romanticization of Gatsby. Nick may like to think he disapproves of Jay Gatsby- because he knows he should disapprove of him for the same reason he disapproves of the Buchanans. The appeal to readers to belong to the magical world of the wealthy is also a memorial to the power of the commodity. Gatsby may not make the best use of his mansion, his hydroplane, his swimming pool, and his library, but many of us feel that we certainly would. Thus another flaw in the novel, form Marxist perspective, is the way in which the commodity’s appeal is powerfully reinforced for the reader by the lush language used to describe this world of leisure and luxury.
While The Great Gatsby offers a significant critique of capitalist ideology, it also repackages and markets that ideology anew. This double movement of the text gives the closing line a special irony: if we do “beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”, there is in this novel that which strengthens the back-flow, bearing us ceaselessly back under capitalism’s spell. In the end, Gatsby fails to realize the American dream, but because the novel falls prey to the capitalist ideology it condemns, many readers will continue to invest in it.
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