FATAL SENTIMENTAL LOVE RELIGION IN THE GREAT GATSBY

FATAL SENTIMENTAL LOVE RELIGION IN THE GREAT GATSBY

                         

                                               

                                                                         By

                                                           Simon Ntamwana

                                                          2015/01/M/IB/2326

AMERICAN STUDIES MASTER PROGRAM, DEPARTMENT OF INTERCULTURAL STUDIES, FACULTY OF CULTURAL SCIENCES, GADJAH MADA UNIVERSITY

 YOGYAKARTA

           SENTIMENTAL LOVE RELIGION AS CAUSE OF DEATH IN THE GREAT GATSBY

Abstract

This paper aims at discussing the issue of obsessive love in The Great Gatsby and the tragedy brought about by love through a psychoanalyst literary approach. It anchors on the assumption that sentimental love religion evolves into unconscious desires and motivations which sometimes bring about death of the seducer or the seduced. In accordance with the aforementioned hypothesis and aims, the research is based upon the qualitative descriptive method by using psychoanalyst literary criticism. The research source data consist of primary data source and secondary data source. The primary data source is the novel The Great Gatsby and the secondary sources are existing literature related to the topic. The data were collected based upon the interactive model, consecutively through data collection, data reduction, data analysis and discussion, and conclusion drawing. It was found out that uncontrolled sexual drives of both male and female characters cause their deaths. In their lecherous situation, their love sentiments are not equally reciprocated by their partners who instead practice adultery with other people. Thus these characters fatally succumb the anger of their love opponents.

Keywords: Sentimental love religion, psychoanalysis, The Great Gatsby

Introduction

            The issue of sentimental love is at the center of the modern American literature in general and American novel in particular. In this kind of literature, sometimes heroes and /or heroines go further to adore their partners like gods. Whether seduced or not, in many cases the storylines turn to the tragedy of the hero or heroine. In some other cases, the protagonist ends up with success while some other character or characters succumb the infatuation climax or the love affairs of the hero or heroine. Fiedler (1960) refers to this belief in love salvation as sentimental love religion. While in some novels authors portray a hero who stands up right and overcomes the love trials, in some others they point to the heroine who glaringly emerges thanks to her virtue or tactics. This differentiation is, according to Fiedler (13), a revival of the archetype of The Great Mother versus The Good Father in American literature.

            Following the sentimental love tradition, Fitzgerald depicts the horror of sentimental love in The Great Gatsby. The hero Jay Gatsby is victim of the sensuous and sensual allure of a temptress Daisy. Despite his love manoeuvres, Gatsby fails to win the love of Daisy and thus succumbs the love drives of his antagonists who orchestrate his death. Gatsby’s tragic end is shared with other characters, namely Wilson and his wife Myrtle who equally are victims of their sexual drives. Many writers and critics have written on The Great Gatsby focussing either on the American dream (Reed 2009, Lucic 2014, and Islam 2014) or woman revolution (Froehlich 2010). But to the best of my knowledge, no two-variable work has been done to tackle the issue of love and death in this novel. In the Norton Anthology of the American Literature, The Great Gatsby is described as a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was firstly published in 1925. The story is set in New York city and Long Island. During the production of this novel, the American society was characterized by economic prosperity and the evolution of jazz music, flapper culture, bootlegging and moral decay. The Great Gatsby is related to the life background of the author, Fitzgerald who after his education in Princeton, went to the army. While Lieutenant, he fell in love with Zelda Sayre who demanded him to make wealth in order to match her love. Against the backdrop of the psychoanalytic literary approach, this paper anchors on the assumption that sentimental love religion brings about lack of emotional control sometimes associated with violence acts among others murder.

Theoretical Foundation

            This paper is based on the psychoanalytic literary approach. According to Tyson the psychoanalytical criticism originated from the Freudian Theories of Psychology as propounded by Sigmund Freud in 1890 in Vienna. For Tyson, psychoanalysis is centred on three main theories, namely the topographic theory, the structural psychology, and the Oedipus complex theory.

            Firstly, the topographic psychological theory consists of the concepts of the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious desires. Freud distinguishes the conscious desires or events that the individual is aware of from the unconscious or desires and motivations the individual is not aware of, and the preconscious   desires which are in the process of becoming conscious. Thus Freud assumes that people are driven by desires and needs or conflicts of which they are unaware (Tyson 14-15). In addition, Freud maintains that unhappy psychological events in people’s past are repressed from the conscious and become unconscious. However, these expunged events are not eliminated, they are rather buried by means of mechanism defenses to be later displayed in the life of the individual.

            Secondly, Freud associates the topographic psychological structure to the structural psychology model. He sustains that human desires and unconscious conflicts give rise to conflict of the three areas of mind, that is the id, the ego, and the superego. The id refers to the drives or instinctual behaviour patterns and basic needs. It is the most basic part of the personality, and wants instant gratification for our wants and needs. If these needs or wants are not met, a person becomes tense or anxious. On the other hand, the ego shelters the major defenses against the power of the drives. It deals with reality, trying to meet the desires of the id in a way that is socially acceptable in the family and society. This may mean delaying gratification, and helping to get rid of the tension the id feels if a desire is not met right away. The ego recognizes that other people have needs and wants too, and that being selfish is not always good for the individual in the long run. Over the ego is the superego. It is the area of the unconscious that houses the censure. The superego develops last, and is based on morals and judgments about right and wrong. Even though the superego and the ego may reach the same decision about something, the superego’s reason for that decision is more based on moral values, while the ego’s decision is based more on what others will think or what the consequences of an action could be.

            Finally, Freud establishes a relationship between the topographic structural model and the Oedipus complex. This is in bid to relating superego to symbol of the father archetype. The superego tends to stand in opposition to the desires of the id because of their conflicting objectives, and its aggressiveness towards the ego. The superego acts as the conscious maintaining our sense of morality and proscription from taboos. The superego and the ego are the product of two key factors: the state of helplessness of the child and the Oedipus complex. Its formation takes place during the dissolution of the Oedipus complex and is formed by an identification with and internalization of the father figure after little boy cannot successfully hold the mother as a love-object out of fear of castration. Later, the psychoanalysis of Freud was advanced by Carl Jung by adding to the Oedipus complex the Electra complex to further the female psychosexual development. During her psychological development, the girl is initially attached to her mother. When she discovers that she does not have a penis, she becomes attached to her father and begins to resent her mother who she blames for her "castration." As a result, Freud believed that the girl then begins to identify with and emulate her mother out of fear of losing her love. According to Freud both the girl and the boys climaxize their Oedipus or Electra complex with the identification behaviour. The boy identifies himself to the father in hope of someday possessing a woman like his mother. For the girl, her sexual desire to the father gives way to a desire to possess a man like her father later in life.  Freud believes that the psychological topography, the structural psychology, and the Oedipus complex theory are central to the minds and dreams of people as adults and affect their writings.

            The psychoanalytic approach fits in the criticism of The Great Gatsby to understand how the people are fatally driven by libidinal and instinctual urges. In addition, repressed frustration of characters kept within the unconscious dictates feelings of fear, denial, codependency which affect their behaviour patterns and precipitate their tragic end. Furthermore, there is a form of oedipal complex dictate in divinising love as sole source of happiness. This kind of sexual behaviour of characters find reason the authorial subconscious.

Research Methodology

            This paper applies qualitative research based upon the method of collecting, describing, classifying, and analyzing the data and drawing conclusions. Library documentation method was used to collect data. Primary data were obtained from the novel The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald (2003). Secondary data were collected from periodicals, textbooks, and internet. According to Cresswell (2007), the descriptive method as qualitative method fits in describing dreams and traumatic events. As far as data collection and analytical processes are concerned, the novel was read repeatedly using the psychoanalytical literary criticism. In accord to the aims and hypothesis, pertinent notes were taken from both the primary and secondary sources. They were discussed in the light of the theoretical framework, were descriptively analysed, and conclusions were drawn.

Discussion and Findings

Sentimental love religion in The Great Gatsby generates three deaths, namely the death of Mrs. Myrtle Wilson, the death of Jay Gatsby, and the death of George Wilson. This fatal love can be analysed from the perspectives of the unconscious desires, mind structure, defense mechanism, and psychic determinism of these characters.

1. Adoration of Tom Buchanan and Myrtle’s Death

            The novel depicts Myrtle as an earthy, vital, and voluptuous woman, married to George Wilson who is desperate to improve her life. She lives her dreams through unconscious desires which make her living a sexual codependency outside conjugal bond and succumbs to it. Wilson Myrtle is driven by sexual instincts rather than sensibility. The author conveys this through the depiction of her clothing style, her language, her relationship with her husband George Wilson and her lover Tom Buchanan, a brutal, hulking man and a former Yale football player who is married Daisy. First, the name Myrtle is used symbolically to suggest “a fleshy yet beautiful climbing plant vigorously moving upwards”. In addition, Myrtle dresses “stretched tight over her broad hips”. “Her manner is rather sharp and affectations are almost comic.  The language she uses is energetic, direct and unselfconscious about her own sexual needs”. (Štrba 43) All this ensures overt sexuality. She desires to impresses people among others Tom Buchanan. Although Tom Buchanan sometimes abuses her, Myrtle collapses before his sexy character.

Daisy! Daisy! Daisy! shouted Mrs. Wilson. I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai——‘Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand. Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women’s voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broken wail of pain. (Fitzgerald 41)

In running after Tom and denying her husband, Myrtle is living her id. Though she knows that Tom is married, she endangers her Christian marriage for the sake of adultery. Her divinisation of Tom is linked with her material-based love. This is demonstrated through her insult to her husband, “Beat me!” he heard her cry. “Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!” (Fitzgerald109). She despises her husband whose low incomes as a garagist does not allow her to live as the Buchanans and other nobility of the Est Egg. This unconscious conflict develops into a kind of codependency in form of romance relationship addiction. She relies on her sex to gain approval of Tom. The author crowns her addiction in stressing her deep concern with the male through her love of male pet. In Freud’s terms, this is psychological mechanism is referred to as projection. Through this excessive attachment to the male sex, Myrtle lives the extreme point of the Oedipus complex. However, this hysterical behaviour eventually makes her pay heavy price for her sexual drives. Her denying of Wilson for Tom is very determinant to her death since she ends up by being run over by the car driven by Daisy. Actually she is shunning Wilson and envisages to embrace Tom`s car to be disappointed that the people on board are her enemies and crush her. Her attitude is foreshadowed by the author through the depiction of woman by Daisy. Talking about females in general and her daughter in particular, Daisy mentions, ‘‘I hope she’ll be a fool. That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’’ (Fitzgerald 21) This is what makes this novel sentimental in the line of American novel wherein the archetype of the Great Mother rises to beak from the old patriarchy. Women characters are “pleasure-seeking” rather than home making.

2. Devotion to Myrtle and the Death of Wilson

            Myrtle’s infatuation toward Tom Buchanan is the cause of her husband George Wilson, an impoverished man whose only passion is his love for his wife. Actually, Myrtle’s love affairs with Tom creates unconscious conflict in Wilson. He lives a kind of psychological defeatism and depression and finally commits suicide. The author depicts him as "a blond, spiritless man, anemic, and faintly handsome" (Gatsby, 31). This unsexy physical morphology is what repels his wife from him. As for his material life condition the author portrays that he is “one of those worn-out men” (Gatsby, 32).  Both his physical and material conditions create a kind of rejection by his wife. Wilson therefore develops in his unconscious anxious behaviour. First, he becomes aggressive to his wife with hope to change her lustful behaviour. But this does not work. The id reaction of Myrtle is captured by the author. "walking through her husband as if he were a ghost" (Gatsby, 31); she confirms to have "made a mistake [...] when [she] married him" (Gatsby, 41). Wilson’s ego compels him to beat his wife to redress her, but the feedback is his denigration. He resorts to other aggressive ways to chastise her, as he declares, "I′ve got my wife locked in up [in the flat]. She′s going to stay there till the day after to-morrow, and then we′re going to move away" (Gatsby, 143). But Myrtle considers him coward and impotent to optimally handle her. Wilson goes further in his superego by invoking God to the sake of Myrtle’s soul to no avail. It only ferments her delirium. It just crows her impression of a prison-like relationship which she tries to break. Escaping Wilson to find her idol lover, she is deadly crushed by Daisy. The author uses this coincidence technique in the storyline to emphasize the determinism in the death of Wilson and to climaxize the storyline with depression of Wilson. This death is the unconscious motivation which suscitates an id-based reaction of Wilson. Totally in depression, he relies on his adversary’s account of the accident and does not give time to investigation to reveal the real circumstance of the accident. Without sublimation, he plots to revenge and to commit suicide. The author plays on this dramatic irony technique, that is enables the reader to know the truth behind the death of Myrtle that is ignored by Wilson to reinforce the sentimental love religion issue. This corroborates to Fiedler`s assertion that sentimental love in The Great Gatsby brings about tragedy (Fiedler 302).

3. Idolization of Daisy and the Death of Gatsby

            Jay Gatsby, a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an impoverished childhood to become wealthy, wants to win back his love with Daisy, a woman he fell in love long before he became wealthy. The author portrays this protagonist’s dreams and unconscious motivation, his failure to canalize the tripartite division of his psyche, that is, his id, ego, and superego, as a determinant factor of his death. After five years of separation, Gatsby, under the guidance of Nick (Daisy’s cousin and friend to Gatsby) wants to revivify his love with Daisy. He becomes infatuated and cannot control himself. Though Daisy is married and has a child, Gatsby’s repressed love dreams becomes uncontrollable and explode. He buys a mansion in the west Egg face to the Est Egg where Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan stay with hope to revive his love with Daisy. According to Li and Zheng, Gatsby “held the confidence that Daisy only loved him and that Daisy’s marriage was just a mistake” (Li and Zheng 53). Thus to seduce Daisy, Gatsby prepares open luxurious parties with the aim to meet Daisy. This unconscious desires develops into codependence as Gatsby becomes caretaker and narcissist. He attracts many people by his parties, nights clubs, donations at his place in the West Egg. In these open parties, his guests lose conscience before his Rolls-Royce, marvellous swimming pool, beach, crates of fresh oranges and lemons, buffet tents in the gardens overflowing with a feast, and a live orchestra playing under the stars. Liquor is free, and therefore the entertained huge crowd make the mansion a night club of promiscuity. Gatsby does not count his expenses. He rather feels grand to pursue his target though luxurious parties. About his lust for Daisy, the author mentions,

“As I watched him he adjusted himself a little, visibly. His hand took hold of hers, and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be over-dreamed — that voice was a deathless song.” (Fitzgerald 95)

Daisy’s love manoeuvres sets ablaze Gatsby’s id and plunges him into his youthful dreams. He becomes passionate and unquestionably surrenders to Daisy who is attached to the wealthy Tom by marriage. Despite Tom`s denigration of Gatsby on the basis race and social class, Gatsby remains determined to gain Daisy. Tom says,

“Self-control [...] I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife [...] Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white” (Fitzgerald 29).

However, Gatsby proceeds his fantastic tactics. He remains lecherous and clings to the wanton Daisy”. He does no notice that Daisy is fickle in love. She is simply a hypocrite seducer. She anticipates Gatsby `s death by running over Myrtle with a car. Gatsby’s ego and superego remain dormant under his sexual drives. To emphasize Gatsby’s unconscious and preconscious behaviour the author uses the Messiah archetype. In fact, Gatsby remains silent and does not reveals the guilt of Daisy in the accident. This atoning sacrifice, does not reconcile the two lovers, since soon after Gatsby’s death, Daisy disappears with Tom. The author here breaks with the renaissance tradition where writers like Shakespeare uses catharsis scenes to reconcile lovers and storyline conflicts. The hero here dies while his seducer survives to mock the stupidity of the seduced heart.

Conclusion

            Sentimental love religion arbitrates fatal end of the characters Jay Gatsby, Myrtle and George Wilson. In fact, their sexual drives maintain them in id-dictated life. They react to situations upon love dependence and depression. Gatsby and Myrtle worship their lovers to fulfill their repressed piled up in their unconscious. Due to lust for their love idols, Myrtle lives adultery and Gatsby manoeuvres to take another man’s wife. On the other hand, George Wilson suffers his adoration of his adulterous wife Myrtle. He is conscious of her love affairs with Tom, but clings to her as her goddess. He is dejected and the news about the death of his wife augments his frustration. His aggressive id propels him to kill Gatsby and himself. This blind attachment to his wife makes the storyline falling events more tragic with three deaths. Wilson and Gatsby are dreamers and both die because of their unrequited love for women who love Tom. The authorial message is linked with Fitzgerald` s life and love struggle in the twentieth century America which is characterized by revolution of women against social patriarchal conventions (as reflected in female characters, mainly Daisy, Myrtle, Catherine, and Jordan), fading Christianity, and race prejudices.

References

Creswell, John W. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches 4th ed.             California: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2014

Crocker, John and Celena Kusch. “Race and Class Identity in The Great Gatsby    and Passing” in SC             Upstate Undergraduate Research Journal, Volume 2, Fall 2009

Fiedler, A. Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Criterion Books, 1960 Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2003

Froehlich, Maggie Gordon. “Jordan Baker, Gender Dissent, and Homosexual Passing in The Great             Gatsby”, The Space Between, Volume VI:1 2010 ISSN 1551-9309, Penn State Hazleton

Gholipour, Mojtaba and Mina Sanahmadi. “A Psychoanalytic Attitude to   The Great Gatsby” in             International Journal of Humanities and Management Sciences (IJHMS) Volume 1, Issue 1             (2013) ISSN    2320–4044 (Online)

Li, Q., & Zheng, L. L. (2015). “The Greatness of Gatsby in The             Great Gatsby”. Advances in             Literary Study, 3, 52-57. Tangshan: Scientific Research Publishing Inc., 2015

Lučić, Ivana Nakić. “The American Dream in The Great Gatsby by F. S. Fitzgerald”. International             Journal of Languages and Literatures, 2(1), pp. 67-76

Reed, Jeremy. “The American Dream and the Margins in Twentieth Century Fiction in The Great             Gatsby”. Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation, University of Missouri-Columbia, 2009

Samuels, C. Tomas. The Greatness of "Gatsby" The Massachusetts Review Vol. 7, No. 4 (Autumn,             1966), pp. 783-794. Massachusetts: The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

Štrba, Ivan. “Emancipated Women of The Great Gatsby” in Institute of British and American      Studies, Faculty of Arts, Prešov University, Prešov, Slovakia

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User’s Friendly Guide. New York: Routledge, 2006.