So, if we read The Great Gatsby with the assumption that its narrator is gay, what new insights do you think we get from it? What do we notice that we might have missed otherwise?
“The American Dream” through the experiences related from Fitzgerald’s “Lost Generation” and “The Great Gatsby”
July 23, 2019Can thinking about the structure of stories help us understand whether a given story is good or bad?
July 23, 2019So, if we read The Great Gatsby with the assumption that its narrator is gay, what new insights do you think we get from it? What do we notice that we might have missed otherwise?
Question Description
Below is a response to the attached essay. Answer the bold questions. answer does not need to exceed a couple of paragraphs but any length you prefer.
I especially like the way you emphasize that “Nick Caraway, who seems unaware of his gay orientation, shows the expression of a heterosexual plot through closeted gay susceptibility.”
The “heterosexual plot,” of course, is the classic love triangle of Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom. When you boil it down, the plot is almost a cliche: Poor Boy loves Rich Girl; Poor Boy goes off to make his fortune so he can marry Rich Girl; while Poor Boy is gone, Rich Girl gets tired of waiting and marries some Other Man, Poor Boy dies trying to win her back.
Ho hum.
One way Fitzgerald makes this cliche a little more interesting is by making the Poor Boy a mobbed-up criminal. Another is to make the Other Man a mean, racist, cheating bastard.
Yet another way of spicing up this formula would be to have the story told through the eyes of a gay man (either closeted or clueless, take your pick), and maybe this is exactly what Fitzgerald did by including the McKee scene, and thereby suggesting Nick is gay.
So, if we read The Great Gatsby with the assumption that its narrator is gay, what new insights do you think we get from it? What do we notice that we might have missed otherwise?
