“We see at once that the Great Gatsby is not…a study of

illusion and integrity, but of carelessness”

“But busy, busy, still art thou,
To bind the loveless joyless vow,
The heart from pleasure to delude”
J. Thompson

In his essay “The Eyes of Dr. Eckleburg: A Re-examination of “The Great Gatsby”,
Tom Burnam puts forward his interpretation of the text. I wish to address the point that he put
forward as to the novel being more about carelessness than misinformation and honesty. My
own interpretation of the text is in short, a comment on the generation and society left after
the First World War. This interpretation follows from his other novels and short stories as they
all follow a similar theme. As I will show, there are multiple interpretations of the book
however some are more logical than others.

During the First World War thousands of Americans died, despite joining the conflict
in April 1917 and this, quite understandably, created disharmony in society and also lead
those returning from war to try to come to terms with their experiences. Although Fitzgerald
himself never actually went to war he was called up to fight but the war ended before he was
called upon to make the trip to Europe. This is in contrast to Gatsby who we are told “tried
very hard to die” during the war and for that earned great honours from “every Allied
government…- even Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea.” This
romanticised expression of Montenegro is one of the things described as enchanted
throughout – including Gatsby’s life and Daisy.

It is here in chapter IV that we get the first impression that Nick does not wholly trust
Gatsby and although it doesn’t last long, it is evidence enough to suggest that there is
something not quite right about Gatsby and the way in which Nick reveres him. Fitzgerald
intentionally threads doubt into every account of Gatsby’s past and Nick begins to wonder “if
there wasn’t something a little sinister about him, after all.” This lack of integrity is a running
theme of the novel and although care is given as the reason for Jordan liking Nick earlier in
the chapter she is described by Nick as “incurably dishonest” and although this is written in
hindsight we, as readers, can’t help but question everything she has said up to this point, until
Fitzgerald reassures us by telling us “[Nick is] one of the few honest people [he] has ever
known.” This self-justification that the reader is not entirely sure of is similar to that of
Stevens in Remains of the Day, when we suspect him of eavesdropping; he attempts to
reassure us by saying “I could not help but get the gist of what was being said.” As we can
see, there is a distinct difference between the author’s voice and intentions and the narrator’s
voice. Undoubtedly Fitzgerald intended us to be suspicious of Gatsby throughout the novel
until we begin to feel genuinely sorry for him.

After the atrocities that happened during the war it is easy to sympathise with those
who lost their faith. It has been suggested the eye of Dr T.J Eckleburg were put in after the
cover illustration had been finished and Fitzgerald added them in homage to it, however I feel
that the symbolism is far too poignant for this to have been a mere after-thought. For me,
these eyes are directly representing the eyes of God, a God that has been abandoned and left
to decay such as “his eyes, dimmed a little by many painless days, under sun and rain,
[brooded] on over the solemn dumping ground.”

Burnam uses the examples of careless driving in support for his claim to the central
theme of the text being the tragedy that this has brought to all affected by it and only
“[Gatsby] and he alone, barring Carraway – survives sound and whole in character.” I cannot

Tris Gibbons
Words: 943
accept that Fitzgerald wrote Gatsby in the sole purpose to put across the hazards of bad
driving; I can, therefore, only speculate that this is a smaller issue than Burnam makes it out
to be and instead would suggest that the references to driving are there simply as pointers or
symbols of foreshadowing the accidents that occur later in the novel. The passage with the
“amputated wheel” gives those who return to the book a pointer as to the ending, with the
line: “You don’t understand…I wasn’t driving.” Afterwards, as a solution to the problem, the
“criminal” suggests “[putting] her in reverse” to which the response is “but the wheel’s off.”
In a very abstract way this episode is a taste of things to come as Gatsby tries to “beat on…
against the current” and reclaim the past which poverty and war robbed him of.

While Burnam’s essay simply puts forward his alternative view of “The Great
Gatsby” I can’t help but feel he has taken the symbols at too deep-a-level. Burnam says the
reason he does this is due to the “confusion of themes and duality of the symbol-structure, of
which Fitzgerald seems to have been unaware. The book…falls short of its possibilities
because its energies are spent in two directions” revealing both the protagonist and author in
great detail making it “somewhat less sharp, less pointed, more diffused in its effect.” By this
Burnam is simply saying he thinks Fitzgerald should have been more careful in allowing
himself to come through in his work and stuck to telling the story of Jay Gatsby. Sometimes
we must take a text at face value and not look too deep as not all novels have such
unfathomable depths.

Tris Gibbons
Words: 943