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Archetypal Approach to the
Characters in
the Great Gatsby
I. A brief introduction of the author
and the novel
F.
Scott
Fitzgerald
(1896
–
1940)
was
an
American
author
of
novels
and
short
stories,
whose
works
are
the
paradigm
writings
of
the
Jazz
Age,
a
term
he
coined
himself.
He
is
widely
regarded
as
one
of
the
greatest
American
writers
of
the
20th
century.
1
Fitzgerald
is
considered a
member of the
Generation
The
Great Gatsby,
published in 1925, which
is his most famous work and contains his
painstaking
effort
and
deep
sorrow.
Fitzgerald
describes
the
protagonist
Gatsby
as
well as
the disil
lusionment about “American
dream” with great sympathy. The novel
is
regulated
as
one
of
the
most
impressing
works
and
also
establishes
the
author?s
position
in
American
literature.
Fitzgerald
becomes
the
spokesman
of
Jazz
age
and
typical
writer of the
“Lost
Generation”.
The United
States escapes from the disaster and damage of the
First World War
(1914-1918),
while
it
comes
into
an
era
of
prosperity,
vanity
and
Hedonism.
The
Great
War
makes
people
lack
of
spiritual
support
and
they
feel
lost,
frenzy,
unconfident and perflexed. The novels
written by Fitzgerald are true social pictures of
“Jazz
Age”
and
all
reflect
the
material
prosperity,
spiritual
desolation
and
moral
disorder in American
society.
2
In the beginning
of the novel, the first narrator, Nick
Carraway
comes
into
reader?s
eyes
and
tells
his
personality
and
background,
then
with
such
indirect
words
to
narrate
his
rationality,
integrity,
and
sticks
to
the
traditional morality.
Fitzgerald
perhaps wants to employ
Carraway?s voice to express
his own
deep interpretation and cynical criticism to
American society and people.
II.A brief introduction of archetypal
approach in literature
Archetypal
criticism was its most popular in the 1940s and
1950s, largely due to
the
work
of
Canadian
literary
critic
Northrop
Frye.
His
Anatomy
of
Criticism
deals
with archetypes and helps him establish
the fame in criticism. Archetypal approach as
an
important
school
in
western
literary
theory
lineage,
is
a
kind
of
fruit
of
all
the
contributions
by
different
critics,
which
adopted
and
developed
by
Frye.
The
most
two influential personage are J.G.
Frazer and Carl G. Jung.
Frye?s work
breaks from both Frazer and Jung in such a way
that it is distinct
from its
anthropological and psychoanalytical precursors.
For Frye, the death-rebirth
myth that
Frazer sees manifest in agriculture and the
harvest is not ritualistic since it
is
involuntary, and therefore, must be done. As for
Jung, Frye was uninterested about
the
collective
unconscious
on
the
grounds
of
feeling
it
was
unnecessary:
since
the
unconscious is unknowable it cannot be
studied. How archetypes came to be was also
of
no
concern
to
Frye;
what
he
is
interested
in
are
the
function
and
effect
of
archetypes.
For
Frye,
literary
archetypes
“play
an
essential
role
in
refashioning
the
material universe into
an alternative verbal universe that is humanly
intelligible and
viable, because it is
adapted to essential human needs and
concerns”
3
Jung?s
work theorizes about myths and archetypes in
relation to the
unconscious,
an
inaccessible
part
of
the
mind.
From
a
Jungian
perspective,
myths
are
the
“culturally
elaborated
representations
of
the
contents
of
the
deepest
recess
of
the
human
psyche:
the
world
of
the
archetypes”
4
Jung
thinks
that
The
collective
unconscious,
or
the
objective
psyche
as
it
is
less
frequently
known,
is
a
number
of
innate thoughts,
feelings, instincts, and memories that reside in
the unconsciousness
of all people. The
archetypes to which Jung refers are represented
through primordial
images,
originate
from
the
initial
stages
of
humanity
and
have
been
part
of
the
collective
unconscious
ever
since.
It
is
through
primordial
images
that
universal
archetypes are
experienced, and more importantly, that the
unconscious is revealed.
Archetypes are
figures or patterns recurring in works of the
imagination, and can
be divided into
three categories. Archetypal characters include
(but are not limited to):
the
hero,
the
villain,
the
outcast,
the
femme
fatale,
and
the
star-crossed
lovers.
Archetypal
situations include (but are not limited to): the
quest, the journal, death and
rebirth,
and
the
task.
Archetypal
symbols
and
associations
include
polarities:
light/dark,
water/desert,
height/depth,
spring/winter.
Here,
I
want
to
give
a
typical
example of archetype
-----Cinderella, derives from folktale, and its
myth story can be
date from 2500 years
ago. As so far, there are more than 700 versions
of Cinderella
around the world. This
archetype has become an indispensible and common
factor in
South Korean TV series.
III. Archetypal analysis in
The Great Gatsby
We
are
tying
to
analyze
the
characters
and
their
archetypes
in
the
novel,
Jay
Gatsby, Tom and Daisy,
the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, and Nick
Carraway.
1.
Gatsby------a variant of Jesus
Jay Gatsby is a modern Jesus-kind
protagonist, his archetype and experience can
be paralleled with
Jesus
?
resolution,
death
(crucify)
and
resurrection. Gatsby
comes
from a family which is
low and poor, both his parents are shiftless and
unsuccessful
farm people,
“
his imagination had never
really accepted them as his parents at
all.
”
5
This
situation is similar to the background of Jesus
who is from a common carpenter
family.
The young Gatsby has a brown, hardening body and
smart as well, while the
young Jesus is
also strong and fills with wisdom
“
felt within himself a
certain spiritual
quality which set him
apart from other
men
”
6
Gatsby
?
s aspiration is far-
reaching from
childhood and imagines
himself as Jesus, he had changed his name from
James Gatz
to Jay Gatsby at the age of
seventeen. Jay Gatsby can be viewed as a variant
of
“
Jesus,
God
?
s
Boy
”
. Therefore, he never
mentions his parents and
“
he
is a son of
God
”
5
. In
the New Testament, when Jesus (12 years
old) is talking with some prophets in the
temple, has refused his parents who are
searching for him,
“
why were
you searching
for me? Did you not know
that I must be in my
Father
?
s
house?
”
7
Gatsby is
like the
young Jesus that is clear with
his ideal, he must be dedicated to His
Father
?
s Business,
the service of a vast, vulgar and
meretricious beauty.
Gatsby is devoted
to his
“
mission
”<
/p>
, when he meets and then works for the
rich
Cody, who gives him the practical
and singularly appropriate education and skills,
but
at same time the desire of wealth.
“
The vague contour of Jay
Gatsby had filled out to
the
substantiality of a
man.
”
5
Now Gatsby
is am earth Jesus, he hold large party in the
house frequently to
attract
more and more admirers, just like the disciples of
Jesus.
When
Daisy
is
tired
with
all
parties,
Gatsby
immediately
stops
such
entertainment,
which
is
similar
with
the
story
that
Jesus
drives
the
cattle
dealers
and
the
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