The Great Gatsby’s Empire State of Mind

     For Jay Gatsby of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby and the persona of Alicia Keys's song "Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down," New York City represents the fulfillment of the American Dream. For Gatsby's companion, however, the Midwesterner Nick Carraway, New York City causes anxiety. For instance, Keys notes that "[t]here's nothing you can't do / Now you're in New York" while Carraway anxiously remarks that "[a]nything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge" from Long Island to New York City, "anything at all." Carraway refers to the Queensboro Bridge which crosses the East River connecting Long Island to the borough of Manhattan whereas Keys mentions the Brooklyn Bridge which also spans the East River although connecting the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Hence, Keys's persona is leaving Manhattan, while Carraway is entering it. The fact that Carraway is leaving the relative comfort of quiet, middle-class, mostly white, Long Island by crossing the bridge, readers see the city through his lens of wonder, especially as he recounts his astonishment at seeing a limousine with three Black youths driven by a White chauffeur. Such a cultural race reversal would be far from common only a few miles away on Long Island. For Keys however her starting place is Harlem, a Manhattan neighbourhood renowned for its slums, high crime rates and poverty levels. Therefore, the Brooklyn Bridge, leading to a comparatively safer part of the city, thus indicates a "going up" of the social ladder for her, while for Carraway the Queensboro Bridge leads to an area of diminished social standing, as revealed by his racially insensitive references to "the tragic eyes and short upper lips of southeastern Europe," "three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl," and Meyer Wolfsheim, a "flat-nosed Jew" with "tiny eyes."
     On the same trip to the city that Nick Carraway recounts, Gatsby seems to agree with the persona of "Empire State of Mind" that the American Dream can be realized in New York City "by any means." First, he avoids a traffic ticket by flaunting the Christmas card that the police commissioner sends him. The police officer goes beyond not giving him a traffic violation by excusing himself for having stopped Gatsby and promising that he will be sure not to do it again. This action reminds Carraway once again that Gatsby is not "just some nobody"; he has social connections which place him above the law. Second, Gatsby meets with his associate Meyer Wolfsheim, a gambler and a bootlegger. Both Gatsby and he are wealthy men that have built their riches on illegal activities. Like Gatsby's outdoing the traffic ticket which he rightfully deserved, Wolfsheim has outsmarted the legal forces that have evidence that he fixed the World Series of 1919 for his own financial benefit. He has yet to be punished for his crime and openly profits from his illegal earnings. Gatsby reasons that Wolfsheim did nothing other than seize "the opportunity" that capitalist America afforded him.
     New York City is this mythical land of opportunities where, in Key's words, "dreams are made." The rags-to-riches mentality is clearly stated in her song: "Some will sleep tonight with a hunger for more than an empty fridge." Presumably the "hunger" pertains to "seeing [their] face in lights [...] down on Broadway." Additionally, the persona has a "pocketful of dreams," implying that her pockets are empty, yet she is confident of future riches and fame. Gatsby also embodies this ideal. He moves east to Long Island and works in the city to make enough money to win his socially-superior former love, Daisy Buchanan. He contacts Daisy through his friend Nick Carraway when he feels that he has recreated himself to the extent that she will now accept him. He has a fine home, a Rolls-Royce, eight servants, and moves in chic social circles. He is even acquaintanced with the movie moguls that make the "movie scenes" to which Keys refers. Perhaps he does not "[see] his face in lights" per say, but his reputation and fame draw crowds to his parties every weekend. Nick reflects that Gatsby must have felt that "his dream [was] so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it." This desire for refashioning is echoed in Keys's lyrics "[t]hese streets will make you feel brand new." Yet his efforts prove to be futile as Daisy ultimately decides to stay in her marriage. Nick suggests that Gatsby regrets having "paid a high price for living too long with a single dream," that of wooing Daisy Buchanan.
     The myth of New York City as the place where "[t]here's nothing you can't do," leads to a feeling of invincibility. When Tom Buchanan heads towards the city to see his mistress, Myrtle, he does not consider that his wife Daisy may leave him because of his affair. He enjoys both the loyal wife, as well as the illicit lover. Yet his belief in his own invincibility is only an illusion; the novel ends tragically as Daisy hits Myrtle with Gatsby's car, killing her. Myrtle's husband then kills Gatsby in revenge, thinking he was at fault, and then he commits suicide. Gatsby, the man who had surrounded himself with socialites, has few mourners at his funeral; not even Wolfensheim makes the effort to attend and Daisy does not even send a card or flowers. At his funeral, readers learn that his father had great hopes for his son. He commemorates Gatsby as a potentially "great man" if he had lived longer, having "a big future before him," and one who could have "helped build up the country." Mr. Gatz, as well as Jay Gatsby, and Tom and Daisy Buchanan believed their American Dream would be realized through another person. For Mr. Gatz, achievement would have come through his son's successes. For Gatsby, it would have been fulfilled in a relationship with Daisy. Likewise, Daisy married Tom in hopes of attaining her dream "of love, of money." And for Tom, he desired the independence of sexual relationships with women, such as Myrtle. For each, their American Dream becomes "the dead dream." Ironically, the unravelling of their individual dreams starts in the heart of New York City at the Plaza Hotel. It is here that Daisy definitively refuses Gatsby's proposition that she leave Tom because she has learned of Gatsby's illegal dealings with Wolfsheim. On the way home from the city, the tragic accident will occur and then the subsequent murder-suicide, demolishing each dream. Leaving the city, Carraway drives "on toward death" crossing over "the dark bridge."

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Colour Discourse

I've just finished another essay dealing with racial issues in the United States, this one for my 20th Century American Novel class. In fact, I haven't even turned it in yet! Here's the introduction and some of the main points. Of course, if you'd like to read it all, let me know.


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When O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder in 1995 the media focused on the contrasting reactions of Blacks and Whites. The opinions of other racial groups were not actively sought (Enomoto 146). Similarly, societal debates surrounding Michael Jackson in the last decade of his life questioned whether his very pale skin colour overrode his African ancestry. These contemporary examples illustrate the historic tendency of Americans to identify people according to the binaries of White and Black, and this based on skin colour. Historically, pseudo-scientific racism, propagated by eugenicists, categorized people into the dualities of the desirable White and the undesirable Black, in an effort to ward off the reversal of the evolutionary process through racial intermarriage. Similarly, the “one-drop rule” adopted by eighteen states between 1910 and 1931 reinforced the dualistic categorization of people since it determined the legal definition of “Black” to include anyone with at least one drop of African blood (Herring 129). Because of these racist concerns, Whites enacted Jim Crow laws to segregate Blacks from Whites in hopes to reduce the births of interracial children.

During the 1920s, in an era when eugenicist’s arguments, Jim Crow laws, and one-drop rules were commonly accepted, a strong emphasis was thus placed on skin colour as both Blacks and Whites appropriated racist rhetoric that deemed light skin tones and European features to be more desirable than dark skin tones and African features. Two novels from this era, Langston Hughes’ Not Without Laughter, which takes place in 1910 and was published in 1930, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, set in the Roaring Twenties and published in 1925, reveal this preference for lighter skin tones in both Black and White communities. Through the inclusion of a panoply of skin tones in his novel, Hughes critiques racial binaries and also the intraracial schisms brought on by the preference in the Black community for lighter skin, while the characters in Fitzgerald’s novel are described on the more limited colour scale of white, tan, brown and golden revealing the characters’ acceptance of eugenic arguments for the conservation of the pure Nordic race.

Through the use of colours, Hughes critiques the prejudice within the Black community which considers lighter-skinned Blacks, the “high-toned” or “yellow” skinned, as more sexually and socially desirable. This stereotype creates racial divisions among Blacks. One reason for this intraracial prejudice is that light skin refers to a white ancestry which connects the light-skinned to the dominate culture and people of the United States. Blacks that hold this view accept the power structure created and upheld by Whites in which Whites are superior to all other races. This racist ideology claims that pale skin and European facial structures are beautiful and all others are undesirable (Fanon 183). The novel’s protagonist, Sandy, appropriates this aesthetic, identifying the Africans in his geography book as “ugly” (175). That other Blacks in the novel, besides Sandy, have also appropriated the ideology of considering whiteness as more attractive than dark-skinned complexions is evident. For example, at the jazz club, black girls are told to “stay where [they] are” while “[h]igh yellers” and “brown-skins” are beckoned to “draw nigh” and to “come near” (100). Obviously, the women are being divided into the sexually attractive light-skinned and the undesirable dark-skinned. Sandy’s teenaged aunt, Harriet, wants to be among the sexually desirable as she powders her face and neck which gives the impression of “pink on ebony,” before going to a barbeque with teenage boys (57). Men, too, try to be whiter to appear sexually attractive, such as the stranger Sandy meets in Chicago whose face is powdered with white talcum.

In The Great Gatsby, Whites idolize a standard of whiteness which is different from that of the Blacks in Hughes’ novel. Fitzgerald’s characters base their scale on the supposed perfection of the Teutonic physical features of the Nordic nations. Miscegenation is therefore conceived as a threat to the conservation of this pure Nordic race. The ideal Aryan body would be blond, blue-eyed and tall (Stoddard xiv), in short the embodiment of Fitzgerald’s character Tom Buchanan. It is thus noteworthy that it is he who voices the racist opinion that Whites and Blacks should not marry. His theory is based on the writings of eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard, which Buchanan, in ignorance, or by the narrator’s mis-remembering, identifies as Henry H. Goddard. Both Stoddard and Goddard advocated scientific racism, dividing races along the scale from the most evolved White to the least evolved Black, including the races of Yellow, Brown, and Red in between the two extremes. The United States, with its influx of immigrants, was thus a battleground for the conservation of the Nordic race. As Madison Grant writes in the introduction to Stoddard’s book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy,

Democratic ideals among an homogeneous population of Nordic blood, as in England or America, is one thing, but it is quite another for the white man to share his blood with, or intrust (sic) his ideals to, brown, yellow, black, or red men. This is suicide pure and simple, and the first victim of this amazing folly will be the white man himself. (xxxii)

Through the influence of these men, Buchanan warns his white friends of the threat of the downfall of modern civilization occasioned by the pure race being submerged by the “colored empires,” a grouping which includes the inferior White races of southern and eastern Europe (13).

At each recounting of Buchanan’s racist views, his companions mock them, such as when his wife tells Nick, in Tom’s presence, that she and her friend Jordan passed a “white childhood” together in Louisville or assures Tom that she and Nick were talking about the Nordic race during Tom’s absence (19). Nick, as narrator, treats Tom’s views as “gibberish,” and is tempted to laugh aloud at Tom’s ignorance, but neither he nor any other of Tom’s acquaintances openly confront Tom’s racist rhetoric (130). In fact, they have internalized it without vocalizing it. The Whites live in “white palaces,” wear white clothing, and powder their white skin in the attempt to convey racial purity (5). The desire of Whites to reflect a pure whiteness is based on the eugenicist Stoddard’s insistence on three races of White peoples, of which the Nordics were the most evolved. People hailing from the Mediterranean regions, including the Republic of Ireland, or from southeastern Europe were considered less sexually and sociably desirable, as well as being less intelligent (Stoddard xiii-xiv). Although Gatsby is white, Tom does not consider him to be of the pure race because he is of the working class and is descended from ambiguous European ancestry. Gatsby’s “brown,” “tanned” skin is a testament to his years as a sailor on Lake Superior and also excludes him from the purer white skinned of the leisured upper class (98). Tom’s contempt for Gatsby as an inferior White is evident in his consideration of a relationship between Daisy and Gatsby to be comparable to “intermarriage between black and white” (130).

Racist preferences of lighter skin tones are evident in both Not Without Laughter and The Great Gatsby, yet Hughes’ inclusion criticizes the practice, while Fitzgerald upholds it. Hughes’ unflattering portrayal of Tempy and her snobbish attitude toward her family and other dark-skinned poor Blacks, whom she considers “niggerish,” (158), reveal that haughty attitudes based on skin tone divide a community already oppressed in American society. Fitzgerald’s characters mirror Fitzgerald’s own questioning of eugenics. During his undergraduate degree at Princeton eugenics theories were “palpably in the air,” mainly due to the teachings of biology professor Edwin G. Conklin (Bender 225). Like his character Tom Buchanan, Fitzgerald seemingly embraced Nordicism, writing to Edmund Wilson four years before the publication of Gatsby, that Americans should “[r]aise the bars of immigration and permit only Scandinavians, Teutons, Anglo Saxons and Celts to enter” (Fitzgerald 47). However, Buchanan’s views are dismissed by the other characters, revealing Fitzgerald’s own uneasiness with the claims of eugenics. Rather, Fitzgerald’s concern with the “rising tide of the colored empires” is disclosed in Nick’s apprehension of the presence of Blacks and “inferior” Whites on the bridge crossing to New York City, a city where “anything can happen [...] [e]ven Gatsby” (69). Americans had to choose in the opening decades of the 1900s, and presently have to choose, if racism will continue to segregate a nation based on the colour, and more appropriately, the shade of colour, of the skin of its citizens.

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