The Role Of The Proletariat In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby, written in 1925 by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, was a tale of the gilded East Coast of America in the wild decade known by “The Roaring 20s”. From the Wealthiest of Nobles to the Lowest of Peasants, The Great Gatsby highlights the differences between the proletariat and the blessed bourgeoisie, having come to riches through means of simple inheritance. Every identity of the character as the bourgeoisie or the proletariat are shown in definite form; the rich emanate a careless aura and the poor are coated with layers of sweat and dust. All, from the aristocratic and arrogant Tom, to the hard-working Myrtle, and to the idealistic Gatsby, are defined by Fitzgerald as of the low or the high. In using character description, self-comparison, and class comparison, Fitzgerald reveals Jordan as the final
piece of his identity: a low, hard-working American who reached the status of celebrity in the time of the Roaring 20s.
Every character in The Great Gatsby is a portion of Fitzgerald’s identity, a part of him.
In Tom and Daisy, he shows the part of him that fits into the upper class, among the rich “fellows” of the East and beautiful fools of the South such as his wife Zelda. Nick is the logical side shown in the mentality of the working class, for throughout his life, Fitzgerald is not completely crazy nor careless like the people with inheritance. And Gatsby is his idealistic spirit: the personification of his greatest hopes, his finest dreams, and his most wondrous passions. However, Jordan Baker, the last of the main characters, is the only one without a clear identity of rich and poor, and the other four are evenly divided between old and new money, leaving Fitzgerald’s wealth status as a stagnant tie, strung between two classes. While, Fitzgerald gives Jordan the exterior of an elite noble as he paints himself as one throughout the Roaring 20s, reality is the fact that under the mask is the spirit of a lowly human, someone who has worked so hard to reach the top: Jordan through golf, and Fitzgerald through his writing. This relates to someone who has reached the
top. Fitzgerald initially paints Jordan as wealthy, just like Tom and Daisy Buchanan, to the eyes of Nick Carraway when he meets the trio. However, she does hide something inside her exterior, for the presence of someone unfamiliar causes “the [invisible] object she [balances to] totter a little,” which is the result “of a fright” (Fitzgerald: 9). Comparing this to Nick’s insight on Gatsby’s behavior, for “[Gatsby] was never quite still,” can be said that Gatsby and Jordan both come from the same sort of blood, members of the lower class who rose to the upper levels of society (64). Jordan, who rose up to the top like Gatsby, also has had some shady instances in her career, occasionally causing “a thing approaching the proportions of a scandal” to erupt in the paper about “her moving a ball from a bad lie,” (57) and is also shown from Nick commenting about her “incurable [dishonesty]” (58). While lying to reach the top is not a characteristic that describes the whole of the proletariat, the majority of those who do climb to the upper ranks of society have used subterfuge and deceit to rise higher and higher. Jordan is not an exception. Jordan’s identity of the lowly is not just in her character but also in her actions, specifically what she does at the “Great” Gatsby’s party early in the book. Gatsby, the personification of the new rich as a whole, has parties which only attract fellow “new rich folks” like himself. It is “the [representation of] the staid nobility of the countryside” (44). While his parties are shunned by the higher class, such as Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker is a frequent attendee of his parties, identifying her not as an elitist, but one of the new generation as well. Still, she does her best to act wealthy as “she responds absently to [Nick]” when Nick first arrives and meets her at Gatsby’s party (42). When with Nick she describes the first part of the party, characterized with small and mindless talk as “a somehow wasteful and inappropriate half-hour” (45). This is why Nick and Jordan, both parts of Fitzgerald, do not identify as true upper class, for the upper class, specifically Daisy and Tom, are people who could spend all their lives talking about wasteless things and doing lifeless events and throwing uneventful parties. In comparing the actions and the behavioral patterns of the “old money” class and the “new money” class, Jordan Baker follows the lines more as of one with new money. But it does not end with Jordan Baker. In tying her to F. Scott Fitzgerald, the man himself, we can see that her patterns and Fitzgerald’s patterns are both in attune with one another. From author to character, Jordan is Fitzgerald’s Reality as a “New Money” person. Before publishing This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald was a needy man, for money, for fame, and for his wife-to-be, Zelda. Resembling the descriptions of the people of the “New Money” class in The Great Gatsby, particularly Gatsby and Jordan, Fitzgerald was a young man who wanted to succeed in many different things. Hooked by the alluring American Dream, Fitzgerald had been an idealist, in his college years to his young-adult life. Many of the lower class, the peasantry and the New Money, have a calling by the American Dream, to reach the social ranks of the wealthy and to be prosperous. In the same way as his characters Nick, Gatsby, and Jordan, Fitzgerald was exactly the same. This shows the connection Fitzgerald has in representing his identity within three of his main characters, all of the same status. And just like the lowly trio, Fitzgerald is caught up into the rich pleasures of life the moment This Side of Paradise hits the shelves, and the moment his love Zelda marries him. Just like Gatsby and Jordan, he attends lavish parties and shows his side as an alcoholic, not just for wine, but also as someone who is unable to control his circumstances and his newly inherited wealth. While he was successful at wooing the second Golden Girl of his life, he shows the failed pursuits of Gatsby and Jordan, respectively towards Daisy Buchanan and Nick Carraway. In Gatsby’s and Jordan’s failed relationships are the failed attempts of many of the lower class in trying to reach the American Dream. In giving Jordan that sense of failure, Fitzgerald further identifies Jordan as a “New Money” person, not someone who has held a stable wealth and economy for years. Comparing herself to him, Fitzgerald confirms Jordan, the fifth and final piece of his many split identities, as of the lowly. Francis Scott Fitzgerald, an idealist who was among the few to rise to wealth and fame, had his identity divided amongst his characters, as old and new money; through the revelation of Jordan Baker, Fitzgerald is determined as someone who has worked to achieve his status. The Roaring 20’s were a period of wealth, of enjoyment, and of façades. In writing The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald paints the culture and lifestyle of Long Island, where old money and new money clash into one another to form a dance of patterns and trends. His many characters, each depicting a part of the culture, flush out the life of The Great Gatsby, and in figuring out the identities of his five main characters, Nick, Gatsby, Tom, Daisy, and Jordan, we are able to uncover the identity of Fitzgerald himself, as a low, hardworking man with a dream and a passion, just like Jordan Baker.