Comparing between Tom Buchanan and Gatsby - Essay Example

Running Head: THE GREAT GATSBY Tom Buchanan and Gatsby in "The Great Gatsby" [The Writer’s Name] [The Name of the Institution] Tom Buchanan and Gatsby in "The Great Gatsby" Introduction In 1925, Fitzgerald had launched one of his sharpest and most devastating attacks on the upper classes, in the form of his character Tom Buchanan, the Long Island millionaire in The Great Gatsby. Buchanan's main characteristic is precisely his muscularity, which makes him "a man of physical accomplishments" rather than a man of the mind. His strength serves to heighten his tendency towards brutality. Daisy describes him as "a big hulking physical specimen"(15). Throughout the novel, Buchanan is described as a massive body directed by a simple mind. Thus, Carraway refers to Buchanan's reaction when he discovers that his wife may have a lover by commenting: "There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind" (117). During his description of his last meeting with Buchanan, he stresses the latter's lack of mental maturity: "I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child." In contrast, Gatsby is described as a man with "a lot of brain power" engaged "in improving his mind" (157,162). There is much in common between Buchanan and the members of this second class. To the second class belong the guardians and keepers of order and security "--above all, the highest types of warrior, the judges and defenders of the law" (164). The novel shows that Tom Buchanan embodies a combination of warrior attributes (his brutality and muscularity), together with an obsessive 'lip-service' to law and order, in spite of his infidelity and the often-criminal expression of its brutality. An example of this tendency is to be found in Buchanan's defence of family values: "Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they'll throw everything overboard" (Fitzgerald, 1991, 122). In his attack on Gatsby, Buchanan emphasises the illegal sources which lie behind the former's wealth and flamboyance: "'Who are you anyhow?' broke out Tom. 'You're one of that bunch that hangs around with Meyer Wolfshiem'" (125). In his defence of the "status quo," which, as a useless millionaire, he depends on, Buchanan attempts to appear morally upright in a negative sense, by trying to unmask Gatsby's activities as a bootlegger, who collaborates with Wolfsheim, a paidup member of the underworld. (Gidley, 2003,171-81) Characterisation and Comparison Sublime egotism" is an integral part of Gatsby's character is demonstrated by the following description of him: "There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the premises of life" (Fitzgerald, 1991, 6). He represents an affirmation of life and all its possibilities without paying heed either to norms or to social prescriptions. Driven by his desire to possess Daisy at any price, his "vitalistic dream," Gatsby becomes a gangster, thus displaying his lack of "conventional" morality. Efficiency is the other essential attribute of the ruling class. The novel emphasises that Gatsby is a highly efficient individual who even uses his spare time to study electricity; even at his parties, he is always alert to telephone calls relating to his business affairs, whereas Buchanan receives calls only from his mistress and seems to be reluctant to learn anything new about economic life. As the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors's eyes--a fresh, green, breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the tress that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams. (Fitzgerald [1925] 1991, 168) Clearly, the beginning of the American civilization involved conquest, aggression, and destruction. There is an element at the very birth of the American civilization which goes hand in hand with amorality and dreams. Fitzgerald knows, of course, exactly what he is doing. He wants to show America desecrated, mutilated, violated. Carraway links Gatsby with the American past by stressing elements of violent desire at the heart of the American dream. Implicitly, the source of Buchanan's riches are included in this, albeit that they are protected by law and morality, because, of all the characters in the novel, he is certainly the most grounded in and ancestrally related to American history. Critics have remarked on Fitzgerald's artistic success in transposing this paragraph from the first chapter of the novel to its end. Yet it is significant that Fitzgerald had previously placed this paragraph at the beginning of the novel shortly after Nick Carraway had visited Buchanan's "red-and white Georgian Colonial mansion," for this original placement serves to link the source of both Gatsby's and Buchanan's riches to forces of aggression and exploitation. Buchanan uses the defence of law and order to hide his decadence and, implicitly, his amorality. Later in the novel, during his argument with Gatsby, Buchanan uses the "intermarriage between black and white" (Fitzgerald, 1991, 122) as a sign of the decay of various social and cultural institutions. Buchanan seems to echo Stoddard's interpretation of the peril presented to America by the expansion in numbers of its black population, a thesis which made his reputation as the most popular American racist of the 1920s. As an unproductive member of society, Buchanan needs to defend his social position. As a hereditary millionaire, he is conscious of the importance of tradition and social order as devices by which to retain his position. His racist remarks also contrast with the eruption of the Harlem Renaissance and the search for wider recognition undertaken by many black intellectuals at that time who sought for dignity within American society. Buchanan simply cannot cope with the idea of change in society. When Order Unmasks Chaos One of the greatest artistic achievements of the novel lies in the association of the main characters (Buchanan and Gatsby) with specific environments. On the one hand, Buchanan's East Egg Georgian mansion overlooking the bay represents order. Its French windows, sun-dial lawns, and brick walls suggest respectability and a continuity with the past. On the other hand, Gatsby's West Egg environment is closer to a "fantastic dream," a grotesque El Greco picture in which only drunkenness, carelessness, distortion, and chaos appear to thrive, and, moreover, with no sense of continuity. (Kerr, 1999, 405-31) Yet, East Egg, behind its facade of order, is much closer to West Egg than it appears to be at first sight. During the night of the car accident which kills Myrtle Wilson, Nick Carraway returns to Buchanan's East Egg mansion after an absence of three months. Looking through the blinds, he manages to spot Daisy and Tom "sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table with a plate of cold fried chicken between them and two bottles of ale" (Fitzgerald, 1991, 136). It is a scene which denotes a strange intimacy, which becomes stranger because it has occurred shortly after, and, we infer, has been caused by the tragic death of an innocent woman. Buchanan is intently talking at Daisy, and the fact that neither of them have touched the chicken or the ale leads Carraway to believe that they are both "conspiring together" (136). The fact that neither has partaken of the superficially 'homely' element of the scene (that is, their supper) renders the meal an aesthetic rather than a functional requirement, contrived, like their conspiracy itself, to give their destructive relationship a veneer of stability. (Pauly, 2001, 225-36) Thus, they are, ironically, alienated from the very substances which appear initially to convey a domestic cosiness. Finally, the conspiracy is acted out when Wilson kills Gatsby at the swimming pool and then commits suicide. Carraway finds the proof of his suspicions when he accidentally and unavoidably meets Buchanan in the street, after everything has appeared to come to a conclusion. When he asks about what Buchanan said to Wilson during the afternoon of the accident, the latter's answer is revealing: "I told him the truth" he said. "He came to the door while we were getting ready to leave. . . .He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn't told him who owned the car. . . ."He broke off defiantly, "What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy's but he was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle like you'd run over a dog and never even stopped his car." (166) Buchanan's revenge accentuates the main features of his social decay. His destruction of Gatsby, which avoids any direct confrontation through the subtle means that he employs, and his subsequent denial of any responsibility for his actions display a degree of cunning and sophisticated contrivance. Whereas, for the true aristocrat, self-affirmation springs from a triumphant affirmation of his own demands, the slave requires that all objective stimuli be capable of action; therefore, "his action is a reaction" (35). During much of the novel Buchanan acts as a passive individual. Even his eventual action is only responsive, whereas Gatsby creates his own self in a burst of initiative that marks the beginning of his social rise. Moreover, although a gangster, Gatsby is still capable of an aristocratic form of honour. Although he has the possibility of escaping to Chicago, he decides to stand by Daisy after the accident. However, Buchanan, who is driven by a slave morality and is obsessed with preserving his reputation and possessions, never runs risks. (Mandel, 1998, 541-558) satisfied by his revenge, Buchanan returns to his former passive state, enveloped in the security of the comforts of his colonial mansion. In his revenge and in his inability to forget, he shows his resentment, and the very essence of the slave mentality, which characterizes his decadence. Tom Buchanan confirms Carnegie's suspicions of hereditary wealth as an element of decadence in American society. In fact, heritage, in both a social and a biological sense, represents the key to understanding his personality as well as his place in the novel. His social heritage places him in the position of a member of the leisure class, that is, mainly as a consumer rather than a creator of wealth for society. (Bergman, 2004, 243-50) His own inefficiency explains his conservative position, for he is afraid of both the power of the newly rich, such as Gatsby, and of the political transformations which may emerge from the proliferation of new races in society. Above all, he is portrayed as a delinquent protected by social conventions that conceal his misdeeds, who tries to camouflage his misbehaviour by appealing to a moral order. Buchanan, Gatsby, and Fitzgerald: Wealth and The American Dream The features of Jay Gatsby's personality described in this article serve to contextualise his sudden arrival in a wider sense. Buchanan represents the individual who is unsuited to the labours of ordinary life. His extreme moral degeneration gives new meaning to the role that Gatsby plays. Although he is, in the broader terms of his society, a delinquent, Gatsby embodies a series of virtues that are totally lacking in the America of which Tom Buchanan is paradigmatic, such as vitality, efficiency, loyalty, and the necessity of a realisable dream. What the novel suggests is that in a world dominated by millionaires such as Buchanan, it becomes more and more difficult for men like Gatsby, whatever their mistakes and deficiencies, to climb the social ladder without partaking of the corruption that is associated with the leisure class. In the long run, it seems probable that Buchanan's class would dictate the rules of the society to which Gatsby aspires, thus making it hard for such self-made men to escape its corrosive influence.( Fryer, 2000, 153-66) Conclusion Tom Buchanan's brutal amorality overshadows Gatsby's selfishness and his disregard for any principles, and highlights the latter's eventual acceptance of responsibility (he chooses to stand by Daisy in the aftermath of the accident), which ultimately renders him vulnerable. Additionally, Buchanan's extreme, yet curiously unmanly brutality reveals him as a debauched member of the leisure class. Carraway's acceptance of his friend's dubious methods of captivating Daisy is another aspect of this personal loathing for Buchanan, and of his need to defend Gatsby against the brutality with which the former is synonymous within the context of the narrative. The position of Buchanan, as well as that of Gatsby, reveals the possibilities that wealth can create in society, and that each individual is responsible for the uses to which he puts his capital. Consequently, the inconsistency between what Buchanan would like to be perceived as, and what he actually is, does not necessarily imply that Fitzgerald condemns the importance of wealth in society. If culture follows money, which implies the ability to put the latter to imaginative use, Gatsby, rather than Buchanan, should be associated with the highest social class. Fitzgerald's words show his internal division when writing The Great Gatsby, which is illustrated by the opposing qualities of Gatsby and Buchanan: the repellence of Buchanan as a character sits well with the self-appraisal of a reluctant imperialist who hates the intellectual connotations of his own imperialism. In this respect, The Great Gatsby occupies a position which is close to the halfway mark in Fitzgerald's intellectual development. References Bergman, Roland. 2004. The Great Gatsby and Modern Times. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 245-50 Fryer, Sarah Beebe. 2000. "Beneath the Mask: The Plight of Daisy Buchanan." Critical Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald's “The Great Gatsby.” Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: G.K. Hall, 153-166. Gidley, Mick. 2003. "Notes on F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Passing of the Great Race," Journal of American Studies 7, no. 2 (August): 171-81. Kerr, Frances. 1999. "Feeling Half-Feminine: Modernism and the Politics of Emotion in The Great Gatsby." American Literature 68: 405-31 Mandel, Jerome. "The Grotesque Rose: Medieval Romance and The Great Gatsby." Modern Fiction Studies 34 (1998): 541-558. Pauly, Thomas H. 2001. "Gatsby as Gangster," Studies in American Fiction 21 (August): 225-36. Tanner, Tony. 1990. Introduction. The Great Gatsby. London: Penguin. 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