Essay | Ambivalence in the Great Gatsby

In Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Gatsby is a morally ambiguous character. Fitzgerald has Gatsby be a sinister villain and a romantic hero who inspires deep ambivalence in the reader. Gatsby inspires disquietude for being a sinister villain and a mobster, but he inspires pleasure for being a romantic hero at the end of the novel. This mixture of disquietude and pleasure forces the reader to respond to Gatsby with deep ambivalence.

Fitzgerald causes us to have a sense of disquietude toward Gatsby due to the mobster activities he is involved in, the lies that he makes up about his past, the fact that he is pursuing a married woman, and the vulgar way in which he shows off his wealth. One of the mobster activities that Gatsby is involved in is the laundering of stolen bonds where several of his men are thrown into jail. This causes a sense...
(read more)