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FEMINIST THEORY “Daisy, in fact, is more victim than victimizer: she is victim first of Tom Buchanan’s ‘cruel power,’ but then of Gatsby’s increasingly depersonalized vision of her. She becomes the unwitting ‘grail’ (149) in Gatsby’s adolescent quest to remain ever-faithful to his seventeen-year-old conception of self, and even Nick admits that Daisy ‘tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything’ (97).” Person, Leland S. Jr. “’Herstory’ and Daisy Buchanan.” American Literature 50.2 (1978): 250-257.
“Thus, Daisy’s reputed failure of Gatsby is inevitable; no woman, no human being, could ever approximate the Platonic ideal he has invented. If she is corrupt by the end of the novel and part of a ‘conspiratorial’ (146) with Tom, that corruption is not so much inherent in her character as it is the progressive result of her treatment by the other characters.” Person, Leland S. Jr. “’Herstory’ and Daisy Buchanan.” American Literature 50.2 (1978): 250-257.
POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM “So it seems especially significant that there is one area in which Nick continually makes judgements about others with no apparent consciousness of doing so: in his numerous references to the plethora of minor characters who are in some way foreign, in some way alien, to the privileged cultural group of his day, of which he is a member: white, upper-class, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, born of families who had prospered in America for several generations. Whenever Nick has cause to mention people from a different culture, he emphasizes their ethnicity as if that were their primary or only feature and thus foregrounds their ‘alien’ quality.” Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, 2nd Edition. New York: Routledge, 2006.
MARXIST THEORY “One of the most effective ways The Great Gatsby criticizes capitalist culture is by showing the debilitating effects of capitalist ideology even on those who are its most successful products, and it does so through its representation of commodification . . . Nowhere in The Great Gatsby is commodification so clearly embodied as in the character of Tom Buchanan. The wealthiest man in the novel, Tom relates to the world only through his money: for him, all things, and all people, are commodities.” Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, 2nd Edition. New York: Routledge, 2006.
“People like George and Myrtle Wilson don’t stand a chance in a world dominated by people like the Buchanans. The valley of ashes . . . Is a powerfully chilling image of the life led by those who do not have the socioeconomic resources of the Buchanans.” “Thus another flaw in the novel, from a Marxist perspective, is the way in which the commodity’s appeal is powerfully reinforced for the reader by the lush language used to describe this world of leisure and luxury.” Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, 2nd Edition. New York: Routledge, 2006.
