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Saintly Visions or Blind Faith? (Part Two of Three)© Emily Woodward
Jan 7, 2000
When confronted with the knowledge that Gatsby has not spent his entire life locked away in his gaudy shrine on West Egg - that he has instead made his wealth through elicit dealings with the most notorious racketeer of the time, "the man who fixed the World's Series back in 1919" (48) - Carraway shows his loyalty by not betraying this secret to Tom Buchanan. The narrator's silence stands in contrast to the later accusations, which he directs at Tom, concerning the death of Myrtle Wilson (119). By this point in the novel, Tom has discovered Gatsby's secret for himself and has exposed the romantic hero in front of Daisy, causing her interest in him "to vanish forever" (Lehan, 57). Significantly, Carraway sees the contemptuous reactions of Daisy and Tom as more reprehensible than the deeds which provoke them. In this way, Carraway shows a marked prejudice towards Gatsby, whose flaws he wishes to cover up, versus the Buchanans, whom he desires to see exposed. Carraway, then, is not an objective, detached narrator - "one of the few honest people he has ever met" (Fitzgerald, 54) - who sees things entirely as they are. Rather, as noted by Jordan Baker, he is a "bad driver" (Lehan, 69). This means that his vision is as blurred as that of the other characters in the novel (Laehan, 107). Carraway's "misseeing" leads him to chase after Gatsby's green light as though its brilliance were not, in fact, worldly and orgiastic in nature, but, rather, sublime.
Sal, likewise, chooses to remain silent when his beloved Dean is derided, by their friends in Denver, as more deadbeat than beatific. Dean's loss of holiness is linked to his having left the road and entered the real world, in which he is expected to assume mainstream responsibilities as a husband and father. Unlike the characters in The Great Gatsby, Dean is seen as an excellent driver. Indeed, as previously noted, the road is where Dean reigns supreme - where he, in effect, gets IT, and is understood as holy. By contrast, in the real world, he is labeled a shiftless "goof": the worst thing he can possibly be, according to Norman Mailer in his essay, "The White Negro." In his narration, however, Sal tempers this accusation with the adjective "holy" (194), thereby showing his ongoing faith in Dean, despite the latter's obvious flaws.
Seymour's flaws, like Dean's, manifest themselves with regard to women. He momentarily abandons his childlike lifestyle by marrying a worldly young lady, well-versed in Freudian theories "and all that crap" (Salinger, 221). According to Buddy, she and her mother "misinterpret" Seymour's spiritual sagacity as psychobabble, and force him to be analyzed. It is the analyst, Buddy defensively maintains, who drives Seymour to the ultimate form of transcendence: suicide. Seymour's wife and his analyst, conversely, maintain that his final act is only further evidence of his already disturbed nature. Regardless of his motivations, however, Seymour ends his life far afield from the "Holy Ground" that Buddy hoped he would one day reach.
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