As we read The Great Gatsby, we eventually suspect that Fitzgerald’s word-puzzle is, ultimately, best explained by acknowledging the pervasive energies of modernism, with all its inherent ambiguities. We delight in the unravelling, not the solution itself. We are presented with a multilayered, complex, Russian doll of a novel. Yet as the layers are peeled away, the central characters and the world in which they live are exposed, and displayed as superficial and empty.
There are so many tantalising questions that lie unanswered. Some must remain so — for example, would Tom ever have sold Wilson a car? Who was Owl-eyes? Whose teeth are on Wolfshiem’s cuffs? What was that ‘fragment of lost words’ that Nick can’t quite recall? And what did happen to that dog? But many others can be tackled with relish.
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