F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Fiction: “An Almost Theatrical Innocence”

Chapter Four: “An Almost Theatrical Innocence”

Jay Gatsby, as James Gatz’s Platonic “ideal self,” must, I have suggested, be objectified for others, must, in effect, be performed in order for it to become actual. And having invoked Sartre’s Being and Nothingness to examine the existential aspect of the self as a being-for-others created by the Other’s gaze, I now want to turn to the sociologist Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life to examine the notion of a self that must be continually performed. Remarking that “life itself is a dramatically enacted thing” (72), Goffman understands any social interaction as in some sense a performance of self, and he defines performance as referring to “all the activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some influence on the observers” (22). Goffman distinguishes between sincere performers and cynical ones, the former being those “who believe in the impression fostered by their own performance,” while the latter have no belief in their “own act and no ultimate concern with the beliefs” of their audience (18). By this definition, Gatsby is clearly a sincere performer. And though he is involved in shady dealings, he is certainly no confidence man, which is to say, “Jay Gatsby” is not an alias adopted for the purpose of perpetrating a fraud. Interestingly enough, in distinguishing between “real, sincere, or honest performances” and false ones, Goffman describes the latter as those “that thorough fabricators assemble for us, whether meant to be taken unseriously, as in the work of stage actors, or seriously, as in the work of confidence men” (70). This grouping together of actors and con men as purveyors of false performances distinguished from one another only by whether they are meant to be taken unseriously or seriously gives a further resonance to Gatsby’s living in a community largely populated by theater and movie people and thus to Gatsby’s remark to Nick after the confrontation at the Plaza: that Tom had told Daisy what he discovered about Gatsby “in a way that frightened her— that made it look as if I was some kind of cheap sharper” (118–19). Gatsby c h a p t e r f o u r “An Almost Theatrical Innocence” “An Almost Theatrical Innocence” 87 objects to the performance of his ideal self being characterized as that of a swindler or cheating gambler (the dictionary definition of “sharper”), yet it’s not clear whether Gatsby objects more to the implication of the word “sharper” or the word “cheap,” that is, to the implication that he’d be unable to support Daisy in the style to which she is accustomed. Since Gatsby’s money ultimately comes from his association with Meyer Wolfshiem—a man he describes to Nick as “a gambler” who fixed the World Series, that is, a cheating gambler—Gatsby realizes that this could easily be construed as making him a “sharper” by association—just not a cheap one. Since the performance Gatsby means to give, as we said, is of a person of inherited wealth, someone of much the same social stratum as Daisy, Goffman ’s remarks about performing in a higher social class are relevant: “A status , a position, a social place is not a material thing, to be possessed and then displayed; it is a pattern of appropriate conduct, coherent, embellished, and well articulated. Performed with ease or clumsiness, awareness or not, guile or good faith, it is none the less something that must be enacted and portrayed, something that must be realized” (75), and he cites a passage from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness to illustrate this. Yet Gatsby understands status as being very much a matter of material things (clothes and cars and a hydroplane ) and understands social place as a matter of physical setting (a mansion on Long Island). Gatsby can handle the material objects and physical settings associated with social status; it’s the “pattern of appropriate conduct, coherent, embellished, and well articulated” and “performed with ease” (italics mine) that gives him problems. At their first meeting Nick observes a certain unease in Gatsby’s manner, noting that his “elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care” (40). Recall that in the schedule of self-improvement the young James Gatz had written out for himself...