Gatsby Identity Quotes

However, Patricia Highsmith and F. Scott Fitzgerald also present us with a negative outlook of fluid identity by indicating that it is fake-which means that there is the threat of someone discovering the truth because it isn’t permanent or secure. Gatsby changes his immigrant name ‘Gatz’ to the melodious ‘Gatsby’ which illustrates that identity is plastic and can be remade or rebranded. This links to the setting of the novel because the jazz age is known to have an element of artificiality despite its glamour and allure. Furthermore, Nick describes Gatsby’s personality as “an unbroken series of successful gestures”; from this, we can infer that Gatsby performs an act. Similarly, Tom is able to copy someone else’s voice, way of speaking and

way of dressing so that he appears to be like them: “‘Marge, you must understand that I don’t love you’ Tom said into the mirror in Dickie’s voice, with Dickie’s higher pitch on the emphasised words” and this also becomes an enactment “it was a good idea to practise jumping into his own character again”. However, we are unsure whether Tom really is believable at playing Dickie because we mostly only have access to his own opinions. Although it is written in the 3rd person, we are only revealed Tom’s thoughts which gives us a limited perspective on things- “his very expression, Tom thought, was like Dickie’s now” this is a personal opinion, not a statement which means that it is unreliable. This sense of insecurity is reinforced by the threat of detection which haunts Tom until the very end of the novel “He saw four motionless figures standing on the imaginary pier…He grew suddenly tense, and his vision vanished. Was he going to see policemen waiting for him on every pier that he ever approached?” In ‘The Great Gatsby’, it is certain that Gatsby’s facade is not entirely convincing because Nick notices and points it out to the reader: “I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying. He hurried the phrase ‘educated at oxford’, or swallowed it, or choked on it, as though it had bothered him before. And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces”, “I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter”. The adjective ‘incredulous’ shows that Nick sees through Gatsby’s mask & considers it to be a mere pretence. In addition, the love between Daisy and Gatsby can be considered false and shallow, Guy Reynolds states in his introduction to Gatsby ‘The ‘constant flicker’ of the American scene’ that “ love is here fashioned and shaped by other desires, especially an acquisitive urge that is a form of materialism. Daisy’s love for Gatsby is conditioned by fascination for his wealth. The lover’s sobbed confession of her feelings becomes in ‘Gatsby’ a confession about love of things-the plethora of beautiful shirts ordered from England”. Indeed, Daisy proclaims “’They’re such beautiful shirts,’ she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds.” Which implies that what attracts her to Gatsby is his wealth- his fluid identity. Fitzgerald does this to represent the consumerist environment that Gatsby and Daisy lived in, thus revealing his “clairvoyant understanding that the twentieth century was to be structured by consumerism, financial speculation and the rise of the ‘leisure class’” as Guy Reynolds wrote.
Daisy’s fake love for Gatsby is confirmed when she doesn’t acknowledge his death “Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower”. This establishes that even though Daisy is enchanted by Gatsby, he appears so be meaningless to her because she fails to show up at his funeral- in fact, Nick and Gatsby’s father and are the only people who bother to pay homage to Gatsby- which signifies that fluid identity is not valued. The sense of loneliness is quite prominent when Nick tells us, at the end of one of Gatsby’s numerous parties that “a sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors. Endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host (Gatsby), who stood on the porch”. Fitzgerald implies that despite his popularity, Gatsby is ultimately friendless because having a fluid identity denotes that nobody can know you very well. Tom never reveals his true self either, but this is because he has no choice. As soon as Tom took Dickie’s identity, he ran the risk of being sent to prison if someone discovered the truth. Tom has attempted to be in close contact with certain people such as Dickie and Peter, however this doesn’t last. Just before Tom kills Dickie, he is vexed because he feels “he had offered Dickie friendship, companionship and respect, everything he had to offer, and Dickie had replied with ingratitude and now hostility” and this is what encourages Tom to kill Dickie. Later on in the novel, Tom rejects Peter’s friendship by saying “’I’d better stay by myself for a while longer.”
Moreover, fluid identity is dangerous because it is linked with crime, consequently, fluid identity is not valued.

Tom committed identity theft along with murder and the source of Gatsby’s success comes from his participation in illegal activities-such as bootlegging. Critics claim that Tom Ripley is a sociopath because he is quite reserved, unsocial and presents an ordinary and composed face to others, yet inside he is corrupt and dangerously amoral. When he first contemplates killing Dickie, Tom’s attitude is nonchalant “If he killed him on this trip, Tom thought, he could simply say that some accident had happened”, Tom even expresses excitement at the thought “the danger of it, even the inevitable temporariness of it which he vaguely realized, only made him more enthusiastic”. However, the murder of Dickie initiates another murder: the one of Freddie Miles. Tom panics when he understands that he could be exposed “Freddie wouldn’t stop now until he had found Dickie” therefore he spontaneously murders Freddie. As a consequence, the sense of doom and hopelessness arises, leading us to believe that fluid identity inaugurates condemnation. In ‘The Great Gatsby’ we learn that Gatsby is also involved with crime through the Tom Buchanan accusations “ A lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers, you know” and later on, his denouncements “’He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drugstores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter.” This implies that fluid identity is connected to

corruption.
In conclusion, both novels deal with the concept that that the self is mutable and changeable and that this fluid identity is preferable however, we learn that this doesn’t necessarily solve any of the problems that the protagonists have. Tom Ripley and Jay Gatsby are similar characters- in that they both display signs of having no inner fixed quality. However, the key difference between them is that Gatsby doesn’t go to the extreme extent of killing someone and impersonating them.