Stereotypes In The Great Gatsby

Lukianoff and Haidt (2015) offer many examples depiciting student hypersensitivity and overreactions by campus administrators and officials. For example, they describe several instances where trigger warnings were called for against notable literary works such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby for their portrayals of misogyny, racial violence, and physical abuse. The authors admit that many of the examples they describe are extreme and surreal, but then they go right ahead and use these isolated and extreme instances to paint a picture of campus “coddling, hypersensitivity, and overreaction” as a nation-wide cultural phenomenon: “It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse” (Lukianoff and Haidt, 2015).

A stereotype is a fixed set of characteristics that many people believe represent a particular group of people (Pullman, 2013). The authors have stereotyped all college students and campus administrators as overly sensitive and overly protective, and applied this perceived culture of “coddling and hypersensitivity” to all college campuses in the US. The authors have stereotyped all students as being quick to complain about any perceived slight against them, and all colleges administrators as being brow-beaten into succumbing to political correctness. This stereotyping is dangerous and dismissive, because many students are grappling with their own experiences, some of which do involve microaggressions and trauma. Rather than stereotyping all students as this or that, it’s far more important to have open dialogue and help each individual student think critically about the issues that impact their lives and work through