Theme Of Intimacy In The Great Gatsby

The romance between Nick and Jordan reveals that Nick, too, fears intimacy. This fear is often upheld through the means of denial and avoidance, symptoms which Nick exemplifies. This can be explained as the prospect of intimacy raises ones self-defense in response to the vulnerability of the situation and the possibility of future loss. As Yousef states, The experience of real love often threatens our self-defenses and raises our anxiety as we become vulnerable and open ourselves up to another person. This leads to a fear of intimacy. Falling in love … creates anxiety and fears of rejection and potential loss” (Yousef). As Nick is skillful in the art of avoiding intimate relationship, the initial appeal Jordon had likely can be attributed

to the image of emotional distance she projects. He refers approvingly to Jordan’s apparent ‘complete self-sufficiency’ (Fitzgerald 13), and describes her, along with Daisy, in terms that indicate the appeal of their emotional aloofness: He frequently uses words such as impersonal, cool, and contemptuous to describe what he considers the ‘pleasing’ expression on Jordan’s face.

He, however remains interested in her as long as she seems to belong to a faraway world, the world of “rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach” (Fitzgerald 23), a world seemingly untouched by emotional realities. Once the household she shares with the Buchanans becomes too emotionally untidy, Nick makes a hasty retreat. Nick subsequently avoids Jordan and shortly thereafter ends the relationship in a manner that keeps him emotionally insulated. He unknowingly represses the memory of breaking up with her on the telephone the day after Myrtle’s death, so much so that he is not able to remember the interaction clearly—“I don’t know which of us hung up with a sharp click” (Fitzgerald 163). Even when he meets with her to discuss what had happened between them, he admits that he ‘talked over and around’ their shared past, implying there was a good deal of avoidance of painful issues during the

conversation. Also, Nick’s fear of intimacy is not limited to his relationship with Jordan, it is similarly suggested by his two previous romances. Although he claims that “…I wasn’t even vaguely engaged… You cant stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage” (Fitzgerald 24) . He also admits that he came east, in part, to escape local rumors to that effect. The only way he could have been, as he puts it, ‘rumored into marriage’ was if the lady in question did not consider herself just an ‘old friend.’ This theory is proven correct when Nick decides that, before getting involved with Jordan, “first [he] had to get [him]self definitely out of that tangle back home” (Fitzgerald 64). Clearly, this relationship was more serious than he cares to acknowledge, and he desires to cut his ties once and for all. Similarly, in New York City he “had a short affair with a girl . . . who worked in the accounting department” at his place of business, “but her brother began throwing mean looks in [his] direction so when she went on her vacation in July [he] let it blow quietly away” (Fitzgerald 61). In other words, when the affair became somewhat serious, he let himself be scared away, again in the manner most likely to avoid an emotional scene. In regards to his relationships with women, Nick is a master of avoidance and denial.