Foil Structure in The Great Gatsby

The three foil groups of the novel (George and Myrtle Wilson, Jay Gatsby/James Gatz, and Tom and Daisy Buchanan) are demarcated not only by location (Valley of Ashes, West Egg, and East Egg, respectively), but also by name: Wilson — the name of the poorest couple — begins with a letter almost at the end of the alphabet, while Buchanan — the name of the wealthiest couple — begins with a letter near the beginning of the alphabet. When James Gatz changes him name to Jay Gatsby as part of his new identity, he replaces the last letter of the alphabet with the sound made by the second (z for “bee”). The Wilsons live in a dusty junkyard and are poor, though not unattractive; Gatsby lives in a giant imitation French chateau with a swimming pool, and he is well-groomed and well-dressed; the Buchanans live in an expansive colonial mansion that fronts the Long Island Sound, and they look great in everything, even pajamas. George Wilson is an authentic poor person trying to achieve The American Dream through hard work and legitimate means, Myrtle Wilson is a poor person who occasionally gets to pretend to be rich and who is trying to achieve The American Dream through illegitimate means, Gatsby was a poor person but is now rich and is trying to achieve The American Dream through deceit and illegitimate means, and the Buchanans are rich people who were born into The American Dream and who aren’t happy anyway.

Caveat: Myrtle Wilson has an affair with Tom Buchanan, which is Gatsby-esque in its infidelity; Tom buys her a dog (a facsimile for a child) and rents her an apartment (a facsimile for a house), acts that align her affair with Gatsby’s business deals — and, less practically though more idealistically, his affair with Daisy — as an illegitimate means to achieving the Dream (the dog is not a child, the apartment is not a house, she is not Tom’s wife). These means may seem illegitimate until one considers that, as an unskilled woman in the 1920s, marriage is Myrtle’s primary means of achieving the Dream — it’s what Daisy did. She is committing adultery against her own marriage and against the Buchanans’, but both Buchanans are also committing adultery. While the illegitimate means that Gatsby uses to try to achieve The American Dream are illegal and involve large-scale illegal operations, the illegitimate means that Myrtle uses to try to achieve The American Dream would not be illegitimate if neither she nor Tom was already married. Of course, even if they were both unmarried, Tom would never have any intention of marrying her, but it would at least technically not be illegal.

George Wilson attempts to achieve the Dream are legitimate (he runs a business, he tries several times to buy a car from Tom, Nick is impressed that the garage is not a blind for something more extravagant and illicit) but ultimately fruitless, including his attempt at the family component to the dream. He cannot prove that he is in charge of his own wife, he cannot defeat his real enemy or receive real justice; God must not have wanted him to succeed.

Nick recognizes this foil structure (he narrates it, after all), but he only recognizes it; by the end of the novel, Myrtle Wilson has been killed by Daisy, Gatsby (who takes the vehicular manslaughter rap to protect Daisy) has been killed by George Wilson (who believes Gatsby had been his wife’s lover as well as murderer), and George Wilson has killed himself (either from grief or from realizing the futility of his life’s work). Nick regards these deaths as inevitabilities, and although he feels sorry for Gatsby that hardly anyone attends his funeral, he regards this as an inevitability, as well. Only Tom and Daisy, in their ancestral and therefore authentic wealth, escape the narrative physically, if not emotionally, unscathed.

At the end of the novel, the Buchanans are “free” in a legal sense (Daisy committed vehicular manslaughter but will not be charged) and in a financial sense (they are rich af), but whether they are “free” in any other sense is, of course, a central question of the novel — even for Nick, a self-professed Judgment Free Zone.

They are not “free” enough to not have to lay low for a while (there’s gossip, after all), and they are not “free” from each other’s mistrust, though they seem to be bonding in their collusion the last time we see them in the narrative — they’re eating cold fried chicken and drinking beer at the kitchen table, lightly holding hands and plotting their sojourn to a place where fewer people will know about any of what just happened. Nick reads this as their ability to float above the consequences that plague other people, although he sees their ability to float as indicative of some kind of hollowness; they seem to be not so much floating as bobbing, though, keeping from going under by supporting themselves on the buoyant detritus from the ships they’ve wrecked.

Nick and Jordan seem to float above the consequences of this narrative in a way that Tom and Daisy do not, however. While both depart from the experience a degree more disillusioned about “modern” romantic pursuits (as illustrated by their final phone call) and “modern” integrity in general, they both regard what happens as easily foreseen, although disappointing: Nick returns to the Midwest, overcome with ennui and vague disgust, and Jordan returns to the golf tour circuit, no less tanned nor sphinx-like for the experience.

Jordan had spent her summer as a sojourn from her professional demands, as Nick had spent it in an anthropological fact-gathering excursion; both remained aloof enough to escape any kind of real involvement with the people who died, but both regarded the other characters as familiar spectacles — they are a degree removed from the central narrative, and they are safer (though each alone) for their lack of involvement.

Even if Nick has suspended criticism of Gatsby the man, the novel insists that Gatsby the Everyman is doomed: his empire, built with deceit and preying on vice, is hollow and effervescent; the only way to achieve the American Dream is to have been born into it, and everyone who was not born into it, though “free” to pursue it through legitimate or illegitimate means, will eventually fail.