Book Review by Sonia Beltran: Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: Is Nick Carraway Gay? And Daisy Buchanan Feeble-minded?

While volumes of criticism and book reviews have been written on The Great Gatsby, nowhere have I read any allusions to the fact that the heroine--Daisy Buchanan--may well be retarded or a mentally deficient character.

Nick Carraway, the narrator, makes much of her beauty and her sultry voice. But it is through dialogue--through her own words--that we can detect her mental flaws. Notice how she deals with one single idea by repeating it three times:


"In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year." She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

If you count the pronoun "it" you will realize that she has mentioned the longest day of the year five times.

What is surprising is that she blurts out not only platitudes, but also absurdities as in the following examples:
"It's about the butler's nose. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose?" But again, what appears an absurdity (to talk about noses in a serious book) may be pseudo symbols to depict "the help," just as the House (Jay's, Nick's, Daisy's, and Tom's)are representative of the "upper crust."

Nick has a fixation--perhaps a subliminal erection--with noses and we see this undertext surface throughout the narration and the only way to break the habit is by actually "breaking" it violently as Tom Buchanan does when he smacks his mistress's nose.

"Nick, you remind me of a--of a rose, an absolute rose." Is she implying Nick is a closeted gay? Well, he never pursues Jordan with the vigor of a male in heat. And there's a scene in which another male removes his garments.

During a get-together in New York, Nick meets Mr. McKee, a photographer. Afterwards McKee takes Nick to his home where they spend the night. Nick later remembers: “I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear."

To confirm McKee's homosexuality and by implication Nick's, we read a phallic image as the elevator boy warns “hands off the lever.” To which McKee responds “I beg your pardon…I didn’t know I was touching it." Need we expand on what It is?

But let's return to Daisy: "I looked outdoors for a minute, and it's very romantic outdoors." And even when making trivial observations, as when she sees Gatsby's opulent collection of shirts:

"They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such--such beautiful shirts before." Oxford shirts are expensive shirts that people in Wall Street wear. Nick a bond trader, and there's the insinuation of Market fixing by the Oxford "buttoned down" characters.

Yet, we must give credit to Daisy for knowing that she married a racist and brutal man--Tom Buchanan, who breaks his mistresses' nose with a open hand--for convenience since that's what was expected of women in those days; while Nick Carraway, the narrator, never acknowledges that he is an amiable pimp.

Daisy, under Nick's beckoning, seals her fate, when she agrees to send away her chauffeur: "Come back in an hour, Ferdie." Then in grave murmur:"His name is Ferdie."

A character that not only repeats herself with each utterance, but also repeats trivialities has to be feeble-minded. Yet when the nurse informs Daisy that her baby is a little girl, she acknowledge the plight of woman in her times: "I am glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

Recall that it is the Roaring Twenties and that women were then totally dependent on men.

Although Nick is for the most a likable narrator-character, his role as a the pimp in the story, it's tasteless. So, it's very difficult to swallow Nick's sanctimonious utterance, "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their Vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." Isn't he part of the mess?

Nick Carraway grew up in the Midwestern United States and went to school at Yale University. He is a child of privilege. In the Summer of 1922, he begins working in New York City as a bondsman--a Wall Streeter and investment banker who will keep safe and make grow the riches of the rich.

Indeed, Nick will provide the safeharbor for the Buchanans to "retreat back into their money."

What is disgusting is that in the end, Nick doesn't denounce his cousin Daisy, even though he's privy to the knowledge that Daisy was the driver that fated night, and that Daisy kills Myrtle Wilson (Tom's mistress). Was this really an accident? Or did Daisy actually ran over Mrs. Wilson intentionally?

When Garcia Marquez has Remedios the Beauty ascend to heaven, the reader accepts this fact because the woman in her simple mindedness never sees that her beauty hurts people. But when Nick Carraway paints Daisy as a southern belle, an innocent ingenue--that is asking too much of a reader.

No pity is to be shown for a character that never confesses her crime and prefers to stay married to a brutal but wealthy man.

Who's to blame? All of them are: those who have "gonnections," the wealthy brats who attended Yale or "Oggsford," the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.

And the biggest loser is no other than Jay Gatsby: a delluded head who thought that ill-gotten riches could recoup a cherished romantic interlude and splice it into the harsh, painful reality of a tough world.