Masculinity In The Great Gatsby

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A female face looks out with sad eyes as a tear rolls down her sky-filled face. Three pearls decorate her hair as a city skyline fills the space below. This cover by Francis Cugat contrasts the glamor of the city skyline with the sorrow, excess, power, and pleasure found throughout The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The woman’s empty face on the cover of this novel signifies the empty success and consequential sorrow, represented by the tear, many characters experience in the novel. Furthermore, the pearls represent the pleasure and excess of Gatsby’s parties, home, car, and lifestyle, reflecting the excess of the 1920s. The female's large face over the small city skyline shows her power, as she is “above” the rules and lifestyles of …show more content…
Immediately struck by Cody’s power and wealth, “the yacht represented all the beauty and glamor in the world” (Fitzgerald 107) to Gatsby. The power, wealth, and glamorous possessions of Dan Cody appealed to Jay Gatsby. As a result, Jay begins to form his own desires for success which “provided an outlet for his imagination” (106). Over the course of five years, while working for Cody as his assistant, Jay continued to form his ideal character and by the time Cody died, “the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man” (108) and soon changed his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby. However, Dan Cody was not the only character who helped Gatsby rise to power, Meyer Wolfsheim also played an influential role. Wolfsheim “raised him [Gatsby] out of nothing, right out of the gutter” (171) and helped Gatsby gain his enormous wealth with which he further crafted his character of Jay Gatsby. However, Meyer Wolfsheim was also a very successful man himself. After fixing the 1919 World series, he demonstrated his power over both people and events. As America’s greatest pastime, when he fixed the baseball world series he demonstrated that purchasing and gambling on all aspects of life is a possibility (class). Instead of in pursuit of noble goals, striving towards achieving the American Dream, the energy spent on fixing the world series was in pursuit of power. Serving as Wolfsheim’s proudest heist, Gatsby has no reservations for sharing that Wolfshiem fixed the 1919 World Series, therefore demonstrating the importance of power in The Great Gatsby and for others to
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