Enchantment And Desire In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

The social environment in which the enchantment and desire are enacted at the same time enhances the value of the beloved person and threaten the desiring subject. The people and objects in the vicinity of the desired person increase their value. Rosemary sees the Divers surrounded by interesting fashionable people. For her the men she had known before, actors and directors, and ”the heterogeneous, indistinguishable mass of college boys, interested only in the love at first sight” (TN: 18) were self-centred, bland and boring. People gathered around the Divers are an interesting mix full of admiration for them. Dick is skilled at handling them, each one believes that he recognises and appreciates their uniqueness, much like Gatsby’s smile makes

The distance allowed him to project his expectations on her. He is susceptible to images and experiences visual enchantment. And Gloria dazzles him. Fitzgerald describes her like most of his “golden girls” in terms of reflecting light, gleaming, flickering. It hints at the remoteness between the protagonist and the object of his desire, as he perceives ungraspable reflections that are inexpressible and vague as the desire itself. The nature of the desire in Fitzgerald works is that it is slightly impersonal. According to Grande (2015) in The Great Gatsby “[p]eople look perfect but slightly dehumanized, and their identities overlap. However, desire, which outwardly creates difference and individuality, is slowly turning everyone into clones, and even male and female are less distinguishable.” To make himself desirable to Daisy, Gatsby tries to become a composite of ‘typical’ characteristics of upper-class men, which gives a strange impression of “skimming hastily through a dozen magazines” (GG: 43), seeming coherent at a distance but revealing incongruity when seen up close. The social distance dividing Fitzgerald’s men from their beloved women enhances their