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The Great Gatsby Psychoanalytic Analysis

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Evelina Kochubey Professor Roberts English 1B 14 March 2018 Dysfunctional Love: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and Psychoanalytic Criticism One of American’s “finest works of fiction by any of this country’s writers” is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel: The Great Gatsby (J. Yardley). It is written from the perspective of the character, Nick Caraway who talks about the love relationships between the characters in the story. In the book Critical Theory Today, Lois Tyson describes, “The Great Gatsby [is] one of the great American love stories”; however, psychoanalytic critics may see the love relationship among the characters in the story as dysfunctional love (39). Psychoanalytic criticism is seeing the world “that it is comprised of individual …show more content…

Being distressed over Tom’s involvement with Myrtle, it may seem that Daisy desires an emotional relationship with her husband. Jordan tells Nick about Daisy after her honeymoon that reinforces this interpretation: I’d never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a minute she’d look around uneasily and say “Where’s Tom gone?” and wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the door. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the hour, rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with unfathomable delight. (76-77; ch. 4) However, through the psychological lens, it points out the history of Daisy’s “delight” in her husband as a different …show more content…

Tom being very rich in which he has acquired from his ancestors – the “old money”- brags a lot about his money, wealth, and status to others. For example, he brags to Nick about his house and stables, introduces Myrtle to Nick and others, belittles those who are not the dominant race, and plays around with George Wilson if he will sell the car to George, implying that he would not make a profit of reselling it. We can see that Tom is not emotionally secure, and therefore talks about whatever he has to make himself feel better. Even the women Tom is acquaintance with- all from low classes-has the indication that he tries to boost his insecurity by “controlling

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