Neil Gaiman wrote, “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up” (“Neil Gaiman Quotes”). Gaiman’s quote goes to the heart of the matter, which is that love can be dangerous. In the case of Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby and Lear in King Lear, both characters’ hamartia is their reliance on love, and their downfall is directly related to their reliance on love. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby and in William Shakespeare’s play King Lear both of the main characters, Jay Gatsby and King Lear, share the fatal flaw of obsession with love and this leads to their deaths. Whereas Gatsby is obsessed with loving Daisy and creates a fantasy surrounding their love, Lear is obsessed with being loved by his daughters and fails to see how they manipulate him. This will be proven through looking at Gatsby’s love for Daisy and how the real Daisy Buchannan does not live up to what he imagined over five years when Gatsby was building up his wealth. It will also be demonstrated through Lear’s test of love for his daughters, through which he is blind to Goneril and Regan’s true intentions. Finally, it will compare Gatsby’s desire to love and Lear’s desire to be loved, paying particular attention to their deaths.
In their five years apart, Gatsby imagines a life with Daisy as he builds up his wealth, creating a fantasy in which the real Daisy Buchannan cannot live up to what he fantasizes her to be like. This is demonstrated in the quotation where Nick Carraway posits that, “no amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart” (Fitzgerald 90). In this quotation, Nick literally says that the real Daisy, whether good or bad, could never come close to what Gatsby had fantasized about over five years. The keyword in this sentence is “man” as it makes the statement generic in which it could apply both to Gatsby and Daisy, or any other couple in which the man fantasized about the woman. Since Fitzgerald chooses the word “man” instead of specifying that this is applicable to Gatsby, Nick removes any ‘blame’ that a reader would put on Gatsby for coming up with a fantasy that is so outlandish that it could never be satisfied. Structurally, Fitzgerald’s use of an unreliable, first person narrator demonstrates that while it may seem that Nick’s statement is widely applicable to all of mankind, really, the “man” which Nick references is Gatsby. What Nick is suggesting is that Gatsby has fantasized so much, and has obsessed over his love for Daisy toa point where she could never live up to his expectations. Additionally, Fitzgerald makes use of a metaphor, “ghostly heart” in which Gatsby’s heart is compared to a ghost in order to suggest one of two things. First, the metaphor could suggest that Gatsby is haunted by Daisy, and thus, could never forget her making it seem that fantasies were all that Gatsby had left. Secondly, the metaphor could also suggest that Gatsby’s heart is empty without his fantasies of Daisy such that it is a crevice in which a ghost can reside. Therefore, the metaphor of Gatsby’s “ghostly heart” is used to demonstrate the effects of fantasizing about Daisy. At other points in the novel, Fitzgerald chooses to use the word “ghostly” to refer to a woman’s beauty as ‘unnatural’; therefore, in the alternative this quote could refer to the fact that Gatsby’s expectations for Daisy are unnatural or that like a ghost, his fantasies are eternal. In an article published by Johns Hopkins University Press, Elizabeth Morgan contends that “Fitzgeralld’s use of the courtly love tradition to can an ironic shadow on the values of his day gives texture to the novel” (Morgan 175). Morgan suggests that one way that Fitzgerald demonstrates the concept of courtly love is through “the actions of the knight-lover are inspired by a desire to please his lady and to deserve her affection” (Morgan 167) as “Daisy ennobles Gatsby” such that “this grail leads him into great wealth” (Morgan 168). Through suggesting that Fitzgerald writes, bearing at least some mind to the medieval style of ‘courtly love’, Morgan also reiterates that part of courtly love is pleasing the object of the knight’s love. In this way, Gatsby subscribes to the notion of a ‘courtly lover’ such that he will do anything to please Daisy as he has put her on a pedestal to be honoured. Following World War One, an entire generation of men were gone and everyone was touched by the war; therefore, to reference something as ‘ghostly’ or undead would mean that it lives on forever, despite human expiration, such as was the case with an entire generation of men.
In King Lear, Lear’s obsession with love manifests not as an obsession with loving something, but with being loved by someone else. This is demonstrated through Lear’s ‘love test’ for his daughters in which he demands that his daughters tell him the extent of their love so that they can get land, “Which of you shall say doth love us most? / That we our largest bounty may extend” (1.1.50-51). This quotation demonstrates that if Lear’s daughters would like inheritance, then they must profess their love for their father. The keyword in this quotation is “most” because in this play, Lear equates love with inheritance such that the child who loves him ‘most’, will receive the largest portion of his estate. In this way, Lear ensures that he is loved because without it, his daughters will not have a dowry which in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, were required for women to have a good marriage involving aristocratic families. Shakespeare utilizes a rhetorical question in the first part of the quotation as he is asking his daughters who loves him most so that he can decide who should have the greatest amount of his power and wealth. The rhetorical question functions so that Lear knows that his daughters love him, but the word choice of “most” indicates that he wants his daughters to compete to decide who loves him “most”. This suggests that he is obsessed with flattery and hearing his daughters express their love for him. Structurally, Shakespeare positions his ultimatum for his daughters as a question and uses the word choice of “us” to encompass that it is not just him who the daughters must love, but also his kingdom because he will be dividing it amongst his daughters. By positioning himself as “us” makes him seem larger and more important than any one individual. Therefore, when asking his daughters who loves “us” most, the structure allows for Lear to seem larger than life in terms of his ego and his person. Through falling victim to his ego and his desire to be loved, this quotation expresses the Aristotelian quality of a hamartia or fatal flaw in Lear which is his pride such that he requires validation that his daughters love him. The late professor Marilyn Gaull who studied Romanticism and was the founder of the Wordsworth Circle contends that “Lear suffered the classic fate of the bereft courtezan. Once king, he is willingly seduced of his kingdom by Goneril’s and Regan’s verbal declarations of love, couched in highly charged idiom characteristic of the courtly lover. Whereas he once commanded tribute, he is debased, after yielding to their overtures” (Gaull 333). Gaull’s opinion that Lear is a deprived member of the court, thus references the idea of courtly love, demonstrating Lear’s obsession with love as like a courtier interested in a woman at court Lear is easily “seduced” by his daughters’ declarations and as such is left with nothing. Lear could simply be requiring this declaration of love to assert his power over his daughters such that without bending to his will, they would not have a good marriage.
Gatsby and Lear are both obsessed with love; Gatsby is obsessed with his love for Daisy and Lear is obsessed with being the object of his daughters’ love. As such, both Gatsby and Lear share the fatal flaw of love which leads to Gatsby’s and Lear’s deaths. Gatsby’s obsession with love and his subsequent demise is demonstrated through the final lines of the novel, "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms out farther... And one fine morning - So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" (Fitzgerald 154). This quotation is the final lines of the novel and exists following Gatsby’s death in both the framed story and chronologically in Nick’s retelling of the story. It functions as Nick’s final opinion on the subject of Gatsby: that is, that Gatsby’s downfall was that he believed in “the green light”. Within the novel, “the green light” is symbolic of Daisy Buchannan and the fact that Fitzgerald chooses the words that Gatsby “believed” demonstrates that Gatsby’s belief in his undying and obsessive love for Daisy Buchannan led directly to his death. Moreover, the rest of this quotation serves to demonstrate that true love never dies as even though Gatsby was unable to obtain true love with Daisy, Nick contends that they will continue on, “tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms out farther”. The concept of Nick as an unreliable narrator is utilized here as this statement as although Nick says that Gatsby “believed in the green light” he qualifies it by subsequently using “we” and “us” to demonstrate that despite Gatsby’s mistake of obsessing over love too much, “we” will carry on. In comparison to Lear’s character, Gatsby’s obsessive love for Daisy led to his death by George Wilson, Lear’s obsession with being loved by his daughters led to his fall from power and subsequent death. This notion that Lear’s fatal flaw is his desire to be loved is demonstrated through the Fool’s line, “Fathers that wear rags / Do make their children blind, / But fathers that bear bags / shall see their children kind” (2.4.46-49). Although this line is assigned to the fool who is intended to represent the comic relief it is also insightful into Lear’s hamartia. The fool is essentially saying that fathers who are poor make their children ignorant of them because they have nothing to gain; in comparison, fathers who are rich make their children “kind” in order to inherit their father’s wealth. This demonstrates Lear’s hamartia because the Fool says this line as if it is obvious, but Lear was blinded by the desire to be loved by his daughters that he did not see their true intentions. Here, the Fool is demonstrating that children do not feel as if they owe their father anything; instead, they respond to their father based on what they can get out of it. Lear’s problem was that because of his hamartia, he was vulnerable to manipulation and failed to see Goneril and Regan’s true intentions. Therefore, because Lear desired love and allowed himself to be manipulated it results in his decline from power and eventually his death by broken heart when Cordelia, the only child who ever actually loved him, dies. Since Lear dies of a ‘broken heart’ Lear literally dies because he cannot be loved by the only daughter who truly loved him. The structure in both quotations is similar as both utilize a ‘narrative style’ to get at the heart of the issues within each work. Within The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses Nick’s internal monologue to summarize what the reader should have learned from the novel which is that Gatsby was obsessed with Daisy and although this led to his death, people will continue to obsess over love despite its potential for negative consequences. Within King Lear, Shakespeare uses the Fool to say something that is at first glance comical, but is also insightful into Lear's situation. While Shakespeare places his ‘summary’ of what the audience should take away from the play in the Fool’s dialogue it is similar to Fitzgerald’s use of narrative style who places it in the narrator’s monologue. Additionally, both Fitzgerald and Lear utilize imagery within these particular quotations to help to demonstrate their points. Fitzgerald makes use of the imagery of the “green light” and “boats against the current” to help to demonstrate that it is impossible to reach one’s fantasy about love. While the “green light” is intended to symbolize Daisy, it is also imagery as light is not something which one could ever grasp onto, similar to how a fantasy of love, like the one which Gatsby created about Daisy, could never be obtained. Additionally, the imagery of the “boats against the current” helps to demonstrate the idea of a boat fighting against waves to get to a destination, similar to how Gatsby fought against obstacles such as Tom, society, and poverty to get to Daisy. This was an ‘uphill battle’, or poetically put by Fitzgerald, “boats against the current”. The imagery utilized by Fitzgerald is similar to the imagery used by Shakespeare to convey his point. Instead of saying a poor father or a rich father, Shakespeare uses objects to help convey a sense of imagery to an audience who would hear the Fool’s line. Shakespeare uses the objects of “rags” and “bags” to help display the differences between rich and poor. Whereas “rags” creates an image of a man in tattered clothing, “bags” creates the image of a wealthy man who has lots of money which he may store in “bags”. While this may be regarded as the characterization of the Fool who speaks in riddles, it is also interesting in terms of the words chosen. These descriptions of rich versus poor would not be acted out on stage, but rather, would only be noticed through the Fool’s dialogue. Therefore despite a play being a visual experience, this line would encourage the audience to create a mental picture of how poor and rich fathers interact with their children, similar to how Fitzgerald uses imagery to encourage his reader to create a mental picture of the difficulties that Gatsby had in reaching his ‘Daisy fantasy’.
It is apparent that within F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby and William Shakespeare’s play, King Lear that both protagonists share a hamartia: love. In both works, the protagonists, Gatsby and Lear, are obsessed with love such that it directly contributes to their deaths. Whereas in The Great Gatsby, Gatsby loved Daisy and obsessed with fulfilling his fantasy about her, in King Lear, Lear is obsessed with being the object of his daughters’ love such that he is blinded by their impure intentions. This was demonstrated through looking at Gatsby’s “illusion” or fantasy of Daisy in which no person could ever live up to. Then, it was demonstrated through looking at Lear and how his demand for his daughters to ‘love’ him really provided an opportunity for Lear to be vulnerable as he did not see that Goneril and Regan were guided by greed. Finally, through comparing Gatsby’s desire to love and Lear’s desire to be loved, both Fitzgerald and Shakespeare use similar structural and language features to demonstrate that love is their protagonist’s hamartia. Ultimately, both Gatsby and Lear represent how obsession can have detrimental consequences and how love can create vulnerability.
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby and Other Stories. Monti Publishing & More, Canada,
2012.
Shakespeare, William. Oxford School Shakespeare King Lear. New York, Oxford University Press, 1994.
Secondary Sources
"Neil Gaiman Quotes." BrainyQuote.com. BrainyMedia Inc, 2020. 16 June 2020.
Gaull, Marilyn. (1967) Love and Order in “King Lear”. Educational Theatre Journal, 19:3,
333-342.
Morgan, Elizabeth. (1984) Gatsby in the Garden: Courtly Love and Irony. Johns Hopkins
University Press, 11:2, 163-177.
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