Mini Essay on the theme of Overreaching in The Great Gatsby. Specifically, Gatsby's overreaching. Exploration of hedonism, excess, consumerism, Jazz Age and Gatsby as Icarus. Perfect for revision on this theme, Gatsby as a character and author's intention.
Overreaching is presented as the primary flaw in Gatsby and in society on the Eastern coast
Gatsby’s ambiguous presence begins with his entrance in Chapter Three and continues to transform as we
enter the following chapter with the description of his car. The car, a prime symbol of someone’s wealth,
serves to suggest Gatsby’s overreaching in terms of exceeding necessity. With the car’s shape ‘swollen
here and three in its monstrous length,’ as though it is unable to handle the lavish lifestyle Gatsby’s uses it
to maintain; the ‘swollen’ verb to imply a misshapen, malformed object that is the result of a fed appetite
for excess. Like most of the East Coast during the Jazz Age, the people were victims to consumerism and
Gatsby is no exception. The ‘monstrous’ length of his car portrays its abnormality which in turn is
suggestive of its danger, the lure of wealth that consequently dismantles a person from their pre-
materialistic self. Gatsby’s ‘triumphant’ collection of ‘boxes’ also demonstrates a certain pride in the
flaunting of his wealth, personifying the ‘hat-boxes’ because they establish the upper-class man that he is.
His car and its overwhelming number of items is all to illustrate the man of money that he is, that he can
exceed what he needs and even desires, even if it comes at a cost to his identity.
His identity - Fitzgerald’s description of the car itself is in excess, with an omission of a description of
Gatsby, which already creates an air of uncertainty around who the reader believes him to be, and also
how Gatsby identifies himself. The car is ‘terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen
suns,’ which alludes to this question of identity. In Chapter Three, we are given several rumours of his
history, a variety of personas before we even meet him, which is paralleled by the ‘mirror(ring)’ of a
‘dozen suns.’ The mirror connotates image and appearance, which for Gatsby’s car and he himself, has
metaphorically multiplied into ‘dozens,’ losing sight of who he actually is. Another choice of Fitzgerald's
to use the sun as a point of distortion by this mirror is that it echoes Gatsby’s party where ‘the earth
lurches away from the sun and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music.’ The ‘lurch’ from the
sun acts as a metaphor within the relationship of man and nature within this time of flourishing industry
and a decline in agriculture. The natural world ‘lurches’ or rather retracts from man, as it has been
replaced by the new sphere of materialism. The replacement of the sun with ‘yellow cocktail music’ is
interwoven within this metaphor too – man is not in tune with the songs of nature but has constructed this
“type” of music to accompany his activity of excess (drinking) and the music colored by ‘yellow’ to quite
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