Platonic Conception

“The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God – a phrase which if it means anything, means just that.”

            But just what does that mean?

 It has been theorized that Gatsby’s imaginative idea of himself in Platonic “pure forms of thought” created a new, super-real, and therefore godlike Gatsby who lived to serve the “vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty” of others. It is hard not to notice the obvious. The strange anti-analogy to Christianity and Christian virtues demonstrates it’s prevalence in this excerpt and throughout this book. First and foremost, Jesus Christ was the son of god. In a way, so was Gatsby. He was born of the only God according to Plato, a pagan philosopher, which was the realm of unfettered “pure” ideas. Second, Gatsby had elements of both a body and spirit. This was most fully demonstrated by his incarnation scene.

“His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face (spirit likeness) came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.” This was the incarnation, the idea that the mind cannot live without it’s analogous body; Daisy’s life was wed to eternal thoughts and dreams. It also further illustrated the anti-analogy of Christ since Christ was entirely God and entirely Human at the same time.

 So was he really GOD?

 And if so, then what was the role of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg?

 The doctor’s brooding eyes look out over the desolate waste-land of the valley of ashes. Being just a billboard, the “doctor” displays an advertisement that is old and decrepit with pealing dull paint. In a way it is a forgotten idea past it’s time. Lost and forgotten by many to the ever evolving world of the fast passed twenties. Wilson, after his wife’s death, stated that he believed that the eyes were the eyes of God, a recurring theme throuought the novel. “God sees everything, he said staring out the window at the gigantic eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg see picture.”. Micheles, a realist and next door neighbor, expounded on the obvious reality that the Doctor was just a billboard. Following this statement, Wilson began to nod his head out into space creating the illusion of implicit contemplation, agreement, and or understanding. This leads to a controversial enigma, IF WILSON BELIEVED THAT GOD SAW EVERYTHING, THEN WHY DID HE TAKE VENGEANCE AND KILL GATSBY FOR THE MURDER OF HIS WIFE.

 Is it because he knew that God had no effect on his life from his moment of contemplation forward?

 

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