The Violent Age | Violence's representation in The Great Gatsby

Violence is pervasive in our media. It is glorified in almost all forms of popular culture entertainment, from television shows, movies, novels, and even in music. The rise of comic-book inspired cinema has seen violence portrayed even more in our film industry, adapting a medium in which fists, not words, solving problems are typically the order of the day. It can be, and often is, sloppy writing that amounts to an author building tension and suspense in his main characters and situations only to have them end in a storm of brutality because the author could think of no other way to conclude it. There are exceptions to this however, instances in fiction in which violence is used as a means to further the plot and communicate information to the audience and not merely as a necessity of genre. For every ten Buffy the Vampire Slayers in which violent ends were the order of the day, there is a Breaking Bad in which violence is used sparingly and to great dramatic effect, often highlighting changes in the characters surrounding it and what they are willing to do over the course of the series run. Such is also the case with F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 classic novel, The Great Gatsby. The novel deals with the high emotions surrounding infidelity and is set just a few years after the end of the First World War, yet despite this it does not manipulate or take advantage of these situations to produce violence for violence's sake, instead saving its worst instances of violence to show the cataclysmic results of the lifestyle of materialistic overconsumption both the characters and America partook in at excess at the time.

The recent film adaptation by Baz Luhrmann added instances of violence for present in Fitzgerald's original text, and it is only upon receiving both that one truly appreciates Fitzgerald's minimalist approach on the subject of action and violent behavior. In the 2013 film of the same name, Gatsby is driven to violence when Tom Buchannan confronts him on his affair with Daisy and informs him that he and Daisy will not be separating. In the film Gatsby snaps and grabs Tom violently, although he composes himself quickly. In the novel Fitzgerald merely teases the threat of violence, not via action or verbal boast but through narrator Nick Carraway's description of Gatsby in that moment: " Then I turned back to Gatsby—and was startled at his expression. He looked—and this is said in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden—as if he had [']killed a man.['] For a moment the set of his face could be described in just that fantastic way[,]" (100). Fitzgerald resists having either Gatsby or Tom Buchanan use violence in order to deal with the rising tension of the situation, instead letting the tension build until it deflates naturally upon Gatsby's realization that he has lost Daisy. Despite the bad reputation most of New York City and especially Tom Buchanan have of him and of how he obtained his wealth, even at his most desperate Fitzgerald's Gatsby does not result to violence.

Tom Buchanan results to violence near the start of the novel, not long after we are introduced to his character. He brings Nick into New York where he meets with his mistress Myrtle Wilson despite Nick being his wife's cousin. They all venture to the Morningside Heights apartment which Tom keeps for his affair and have an impromptu party, during which Tom conveys many White Supremacist sentiments and becomes angry when the drunk Myrtle will not stop saying his wife's name. With the line "[m]aking a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand[,]" (28) Fitzgerald simultaneously demonstrates Tom's character and demonizes him (not without warrant), but also creates contrast to how Gatsby would handle a similar situation later in the novel. Tom Buchanan breaks Myrtle's nose for slighting his relationship with Daisy, although he himself is in that situation due to an affair with another woman and does not see that as a slight. This violence, paired against his later passivity towards Gatsby, illustrates how little of a threat Tom views Gatsby as, as though Gatsby is not even worthy of the effort it would take to strike him. Tom Buchanan's violence also highlights the differences between the two characters. In many ways Buchanan represents Fitzgerald's distaste for "old money" and the rampant consumption the plagued the era in which the novel was written. Despite Tom coming from a 'good' and 'noble' family line and Gatsby coming from poverty and using potentially-illegal means as a method of obtaining his wealth and status, Fitzgerald paints Tom as a dark mirror to Gatsby. Where Tom Buchanan is 'old money,' Gatsby is 'new money.' Where Tom Buchanan is adulteress cheats on his wife, Gatsby is singular in his obsession and pursuit of one woman.  Where Tom Buchanan is racist and ethnocentric, Gatsby has no qualms about working with the Jewish minority and sees nothing of it. And finally where Tom Buchanan does resort to violence, Gatsby never does.

No other violence is seen by Nick Carraway during the course of the novel, and as he is the narrator, no other violence is seen first-hand by the reader as well. Everything else happens "off-screen" as it were, with Nick (and by proxy, the reader) hearing about it after-the-fact. One such example is the death of Myrtle Wilson, who saw a violent end when she was struck by the car Daisy was driving. But indeed the most violent act in the novel -- the death of Gatsby himself -- is not witnessed by narrator or reader and is added as an afterthought, the killing shots heard only by "the chauffeur—he was one of Wolfsheim’s protégés... [who]... afterward he could only say that he hadn’t thought anything much about them." (120). George Wilson resolved to kill Gatsby, believing Gatsby to be responsible for the death of his wife by the manipulations of Tom Buchanan. Despite George being the one who actually pulls the trigger (and kills himself thereafter), this can once again be seen as the upper-class 'old money' carelessly abusing those they considered beneath them for their own benefit, a common element in Fitzgerald's portrayal of old money in general and Tom Buchanan in specific within the novel.

In the end Fitzgerald's use of violence in The Great Gatsby illustrates the desperate lengths that each male character in narrator Nick Carraway's life will go to once pushed to a violent extreme. Despite his upper-class heritage and lineage, Tom Buchanan proves himself to be the most violent and bigoted character in the novel, despite arguably having the least to lose through its events. Each man - Tom Buchanan, George Wilson, and Jay Gatsby - deals with the threat of their romantic interests being taken from them in different ways. While Buchanan does not strike Gatsby he brings the most violence in the novel, first striking Myrtle and then manipulating George to murder Gatsby, both Myrtle and Gatsby having threatened him marriage to Daisy. George himself commits homicide (as well as suicide) out of grief after losing his wife to the car accident. Despite his poverty-stricken background, his questionable associations, and the possibly illegal methods he used to obtain his money, of all three Jay Gatsby is the only man not to respond violently to losing the woman he loved, even though he had cost himself everything in order to seduce her. The Gatsby of the novel never results to violence and yet meets the most violent end, the final commentary by Fitzgerald on the effect of the class struggle on the American Dream.