Gatsby Occurs as a Symptom: Trauma and the Memory

Abstract

This paper explores a new possibility to interpret F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby through the distinctive features of Luhrmann’s cinematic adaptation. The previous studies of trauma on The Great Gatsby have been limited to the novel’s hero, Jay Gatsby, but Luhrmann’s cinematic narrative structure and aesthetic devices can help understand the perspective and interpretive knowledge of the narrator, Nick Carraway and the narrative process in the novel, which should involve the narrator’s sense of personal or cultural identity as well as his construction or creation of memories. While the original novel achieves thematic progression and expands the ideas through complex narrative structure and narrative aesthetics, the ideas Luhrmann’s production hints at—the visual centrality of the narrative which alludes to its narrative techniques of photography or film, the possibility of Nick’s traumatic experiences and his writing as a recollection of those memories, and the implication of the connection between Nick’s trauma and contemporary American crisis and trauma—enable us to explore Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby from a new angle.