Queer Morality in The Great Gatsby

Posted on May 24, 2022 by 23johnsona

Abrielle Johnson

Mrs. Waterman

Honors American Lit. 

3/1/22

The book, The Great Gatsby plays a very important role in American literature. Because of this, a lot of other works and cultural discussions mention it. The Great Gatsby is a book with many themes to it. There is the famous American Dream, the deeper look into rich people’s lives, capitalism, but two linked ideas that often get overlooked in many discussions are the subtext of homosexuality combined with the theme of expectation versus reality. Many readers “expect” heterosexual characters, and so miss the underlying hints of Nick’s actual sexual leanings, the reality that he prefers men to women.  

Nick’s sexual orientation shows up in Nick’s descriptions of women versus men. When Nick moves to his new house in West Egg, he visits his second cousin who lives nearby. His description of his cousin’s husband compared to who is supposed to be his heterosexual love intrest of the story is very different. He portrays his cousin’s husband as, “…enormous power of that body”(7). And, “…great pack of muscle” (7). Compared to Jordan Baker (his “love interest”), “She was a slender, small breasted girl…like a young cadet” (11). And, “wan, scornful mouth”(80). For the best compliments Nick could give this woman in the entire book, they’re not very flattering compared to the men.

Not only does Fitzgerald, through Nick, describe men more appealingly than woman, but Fitzgerald also inserts a clearly queer-coded scene between Nick and a random man he meets at a party in the City.  In Chapter 2, Nick meets a man named Mr. McKee at a little get together with a couple other rich folks around the city. Nick describes this man as a feminine man and in the ‘artistic game’ (30). But when his wife walks in, he outrightly shows a dislike towards her. “His wife was shrill, languid, and handsome and horrible” (30). Obviously he takes no interest in the wife, but McKee seems to catch his attention for some reason throughout that evening. “Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair with his fists clenched in his lap, like a photograph of a man of action. Taking out my handkerchief I wiped from his cheek the remains of the spot of dried lather that had worried me all the afternoon” (36). In this situation, when most people meet strangers they do not approach them in their most vulnerable states and touch them intimately on the face. But that could just be a rich person thing. Anyways, Nick isn’t much of a drinker and because of that he ends up getting very drunk that night. He ends up following Mr. McKee into an elevator and agrees to meet up with him for “lunch…I was sitting beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands” (38). From this sentence it’s pretty clear what the word “lunch” was replacing in their drunken elevator conversation. This was a scene in the book that really jump started people’s suspicion of Nick’s sexuality. I mean, he had sex with a man. What more evidence could there be? Well, plenty more actually. Believe it or not, it does not end just yet. 

Even more than his drunken one-night stand with McKee, however, the way Nick describes his relationship with Gatsby is another sure give-away to Fitzgerald’s queer-coded exploration of morality. Whether Gatsby is gay himself or not, there is no denying that  Nick and Gatsby take a special interest in each other. When the two first meet, it is at a party Gatsby throws. Being his neighbor, Nick gets an invitation and decides to attend. After searching for a while, he comes across a man whom he bonds with for serving in the war together a while back. What he didn’t know was that he was about to find out that the man he is talking to is Gatsby. And Nick definitely has some things to say about this man’s smile. “He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey” (48). If this isn’t a paragraph dedicated to a love interest then honestly what is? Fast forwarding to near the end of the novel now, Gatsby has failed at winning over the woman of his dreams and so Nick gives him a visit the next day before work. This visit lasts a little longer than he intended, not because of Gatsby, but because he chooses to miss the first half of his 9-5 to comfort his “friend”. “I didn’t want to go to the city. I wasn’t worth a decent stroke of work, but it was more than that-I didn’t want to leave Gatsby. I missed the train” (153). He could tell this heartbreak really upset Gatsby and tries his best to console him. But Nick could also tell that there was still hope in Gatsby’s voice. Not wanting to ruin it for Gatsby, Nick decides to back off a bit from the matter. “He was clutching at some last hope and I couldn’t bare to shake him free” (148). Nick cares so much about Gatsby that he doesn’t want to see his hopes crushed, even if he knows that what he longs for is impossible. A lot like the way Nick may view Gatsby as himself actually. 

One theme in the famous novel The Great Gatsby that should be talked about more is expectation versus reality. It is an expectation that Nick be a straight man with absolute zero interest in Gatsby and all his attention on his heterosexual love interest. Is that really the reality though? Sure, Nick and Gatsby aren’t going to ride off into the sunset together, but to say that the subtext isn’t there is just ignorant.

Furthermore, Nick’s implied sexuality plays a part in his perceived morality. This book was written in the 1920’s so it’s very possible that Fitzgerald was using queerness to convey a character’s morality. Scholar Agnes P Collins takes a deep dive into Fitzgerald as a person himself and states, “Homosexuality is unequivocally synonymous with moral irresponsibility because it is Fitzgerald’s private emblem of the moral carelessness he was trying to repudiate in himself” (Agnes P Collins). This all could suggest that Nick’s queerness is a device used to convey his moral character, which throughout the book is hypocritical and very judgemental–but is still better than literally any other character. Though these depictions of homosexuality are harmful, it may have been the way Fitzgerald intended his characters to be written. That is why it is important to educate people about the clearly queer coded subtext this book has sprinkled throughout its pages. If the matter goes ignored, if people let Fitzgerald make his point that queerness may somehow determine a person’s morality, then it could continue to feed into some hurtful stereotypes. Fitzgerald may have been right about a couple things in his novel, but one thing that should be criticized is how being queer, or any other type of minority, does not have anything to do with that person’s moral beliefs. 

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