The Great Gatsby As A Grail Quest: Part One – Jay Gatsby As The Grail Knight

Introduction

If we are going to explore The Great Gatsby as a Grail Quest, one of the first tasks would be to identify the Grail Knight. Fortunately, Fitzgerald has done all of the heavy lifting for us when he tells us that Gatsby found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail (156). It could not be clearer.

Also, we know that the glasses in which champagne served at Gatsby’s parties was likened to large finger bowls (51). These finger bowls symbolize this same Grail that Gatsby followed. This is Fitzgerald’s way of telling the reader how Gatsby perused this Grail. The parties, like all of Gatsby’s possessions, were a means of obtaining Daisy and everything that entailed.

In 1961, W.H. Auden wrote an article called “The Quest Hero.” While it largely dealt with The Lord Of The Ring, its standards may be used to meter Gatsby as a legitimate Quest hero. Auden listed the following components as elements of a Quest legend:

• A cherished Object or Person to be obtained.
• A long Journey that takes a long time to complete.
• A worthy Hero.
• A Test to demonstrate worthiness.
• The Guardians of the Object who must be overcome.
• The Helpers of the hero.

The Great Gatsby meets all of these benchmarks, and can be considered a matter of Quest lore. Daisy is the cherished person to be obtained, although she is not the Grail. Gatsby’s journey took him from Louisville to the European theatre of the Great War, and to Oxford. Eventually Gatsby ends up in Chicago only to move to New York. Here he works for Meyer Wolfshiem bootlegging grain alcohol, and in three years he has the money to buy his mansion on West Egg. All of this in four and half years. Gatsby’s worthiness comes about by no other means than his wealth, for that is all he needs to win Daisy. The tour of his mansion after the tea party is the test, and he passes with literally flying colors (his shirts). Tom is the Guardian to be overcome, while Nick and Jordan are the helpers who aid in arranging the tea party and its reunion.

Based upon this, Gatsby is a Quest hero, but so are Odysseus and Jason. But neither of these two Greek are Grail heroes. This particular story structure rides on a horse of a slightly different color. Not only must there be a legitimate quest hero, but there must also be a wounded king who presides over a waste land, and whose infertility may be cured by the obtaining of the Holy Grail. That puts little more on the plate that our hero needs to eat. Identifying the King and the Grail will be matters for subsequent articles coming in the next few weeks.

Here are other articles regarding The Great Gatsby:

• “The Reliability Of Nick Carraway: Part One – The Naysaying Narrator” (10.9.12)
• “The Reliability Of Nick Carraway: Part Two – The Drive To Lunch” (10.11.12)
• “Why The Great Gatsby Is The Best American Novel” (6.21.12)
• “What Made Daisy Faye Buchanan & Jay Gatsby So Attractive And Attracted To Each Other?” (8.28.12)
• “Who Shot Jay Gatsby?” (3.4.13)

Perfection

I recently watched Braveheart again. I was reminded of one of the most famous lines from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: “Some people have greatness thrust upon them.” William Wallace was great, not only as a literary character, but as a real person. He did not set out to be a hero or important, and he would not be noteworthy if he were set in different circumstances.

It made me wonder about some of my favorite writers. Would they be less great if they lived in a different place and time? Consider Hemingway. What kind of writer would have been if he had not lived in Paris in the 20s? He would have never known James Joyce or Gertrude Stein. What if he had never been a reporter for the Kansas City Star? He might not have developed the minimalist style he is known for. If circumstances were any different, he may not have become the celebrated writer, or possibly not even a writer at all.

Perfect v. Great

There are many writers I enjoy, but some to me are perfect. Writers like Steinbeck, O’Conner, and Porter are great, but then to me, Hemingway is perfect. So are Fitzgerald and Faulkner. Are there not three American writers more different? And yet, in my book, each of them has gone as far as a writer can go, and their writing leaves me in awe.

Maybe these three would not be so recognized if they lived in a different place and time. I don’t know, because such is mere speculation. Maybe their greatness was thrust upon them by the shapes of life. Or maybe not. It’s possible that Shakespeare would have been just as great living in 19^th century Georgia or 20^th century Russia.

Perfection In Art

No celebrated writer would be considered great, much less perfect, without the dedication and hard work it takes to learn the craft. That has to weigh more in the end than time and place since we know learning to write matters greatly. It makes no sense to speculate as to whether I’d be a better or more celebrated writer if I had hobnobbed with other American expatriates in Paris just after the Great War.

I have no control over were and when I live, but I do have a say in how I live wherever or whenever I do. This is more than deciding to do my best as a writer, but to see composition as a serious and valuable artform.

I plan to follow up this post with another article next week. But I do want to say that literature as fine art is a deliberate choice the writer makes. Without this choice we can never be great, much less perfect, even if by perception. Anyone can ride a wave or hit a stride and be popular for a little while. But to create a work of fine art is incredible. We should all strive to create that which will be added to the canon of the industry of such people as Hemingway  Mozart, or Rembrandt. A writer should strive for permanence, not popularity.

“Archimedes” by Friedrich Schiller

To Archimedes once a scholar came,
“Teach me,” he said, “the art that won thy fame;–
The godlike art which gives such boons to toil,
And showers such fruit upon thy native soil;–
The godlike art that girt the town when all
Rome’s vengeance burst in thunder on the wall!”
“Thou call’st art godlike–it is so, in truth,
And was,” replied the master to the youth,
“Ere yet its secrets were applied to use–
Ere yet it served beleaguered Syracuse:–
Ask’st thou from art, but what the art is worth?
The fruit?–for fruit go cultivate the earth.–
He who the goddess would aspire unto,
Must not the goddess as the woman woo!”

Is The Great Gatsby A Grail Quest?

High schoolers have been reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby for decades. Since most sophomores are too, well, sophomoric to appreciate it for the great work of literature that it truly is, they usually leave high school with The Great Gatsby as one of many sour tastes left in the mouth. Since most teens hate what they have to read, most don’t re-read Gatsby once they have become adults.

That is a terrible shame, since it is truly a wonderful book. Despite being not read enough (in my opinion), The Great Gatsby remains one of the most familiar stories to date. It has been the subject of several movies and even an opera.

With the most recent rendering in theatres now, I knew there would be a renewed interest, and possibly a few folk might look one more time at this great work. I wrote a few articles a while back on Nick Carraway as a narrator (more links below) and they are always my more popular archive searches. So I thought to follow that up with a new series on The Great Gatsby. This will explore Fitzgerald as another writer to tackle the Grail Legend.

When we read that the valley of ashes is a waste land, or that Gatsby had committed himself to the following of a grail, it seems clear that Fitzgerald intended to intertextually layer his novel with Grail Quest imagery. This requires three particular tasks: identifying the Grail Knight, the Fisher King, and the Holy Grail.

According To Weston

In 1920, From Ritual To Romance by Jessie Weston broke new ground concerning Grail scholarship. Before Weston, academians took one of two positions: Grail lore should be considered strictly as Christian literature or pagan lore. Weston pointed out both the strengths of both positions while further demonstrating the insufficiency of both positions alone. Her solution is to combine the two.

In other words, the panoply of Grail literature is a combination of Christian and pagan sources. In this it is not much different from other medieval works like Beowulf. Weston relies heavily Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough. It was published in two volumes in 1890, three in 1990, and a dozen between 1906-1915.

The Maimed King & The Fisher King

Weston explores the pagan roots to the Grail as manifestations of ancient fertility cult. In particular, Grail legends call upon the mysteries of Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis. According to Frazer and Weston, the notion of the king as divine comes from the idea that he represented god. And when god is good for nothing more than providing a bumper crop, fertility cults commonly held the sway of primitives. So with Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, and as extension, the kings of people who worshipped these idols, their personal health reflected on their ability to provide for the worshippers.

So if the king is wounded, then the land is laid waste. So in literature, this becomes the Maimed King who presides over the Waste Land. Based upon the variation, there is also a Fisher King, who is sometimes also the Maimed King, or other times, related to the Maimed King. The image of the fish has often been a symbol of fertility. For example, within the fertility cult of Dagon, the chief deity was pictured as a fish. And thus, the term Fisher King refers to the king as divine who has the power to provide for the livestock and crops of his citizens.

Within Grail writings, the Fisher King and/or Maimed King are more central to the story than the Grail knights. By obtaining the Grail, the waters are freed, the king is healed, and the land becomes fertile once more. Based upon the individual texts, the king or the knight vary in importance, with the older texts laying more of an emphasis on the king and the more recent stressing the story of the knight. Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur does not even mention a Fisher or Maimed King, although their fingerprints are all over the Sangraal section of the book.

The Grail Knights

Gawain, Percival, and Galahad have all been Grail knights. And while they may have their small differences, their role is basically the same. The Grail Knight is tasked with finding the Holy Grail, the chalice used by Jesus at the Last Supper. Only the pure may obtain it, and finding the Grail is the ultimate of spiritual ascendancy. The success or failure of the Grail Knight has to do with asking, or not asking, the correct questions: What is the Grail? Whom does it serve?

Fitzgerald would have been well aware of Weston’s work. T.S. Eliot writes in the commentary of his own 1922 poem “The Waste Land” that he leaned heavily on Weston in composing his poem. It is not a stretch to think that Fitzgerald would have learned these things and worked them into his 1925 epic. The issue for the reader is to figure out if this is the case or not. The question is answered by looking at another question: Can I identify the Grail Knight, the Fisher King, and the Holy Grail in The Great Gatsby? These matters will be explored over the next few weeks.

Here are other articles regarding The Great Gatsby:

• “The Reliability Of Nick Carraway: Part One – The Naysaying Narrator” (10.9.12)
• “The Reliability Of Nick Carraway: Part Two – The Drive To Lunch” (10.11.12)
• “Why The Great Gatsby Is The Best American Novel” (6.21.12)
• “What Made Daisy Faye Buchanan & Jay Gatsby So Attractive And Attracted To Each Other?” (8.28.12)
• “Who Shot Jay Gatsby?” (3.4.13)

Communicate With Confidence: Conclusion – It’s All Great, Unless …

Read Part One

Read Part Two

Read Part Three

Read Part Four

Read Part Five

Read Part Six

So by now you have mastered the notion of how to communicate with confidence. You have also probably figured out perpetual motion, atom splitting, and how to fly. The truth is that confidence is something you might not ever be able to master. You and I, we both will spend our lives developing our assurance.

But maybe now you have better tools to work with and a better capacity to accomplish more than you might have before reading this material. To speak the truth, writing these articles has been a wonderful exercise for me in developing the breadth of my own capacity to communicate with confidence, whether it’s with blogposts, novels, short stories, or been personal correspondence.

So now that we are now all brimming over with confidence, what now? There has to be practical upside to all of this. More than that, there may even be a few new responsibilities put before us.

Raise The Bar

What is the use of all this newfound confidence if you are not going to use it to try bigger and better things? Think of all those ideas you’ve had, those literary dreams still in your heart, but never had the nerve to try. Now is the time to dust off that list and seriously think about tackling some of the items on that list. Intimidated with the notion of stating that novel you’ve always wanted to write? No more. Convinced you don’t know enough to start your own blog? Baloney. If not, why? If not now, when? Today is the day you begin what you’ve wanted to do but didn’t have the nerve to try.

Break The Ribbon

I read something a while back that gave me a shiver. There are somewhere between tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of finished and unpublished novels. It’s hard to get a firm number, but people in the business ballpark this figure. If this is true, how many unfinished novels are there? Millions. If you have an unfinished novel, now is the time to complete it. That’s true for anything you have unfinished. If you felt before like you couldn’t do it, put on your Lil Engine cap and climb over the mountaintop.

Pay It Forward

Being a Christian gentleman, I believe we are not here just to selfishly suit ourselves, but that we are here for other people. Jacob Marley had it right when he said, “Mankind was my business.” I think writers should not just satisfy themselves or their audience, but other writers, as well. Think of yourself. Your struggles are not unique to you. Other writers have the same problems you do. I know you would appreciate it if someone helped you, and I’m sure that has happened many times before. Why not help someone else? You not only bail out someone who can use your aid, but you help yourself, not only as a writer, but also as a person.

So now you have learned how to communicate with confidence. It’s all great, unless you fail to use it to make yourself and others better writers. I hope this has been the boon for you as it has been for me. If you have at all benefited from these articles, share them with other writers you know. And as always, tell me your thoughts in the Comments section below. I’d love to hear from you.

“Sailing To Byzantium” by W.B. Yeats

I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.

II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Top Ten List: My Favorite Movies Based Upon A Novel

We’ve all heard, “Good movie, but the book is better.” Sometimes a great book makes a terrible movie. But once in a while, a great book has been made into a good movie, even though the book is still better. These are my favorite movies based upon really good books.

10.             The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957, dir. by David Lean), based upon the novel by Pierre Boulle, The Bridge On The River Kwai

9.       Master & Commander (2003, dir. by Peter Weir), based upon the novel by Patrick O’Brien, Master & Commander

8.       Dr. Strangelove (1964, dir. by Stanley Kubrick), based upon the novel by Peter George, Red Alert

7.       Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971, dir. by Mel Stuart), based upon the novel by Roald Dahl, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory

6.       The Natural (1984, dir. by Barry Levison), based upon the novel by Bernard Malamud, The Natural

5.       Love In The Time Of Cholera (2007, dir. by Mike Newell), based upon the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love In The Time Of Cholera

4.       No Country For Old Men (2007, dir. by Joel & Ethan Coen), based upon the novel by Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men

3.       Psycho (1960, dir. by Alfred Hitchcock), based upon the novel by Robert Bloch, Psycho

2.       The Godfather (1972, dir. by Francis Ford Coppola), based upon the novel by Mario Puzo, The Godfather

1.       Doctor Zhivago (1965, dir. by David Lean), based upon the novel by Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

So what would you put on your list? Did I leave something off? What is on my list that you would not have on your list? Tell me what you think in the Comment section below.

“The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot – Part Four

             IV. Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell

And the profit and loss.

                                   A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

He passed the stages of his age and youth

Entering the whirlpool.

                                   Gentile or Jew

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Communicate With Confidence – Part Six: Readers Can Tell When You Are Not Confident

Read Part One

Read Part Two

Read Part Three

Read Part Four

Read Part Five

When you are not confident as a writer you hold back. Readers can tell when you’re holding back, even if they have never read you before. This is so because that which is held back by a loss of confidence is uniqueness more than anything else.

Don’t be afraid to write like you. But there is a problem to this: how are you as a writer? It’s not like what you write even now is acceptable because it gets a democratic or subjective free pass under the banner of I Wrote This. I’m talking about a writer’s voice, and a voice does not come without both passion and hard work.

Writing Like You

Think of painting. Do you remember the painting shows that used to come on PBS? A painter would start with a blank canvas and in half an hour there would be a field or a mountain or a river. And you were supposed to paint along with him.

I don’t know if that really would work or not. What I do know is if that is all you learn about painting you will never stand out even among other average painters. Think of the masters. All of them are great, but a Turner is different than a Van Gogh, which are both different from a Rembrandt. They painted the way they wanted to paint with a style as individual as a fingerprint.

Also consider music. You may hear a piece and be able to identify it as Tchaikovsky or Brahms, maybe even Bach or Beethoven. Why? Because they each have a distinctive sound to their music which is often hard to pin down with exact descriptions, yet you know it when you hear it.

Caravaggio did not become great because he tried to paint like everyone else, or for that matter, like anyone else. Likewise, if Wagner had decided he would compose just like Meyerbeer or Mendelssohn, we would never have anything as fabulous as the Ring Cycle of operas. Likewise, a writer’s voice comes from the quintessence of uniqueness.

But this uniqueness does not come easily. It is cultivated and distilled through personality, life experience, and world view. It is also concentrated by the writer’s choice of subject matter, vocabulary, phrasing, and descriptions. A writers’ voice comes from conscious choices and innate reactions. Before you write a word truly as you, the writer must look inside and determine What do I want to write? as well as Why do I want to write? Someone who fails at introspection fails as a writer.

So you can either be a Mozart or a Salieri. These two men were musical rivals in Vienna of at the end of the 1700s. Salieri wrote the way he was supposed to and Mozart wrote the way he wanted to. Salieri enjoyed some notoriety in his day, but who is still performed even now? Don’t write like everyone else or like anyone else. Write like you, but take the pains to find what you as a writer must be like first.

Why would anyone be a writer if they’re just going to write like everyone else? (tweet this comment)

Following The Rules

Just because you are true to your nature in something you write, that doesn’t mean that it works, or even that it is good. Having your own confident writer’s voice is no guarantee that everything you produce is beyond correction or improvement. Some foolishly feel that having some unique author’s voice is license to do whatever they want as long as they genuinely think they should.

Picasso did not wake up day still as an amateur and decide to paint “Guernica” or “The Prostitutes of Avignon.” He commented how it took him twenty years to learn to paint by the rules so then he could learn again how to break them.

But a writer’s voice is not just about breaking rules in the name of being unique and genuine. There are some things about literature that will always be true. Show me, don’ tell me. Watch your modifiers. Avoid passive verbs. I could go on, but you know what I mean. For example, stream-of-consciousness writing was new when Joyce starting using it. It clearly went against conventions and norms, but still followed the rules of good storytelling. And just as Joyce is unique, so is each work. That is what makes Ulysses great, and The Dubliners, and Finnegan’s Wake. Joyce wrote like Joyce, and still each novel is its own. And when someone like Hemmingway decides to write in stream-of-consciousness, he doesn’t sound like he’s aping Joyce. So when you read “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” you don’t feel like your reading anything other than genuine Hemmingway.

A strong and individualize writer’s voice comes down to not only still following the rules, but following your own rules. Cormac McCarthy formats his dialogue differently than I do, but it works for him. But if I formatted my dialogue like him, it wouldn’t work for me. Both Twain and Faulkner are great Southern writers, but their voices are so different, and yet each works for them.

Be bold enough to find your own voice, and be brave enough to use it. If you lack the confidence to write with uniqueness, you will become another forgotten Salieri. While your voice is not just being different for the sake of being different, it must still be your own. Writing with a voice you have put effort and strain into finding and developing will demonstrate your confidence as a writer, and everyone will be able to notice your individual assertion in each novel, each sentence, each word.

If you were helped by this article, please share it with other writers you know who may be struggling to find their voice, as well. Also, please share with me your experiences in finding your own writer’s voice.

Read Part One

Read Part Two

Read Part Three

Read Part Four

Read Part Five

“The Destruction of Sennacherib” by Lord Byron

  The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

   Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,

That host with their banners at sunset were seen:

Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,

That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

   For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,

And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;

And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,

And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

   And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,

But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;

And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,

And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

   And there lay the rider distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:

And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,

The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

   And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,

And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!