Does Tragedy exist without love?
I think that there is an intersection of tragedy and love and that Fitzgerald uses it as a potent story device. These intense emotions of love within the backdrop of the tragic circumstances within the novel are what drive the compelling narrative.
Fitzgerald explores the idea of tragedy and love dancing together in The Great Gatsby and it works. It challenged the traditional narratives of the time and offered more nuanced and complex portrayals of these two strong emotions. The characters have to deal with these complexities which drive them to face the adversity of their choices for love which ultimately meets with tragedy.
Fitzgerald’s success with Tragedy and love lies within the universality of these emotions. They resonate with the audience across cultures and time, it reflects the depth and complexity of the human experience. Although it may be hard to call Gatsby’s life the average human experience, the emotions he feels are. He interplays between tragedy and love to captivate the feelings of a hopeless lover.
I don’t think Tragedy and Love exist without one another, they both need each other to be strong individual emotions. With their intensity and how they both tend to be stronger when the other lacks. The vulnerability of attachment requires that someone makes a deep emotional investment into someone else, this is exactly what Gatsby did with Daisy, and this attachment led to him taking the fall for Myrtle’s death.
Fitzgerald reflected on the complexity and richness of this human experience. Giving the readers a reminder that life has inherent uncertainty and that love and tragedy are integral parts of the human condition and experience. The ending in the novel although abrupt seems fitting and if Gatsby finally saw the forest from the trees the brief moment before he died.
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