Battle of the Nicks

How does a novel written over one-hundred years ago remain as such a revered piece of media in the modern cultural zeitgeist? Sure, said novel contains some beautifully written metaphors that paint vivid pictures of the dueling lavishness and tragedy of the 1920s…but it’s still the 1920s. No amount of gold-embossed language or daring insights can distract from the fact that The Great Gatsby was written by and for a specific audience: white, cisgender, heterosexual, preferably male–that’s where authors like Anne-Marie McLemore come in. McLemore uses her writing in Self-Made Boys as a tool for exploring the gaps she saw in The Great Gatsby. She does not simply use the characters and setting to do with as she pleases–instead, she uses common themes present in Gatsby and reinterprets their meanings. Through analysis of the two novels’ narrators, it is understood that Self-Made Boys‘ reinterpretation of The Great Gatsby underscores the differences in the two authors’ perspectives by mirroring key aspects of Fitzgerald’s commentary, especially regarding class, identity, and societal struggle.

Nick Carraway is an inherently isolated character. This sentiment can be found throughout both novels, including chapter three of The Great Gatsby where he notes how, “[a]t the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others…” When faced with a city that should be full of life, Nick can only see solitude. During his journey through the Valley of Ashes, he describes it as “a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens…” (Fitzgerald, ch. 2). Nick’s words depict not only the physical desolation of his environment but symbolically represents that he sees a moral and emotional decay happening around him, which only deepens his sense of alienation.

 In Self-Made Boys, this isolation manifests as a result of his queer and Latinx identities. Upon arriving in New York and learning that his cousin, Daisy, has been pretending that they were not related, Nick describes himself as “the brown boy who stood as proof of the lies she told.” (McLemore, 16). As opposed to seeing the outside world as its own plight, all around him–even from his own family–Nicolás is being fed the idea that the burden is actually himself. At the first of Gatsby’s parties that Nicolás attends, he is wearing a shirt that apparently makes him indistinguishable from the service workers in the eyes of the guests. When given the option to discard his shirt for one of Gatsby’s, he becomes overwhelmed with the fear of his side lacer being seen: “anyone looking closely might ask, What have you got under there?” (McLemore, 38). This quote is important because it illustrates a much deeper fear of vulnerability. Nicolás is not lonely because of some deep-seated reproach for society, but because he has been taught society holds reproach for him.

Self-Made Boys’ Nicolás Caraveo is constantly fighting to be truly seen. In New York, he is told, “you forget the family name. You’re Nick Carraway”, a command that both invites him to blend in and erases who he really is (McLemore, 53). He struggles so much to weigh the external perception of him with his internal experience, wondering, “[i]f I loved another boy, did that make me less of one?” (McLemore, 189). Nicolás sees his trans and gay identities as a burden due to both internalized negative perceptions and fear of harm from the world around him. His cynical nature forms as a protective response to past experiences, which closes him off to future connection–because in his mind, “[b]oys like Gatsby didn’t kiss boys like me, if they ever kissed boys at all” (McLemore, 46). Even when he accepts his feelings for Gatsby, Nicolás still refuses to let himself believe in a world where those feelings could be reciprocated. It’s much easier to disregard the possibility that his identity could be rewarded than accept the tragic implications of why it often isn’t.

In The Great Gatsby, Nick is not a social deviant. Nick Carraway is a white, upper-class, cisgender man that has never had a consistent thought in his life. He even describes himself as “simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life” (Fitzgerald, ch. 2). From the glimpse into Nick’s life that the audience gets, “diverse” is not the best word to describe it. He longs for some sort of change to take him away from his day-to-day life, yet that desire is contested by how “[he] wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever…” (Fitzgerald, ch. 1). His apathy is not created from fear, but from boredom and an inability to see beyond his own perspective. Bonding over common experiences is a futile endeavor when they are common to everyone. It is only when Nick experiences something–or someone–not confined to his rigid expectations of the world that he says “[he] was lonely no longer” and begins to open himself up to a more positive outlook; that someone being Jay Gatsby (Fitzgerald, ch. 1).

In the end, Nicolás is allowed to explore the greys of morality and differing perspectives because he is able to understand that his is not the only one that can be considered “correct”. When Tom throws a slur his way, he is defended by Jay Gatsby and Martha Wolf: two known bootleggers with likely connections to the mob (McLemore, 234). He is shown kindness (if a bit crude) by sex workers (McLemore, 66). He is introduced to an underground life populated by other queer people that Martha later admits also serves as a place for people down on their luck “can eat well…for below cost” (McLemore, 186). Where Nick Carraway’s lack of any marginalized identity and moral rigidity bars him from any sense of community, Nicolás Caraveo’s deviance from existing social norms allows him a fuller understanding of himself that ultimately leads to stronger connections with others. Self-Made Boys’ Gatsby said it best: “Boys like us get used to having to lie about everything else just so we can tell the truth about ourselves.” (McLemore, 123). Nicolás himself lives on the fringes of the law by living as a trans man. Just by the mere act of existing, Nicolás is forced to confront the notion that morality is not always capable of rigidity.The Great Gatsby, to put it plainly, does not retain its impact with modern audiences on its own. With every year that passes, the gaps in the novel’s story become more obvious. Self-Made Boys and other similar remixes revitalize conversations Fitzgerald began by essentially acting as one large thought experiment–one that forces readers to confront the systematic erasure of these identities rather than accept Gatsby’s whitewashed version of history as the universal truth. Without these reimaginings delving further into its nuances (or lack-thereof), Fitzgerald’s exploration of 1920s class and culture risks feeling incomplete. Modern perspectives must be created to appeal to modern readers in order to keep the discussions around The Great Gatsby alive and growing.