Not Willing to Conform

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 may not have much in common in terms of, well, anything.  But the underlying message in each novel, although different, describes aspects of America that neither author wanted to see and both have come to despise: the relentless Machiavellian pursuit of a ruptured dream.

Heller begins the book with a playful tone that portrays the randomness andThe Great Gatsby from the beginning of the novel.  When McWatt decides, “Oh, well, what the hell,” and flies into the mountain, Colonel Cathcart decides to raise the amount of missions to sixty-five.  It seems that the sad troops have gone insane, and they are so war weary that they can’t continue, yet a faded, and not very present, dream requires that they stay longer.  In Fitzgerald’s novel, Gatsby is confident bordering on cocky when he says to Nick: “You’re having lunch with me today” with what Nick describes as “resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American.” Heller’s idea of funny comes embedded in a critique of American foreign policy where enforcing international supremacy— which isn’t even mentioned in the novel— is more important than the troops’ morale.  In The Great Gatsby, a different kind of weapon is used to attack a similar target: Jay Gatsby’s emphasis on material wealth is used to critique the American Dream.  Gatsby knows that a proper rich man (although he only made it to West Egg) need not ask someone like Nick out for lunch, informing him will suffice.  In both novels, the author doesn’t blatantly clobber American culture, rather, they play with the tone used to describe the protagonists and the situations around them to get their point across.  Interestingly, it could be said that the raising of the missions is failing to conform when change is needed, while Gatsby’s conforming to the upper class attitude is changing when it isn’t needed.

frustration that comes from Catch-22; little by little that parody of the military evolves into dark almost lugubrious humor.  On the other hand, the reader can sense the resentful tone in the description of the 1920s in

Catch-22 portrays the suffering that comes from exposure to war.  The Great Gatsby uses a simple plot to explain the pitfalls of the consumer culture.  Both attack the American mentality by exposing a small group of characters— soldiers in one case and rich people in the other— to the reality of what can come to be America.