The Great Gatsby and Of Love and Dust

Ernest Gaines has made his indebtedness to various authors known throughout the years, and some of these authors have already been discussed on this blog. One author that pops up purely for the influence of style on Gaines' writing is F. Scott Fitzgerald. When listing authors who taught him about writing, Gaines often mentions Fitzgerald. He says that The Great Gatsby is a good novel; however, he also says, "I don't care for Fitzgerald, but I love the structure of Gatsby" (Blake 144). That structure can be seen, partly, in the way that Fitzgerald ends each chapter, something Gaines does in works like The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. On another level, Fitzgerald's influence on Gaines can be seen in Of Love and Dust where Jim Kelley narrates the story instead of Marcus. Discussing this decision in 1976, Gaines said, "I needed a guy who could communicate with different people" (Tooker and Hofheins 107). That guy, of course, would become Jim Kelley. Jim could communicate with Bonbon, Aunt Margret, and Marcus; he could navigate those relationships in the same way that Nick could navigate his in Gatsby. "Fitzgerald used Nick," according to Gaines, "because he could communicate both with Gatsby and the real rich" (107). This can be seen in the way that Nick talks with Daisy and Tom and how he speaks with Gatsby.

While the aspect of having a narrator who can communicate with all of the sides involved in the plot appears in both novels, I would go a step further and say that Nick Carraway and Jim Kelley make good narrators because they both admire their subjects, Jay Gatsby and Marcus respectively, and attempt to show the human side of each of them. In the opening pages of The Great Gatsby, Nick states, "No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men" (6-7). Nick, throughout the novel, paints Gatsby as a sympathetic figure. He portrays Gatsby as a man who, while Nick may have "disapproved of him from beginning to end," warrants admiration, and Nick admires Gatsby through the end, even becoming the only person in New York, really, to do anything after George kills Gatsby (162).

Jim, like Nick, disapproves of Marcus' actions and the way he goes about them. Jim tells himself, early in the novel, "One of these days I'm going to stop this, I'm going to stop this; I'm a man like any other man and one of these days I'm going to stop this" (43). Even though Jim thinks this, he doesn't do anything about it. Marcus becomes, in essence, the motivation for Jim to finally act and leave at the end of the novel. Near the end of the novel when Jim tries to catch Marcus before he confronts Bonbon, Jim says, "No, I didn't blame Marcus any more. I admired Marcus. I admired his great courage" (270). For Jim, Marcus becomes an inspiration because he actually stands up to Bonbon and decides to "stop this." Both narrators, Jim and Nick create sympathetic portraits of Marcus and Gatsby. They both allow the reader to see the nuances of each character. If Marcus narrated Of Love and Dust, we would most likely just get "The hell with it, let the world burn; I don't give a damn" (Tooker and Hofheins 107).  



Blake, Jeanie. "Interview with Ernest Gaines." Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Ed. John Lowe. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995. 137-148. Print.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1995. Print.
Gaines, Ernest J. Of Love and Dust. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979. Print.
Tooker, Dan and Roger Hofheins, "Ernest J. Gaines." Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Ed. John Lowe. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995. 99-111. Print.