One comes away from both F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” with an acute sense of the emptiness of the jazz age and the despair at the heart of all our delusions and decadence. One also can’t help but compare the lives of the authors themselves.
On re-reading The Great Gatsby (thanks to Ignatius Press’ newly published critical edition) and meeting again F. Scott Fitzgerald’s narrator, Nick Carraway, I couldn’t help being reminded of that other observer of delusion and decadence: Evelyn Waugh’s Charles Ryder.
Carraway—a simple bond salesman from the midwest is drawn into the glittering world of the seemingly sophisticated socialite Jay Gatsby. Charles Ryder—a modest Oxford student is drawn into the opulent champagne and strawberries world of Lord Sebastian Flyte. Both stories unfold in a sumptuous setting: Gatsby’s fantastic mansion in West Egg and Brideshead Castle—the ancestral pile of the Marquess of Marchmain. Carraway observes the decadence of 1920s American “new money,” while Ryder is drawn into the decay of 1920s English “old money”. Whether the money is old or new, and the characters archaic or parvenu, the delusion and decadence compare.
Both Ryder and Carraway are attracted by the extravagant elegance of West Egg and Brideshead, but both are also curious and cautious of the deep waters into which they are plunged. Carraway is curious about Gatsby’s backstory. Ryder is fascinated by the personalities and history of Sebastian’s family. Both end up being drawn into a web of delusion, alcoholism, adultery, and deceit. Both retreat in the end from the delusion and decadence—Carraway back to being a modest bond salesman in the Midwest, and Ryder to being an solitary, but realistic soldier.
What do they (and we) learn from their observations? I think with Nick and Charles we learn about the siren songs of delusion and decadence. This world’s vanity is on display: the delights of decadence glitter with fatal allure, but vanity, vanity, all is vanity. It is a matrix of immaturity, a delusion of delight, a pablum of pleasure. Gatsby’s mansion is obviously a hollow pleasure dome, while venerable Brideshead Castle winds up as a gambling hall when the boorish Rex Mottram is in charge. Lord Marchmain’s palazzo in Venice is morally no more than a sleazy flat where a rich man houses his mistress. Sozzled Sebastian ends up in a cheap apartment with a low-life sponger, and poor old uxorious Bridey with the regrettable Mrs. Muspratt.
In the end the glitter is gone. The bubble bursts. Gatsby is murdered. Sebastian is a hopeless dipsomaniac. Julia has chosen God over Charles. Lord Marchmain has died within a whisker of damnation and Daisy, after accidentally killing another woman, slinks away with her boorish husband, “retreating into their money and vast carelessness”.
It turns out the not so great Gatsby is just James Gatz from a dirt poor farming family—and Brideshead Castle is a castle in the air. Beneath all the glitter is gritty reality. Farm boy Jimmy Gatz fled into the American Dream and the whole Flyte family were in flight from reality: Lord Marchmain to Venice and Cara—Julia to Rex and disaster, Sebastian to the bottle and Bridey to a matchbox collection and Beryl. Cordelia emerges from the bonfire of the vanities unscathed and Charles joins her taking refuge in the only reality which is his newfound faith.
One comes away from both stories with an acute sense of the emptiness of the jazz age and the despair at the heart of all our delusions and decadence. One also can’t help but compare the lives of the authors themselves.
Fitzgerald—born and brought up in an Irish-Catholic home—fell victim himself to the delusions and decadence. Living lavishly at first, his writing career took a tumble, and he ended up alone and trapped in the bottle like Sebastian. Catholic convert Waugh, on the other hand, like Charles, tasted of the strawberries and champagne, but ultimately found refuge in faith and family.
The contrast echoes in the two stories. Fitzgerald had enough depth to weave a symbol of Divine watchfulness into the story, with the billboard of the occulist (or is he an occultist?) Dr. T.J. Eckleburg presiding over the valley of ashes, but Eckleburg (along with his vision-enabling practice) is long dead, and the billboard is faded.
Waugh manages his moral neatly with a poetic “twitch of the thread”. Where Fitzgerald fails Waugh succeeds by placing a beacon of hope at the end of his tale: the darkened chapel heavy with incense and the flame of the sanctuary lamp re-lit before the beaten copper doors of the tabernacle.
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The featured image is “Publicity still from The Great Gatsby 1926 promoting Neil Hamilton as Nick Carraway” (21 November 1926), and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Has anyone besides me noticed the most pertinent novels of the 21st Century were written a full hundred years ago?
We continue to circle the drain of impoverishment and decadence.
There has been a succession of ever-bigger booms and busts ever since, with wealth being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.
So many NYC brownstones that might have housed one or two families in opulence in those days have been converted into a dozen apartments so minute only singles can fit – and they put up false walls and call them “2-bedroom conversions.”
Every week on trash day the sidewalks are filled with cardboard “furniture” from IKEA so cheap that hastily departing tenants don’t even bother to take with them.
To me, Brideshead Revisited is about the Communion of saints- Lady Marchmain’s life seems a tragic failure but after her death her husband dies in the Lord, Julia returns to her husband, Charles converts, the chapel is restored, Sebastian goes to the monastery and is regarded as a saint, No wonder Charles is so cheerful- there is another world beyond this.I’ve seen this in my own family when my mother died and our family’s ‘luck’ changed.
The Great Gatsby is about the Vanity Fair of the Pilgrims’ Progress- where anything can be bought or sold. It is light as air but Christ did not partake of its goods.
Nina. Thanks for commenting. In Brideshead Julia does not return to her husband. She has no husband.
Julia does return to her faith.
It is an interesting comparison, Father, but I disagree that Brideshead had the glitter, opulence and emptiness of The Great Gatsby. Charles was attracted to the strawberries and champagne of Sebastian, but because of remarkable contrast to his own lonely and familial neglected background. (Who would not with a father like that!)
It was more the mysterious inner workings of the Flyte family that first attracted Charles. Yes, he moved on to an empty marriage of convenience which opened the door to adultery, but I don’t see the glitter and opulence of which you speak in Brideshead..
“Bridey” himself was not indulgent, quite the opposite. In practicing his faith, he was more like the “old stone savage” of Robert Frost fame: trudging along doing things because it was the way it had always been.
Yes, Sebastian was a drunk, but because for one, he could not bring himself to comply with the practice of the faith the way his mother desired of him.
Julia involved herself with Rex Motram because she too wanted to “ be causing problems.” I agree the age put pressure on these characters to conform to the godlessness around, but I do not see the same glitter, gold, and utter surrender to debauchery that I see in The Great Gatsby.
Germaine, thanks for your comment. The comparison between West Egg and Brideshead is not total, but I still contend that the rotten egg of West Egg is the same rot that destroyed the Flyte family. The main difference, it seems to me, is that the decay in Waugh’s story is more elgant and tasteful. But perhaps all the more powerful for being understated.
For some of us Father, the snotty culture of Britain (there are a few touches of this even in Newman,) makes Waugh and his characters difficult to sympathize with. I suspect most Americans find it easier to sympathize with the farm boy trying to recover his lost love and join her set, and with the fellow mid-westerner who befriends him. And perhaps also with the tragic, hard-drinking, mid-westerner Fitzgerald than with the, well, snotty Waugh.
Mark. I do not disagree, and my quarter of a century living in England certainly immersed me in the vagaries of their inscrutable and incorrigible class system. However, this was not the point of my essay. It was about delusion and decadence–and that this delusion and decadence underlies both cultures and both of these classics.