A Freudian Reading of the Great GatsbyF. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, is generally considered an excellent novel that expresses much more than the superficial plot. The Great Gatsby may be, however, more complex than the average reader might imagine. The Great Gatsby is often interpreted as a corruption of the American dream. In this framework, the Buchanans are seen as the example of irresponsibility and degradation, and Gatsby the embodiment of idealism and sentimentalism. In this essay I want to offer another reading of The Great Gatsby in the Freudian frame of reference. I like to start with the last one. In the last chapter of this novel, we face the mystifying passage: ... I gradually became aware of the old island here that once flourished in the eyes of the Dutch sailors: a fresh, green breast of the new world. its vanished trees, the trees that had given way to Gatsby's house, had once indulged in whispers the last and greatest of human dreams; for a transitory and enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, forced into an aesthetic contemplation that he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate with his capacity for wonder . (227) Fitzgerald's phrase is important here and should not be easily overlooked. The “fresh, green bosom of the new world” and “the last and greatest of all human dreams” are two fateful phrases that help launch my Freudian reading of The Great Gatsby. According to Freud's theory, at the beginning of the sexual development of both boys and girls, the mother is the first desired object, seen as omnipotent and capable......middle of paper......illusion: "Gatsby he believed in the green light, in the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us” (228). Nick and Gatsby retreat from adult sexuality to the infantile state of desiring the mother's breast. This retreat is expressed most clearly in the last sentence: “So we row on, boats against the current, carried back ceaselessly into the past” (228).Notes(1) The question of Nick's sexuality is discussed in great detail and depth in Keath Another reading by Fraser of the Great Gatsby. Works Cited: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald . NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. 57-70. Green, Keith and Jill LeBihan. Critical Theory and Practice: A Textbook. NY: Routledge, 1996.