“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (post 7): The title expresses contempt for Gatsby as being an alternate personality who will be killed off.

“It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night—and, as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over” (1, p. 113).

Fitzgerald thought of Gatsby as Trimalchio.

Who is Trimalchio? The fictional character “Trimalchio is an arrogant former slave, who has become quite wealthy by tactics that most would find distasteful…The term ‘Trimalchio’ has become shorthand for the worst excesses of the nouveau riche” (2).

Fitzgerald had “preferred titles referencing Trimalchio…but was eventually persuaded that the reference was too obscure and that people would not be able to pronounce it. His wife, Zelda, and [his editor] Perkins both expressed their preference for The Great Gatsby” (3).

However, “The Great Gatsby,” while more marketable, still expresses contempt for the character, since the truly great people in history almost always have “the great” following their names—e.g., Alexander the Great (4)—whereas pretentious entertainers are called “the great” this or “the great” that. 

To understand this novel, you must keep in mind that the original person is James Gatz (see prior post). “Jay Gatsby” is an alternate personality, whose time to be out and in control has come and gone.

In multiple personality, alternate personalities may think of their having control taken away from them and their being forced to go back inside as being killed off, so to speak. The novel translates this into ordinary terms when Jay Gatsby is literally killed off at the end.

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby [1925]. New York, Scribner, 2004.

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimalchio

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_known_as_the_Great