Authorship, Displacement, and Identification in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams” and The Great Gatsby

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore F. Scott Fitzgerald’s narrative strategies in constructing“Winter Dreams”(1922) and The Great Gatsby (1925) as paired semi-autobiographical narratives. In a letter written in June 1925 addressed to his editor Maxwell Perkins, Fitzgerald refers to“ Winter Dreams”as“a sort of first draft of the Gatsby idea.” The relationship between Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby can be seen as a transformation that mirrors the doubling of Dexter Green, the protagonist of “Winter Dreams.” In a letter to Ludlow Fowler written in 1924, Fitzgerald highlights the central theme of Gatsby.“ That’s the whole burden of [Gatsby ]—the loss of those illusions,”relates Fitzgerald, “that give such color to the world that you don’t care whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the magical glory.” By reexamining Nick and Gatsby as paired fictional instruments for the author’s conflicting impulses for voicing and muting, we can define the way Fitzgerald’s narrative agenda for displacement and identification creates an intimate space of empathy for the reader, narrator, and author.