Reality and Process of Acceptance

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Gatsby attempts to break the social barrier present between him and the status of socialites in the East Egg of Long Island to reach Daisy. Similarly, in T. S. Eliot's poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Prufrock searches for love as a social outsider during an evening party. Yet, despite their efforts, both Prufrock and Gatsby end up alone. However, unlike Gatsby, Prufrock accepts his failure whereas Gatsby remains alienated in his own fantastical world as a result of his unhealthy insistence and incapability to accept reality.

Prufrock, although obsessive and inwardly frenetic about social interaction, ends up alone because he mentally recognizes that he cannot achieve love. His mental state is mirrored by his own description of the setting around him throughout the poem. Initially, he describes his environment concretely using tangible objects like “streets,” “hotels,” and “restaurants.” This physical and realistic description is representative of Prufrock’s initial sensible rejection for social and emotional interaction.

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This rejection is evidenced by how he constantly questions himself on why he ever “presumes” any social engagement between him and a woman is possible.

However, Prufrock then undergoes a mental shift that is represented by his description of a fanciful setting in which he is surrounded by “mermaids singing, each to each.” These mermaids are depictions of women at the party speaking to each other, but the fact that they are portrayed as mythical and unrealistic creatures shows Prufrock’s incapability to ever be with them in actuality.

This imaginative setting mirrors Prufrock’s quixotic mindset, which in turn reflects Gatsby’s mental state before he dies. However, unlike Gatsby, Prufrock is awakened by “human voices,” signaling another mental shift in which he returns from his mermaid fantasy to the actual human world. He “drown[s]” within his dream in response to the voices and therefore shows that he is able to remove himself completely from the mermaid fantasy and acknowledge his human reality.

Gatsby never undergoes a mental shift like Prufrock until the moment before he dies as he is waiting for a telephone call from Daisy. Nick Carraway suggests that “Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come,” and “shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is” (Fitzgerald 161). Like Prufrock, Gatsby is struck into reality, but here as a result of Daisy’s implicit rejection. Yet, unlike Prufrock, Gatsby does not reach the mental state of acceptance. The rose, representative of undeniable beauty and therefore Gatsby’s skewed and goddess-like perception of Daisy, becomes grotesque in Gatsby’s mind. The fact that he shivers and is shooken by this thought shows that he is dumbfounded by his failure to be with Daisy rather than in acceptance of it.

In addition, Gatsby’s incorruptible insistence of attempting to achieve his dream to be with Daisy further exemplifies his inability to accept his fate. This excessive insistence is reflected toward the end of the novel in Gatsby’s choice to persist on using his pool despite the fact, as his servant noted, it was autumn and the pool was to become unusable (Fitzgerald 153). Just as the way that Gatsby insists on recreating his old relationship with Daisy that existed in the past, he insists on using his pool at an inappropriate time. He is unable to accept that Daisy is no longer the same person she was and that she has changed in availability as the pool has as time has passed.