Puzzling Men : Masculinities in The Great Gatsby

This thesis examines hierarchies that affect a man’s status in the hierarchy between masculinities in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. In a close reading of the novel, the most important concepts in the thesis are hegemonic masculinity and self-surveillance, which both contribute to the idea of a hierarchy between masculinities. While masculinities in modernist novels have been studied, the hierarchies between masculinities have not been well explored in The Great Gatsby. I suggest that the most notable men in the novel, Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, and Tom Buchanan, survey certain features of each other to know their own place in the hierarchy between masculinities. Divided into three sections, this paper first defines Raewyn Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity with the help of David Buchbinder, and then the notion’s connection to Michel Foucault’s theory of panopticism. The paper then studies the hierarchies that affect a man’s position in the hierarchy between masculinities in Gatsby. Lastly, the paper examines how men organise each other into a hierarchy by surveying themselves in contrast with other men’s masculinities