Everything is (not) illuminated: the sense of being lost

This essay is an analysis of the sense of being lost through some exemplary characters of 20th American literature.

“I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always will be.” (Hemingway,1964:87)

If we travel back in time, to the days of the Greeks, we might hear the famous philosopher Aristotle say:

“Man is by nature a social anima[…] Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god” (Aristotle,Politics, Book1:section 1253a)

By stating this, the well-known philosopher expressed the belief that men are not fully capable of living on their own or alone, they do so only if they are born outcasts, as “beasts” or “gods”. However, when one turns to many writers from all over the world, their characters seem to be as far removed as possible from this definition of “social animal”. They are all alone, either through their own will or as the result of some superior power that made them so. Often, this loneliness is accompanied by a sense of loss, of being lost in the crowd and in a world that, especially from the 20th century onward, has removed all its limits and boundaries to become more of a “global country/nation”. Therefore, although Aristotle’s statement might seem extremely contradictory, that is only the case, if we approach it at a superficial level.

1. The sense of being lost, in Salinger

For instance, let us consider Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of JD Salinger’s "The Catcher in the Rye" (1951). At first sight he conforms perfectly to the personality type outlined above, but does not, however, conform to Aristotle’s view. He wants to leave his life behind, he wants to be alone, he is a rebel, he does not belong, he does not fit into society. Still, the book ends with this petrifying line:

“I’m sorry I told so many people about it. About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. […] It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” (Salinger, 2010: 230)

Holden in the end does not leave New York and his life. Seeing his younger sister probably made him change his mind because ties, connections, relationships of any kind make you feel like a part of something bigger, something that you cannot control and that may even scare you, but is something you cannot ignore. The desire of belonging is always stronger than anything else because we are not gods, as Aristotle said, and although we may feel completely different from the society that surrounds us, we want to be a part of it, deep down. All in all, Holden is not a rebel. Rather he is more of an observer of reality who wants to expose the so-called “phonies” and all the hypocrisy of his world, but he does not really have the courage to stand apart. Therefore, he feels lost and lonely and tries to do anything in his power not to become just another part of this infinite chain, which annihilates what is special about an individual. Salinger exemplifies this concept through words and, in particular, with an image of a frozen lagoon.

Where do the ducks go when the lagoon freezes? Where does a lost and lonely young boy go when society has frozen and tries to freeze him too?

The answer is not quite clear. In this case, maybe the young boy goes to family or just to a group of people to belong to. When we reach the end of the book, though, we all know that Holden is still lost and alone. Nothing has changed, maybe because being a part of something is a solution only for some and not for each and every human being. Indeed, it is worth pointing out that this strong sense of insecurity is present not only in Holden, but also in other characters who originate from Salinger’s pen. However, it is also notable that this insecurity is dealt with in many different ways.

On the one hand, we have Seymour Glass, another exemplary character, the eldest son of the Glass family, who commits suicide in the short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish. Apparently, he does not have a clear motive for this ultimate and desperate action -he is on holiday with his fiancé in a beautiful place and they seem happy. Seem happy. Seymour is a veteran of the Second World War and, even though he is back home safe and sound, he no longer belongs anymore to the world, to a society that has not experienced war. He is affected by a strong sense of displacement and he cannot find anything to hang on to. He ends his life because he sees not a way out, as we would commonly define a suicide, but a way in, a way into a kind of possible life for him. On the other hand, there is his younger brother, Buddy Glass, the narrator of most of the stories about the Glass family, who opts for voluntary solitary, seclusion. As he grows old, he yearns more and more to be alone. He then decides to go and live in an isolated cottage in upstate New York.

This character has often been considered to be the alter ego of the writer, mainly for the many similar characteristics, as well as the decision to go and live a secluded life in a small rural town. In fact, all these characters which Salinger portrays share this common feeling of not belonging. They cannot find their true identity inside a group or a movement or even a shared belief, and all three come up with different solutions to this existential problem. In many ways, all three reflect different aspects of the author, famous for his continuous changes in religious beliefs and so on. He and his characters are all so terribly lost that “the space between two sidewalks” becomes bigger than it could ever really be.

2. The sense of being lost, in Fitzgerald

If we go slightly back in time, we encounter a group of writers, defined by Gertrude Stein as “The Lost Generation”:

“All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation…You have no respect for anything. You drink yourself to death” (Hemingway, 1926:128)

Francis Scott Fitzgerald is considered to be one of this generation and probably the most famous and widely read throughout the world. Unfortunately, the media and pop culture have propagated the idea that Fitzgerald’s work deals mainly with hyperbole, excess, extreme luxury and wealth. These elements are certainly an important part of his narrative, but they must not be regarded as the focus of his novels. 

I believe that the latest film version of his enormous success, The Great Gatsby, directed by Baz Luhrmann in 2013, has over-emphasized these features, resulting in an almost paradoxical exaggeration of them. His main aim was undoubtedly to show how crazy and without limits the life of these characters -and of the period itself- was, but he has neglected to give an insight into their psychology and personality, which are of extreme importance in the novel. Indeed, what we see through our narrator, Nick Carraway’s eyes, is the story of Jay Gatsby, the man who gives his name to the book. Fitzgerald effectively depicted the essence of loneliness with the creation of Gatsby’s persona, mostly by showing us his rise and downfall not through the eyes of the bombastic main character, but with the point of view of an “opposite mirror”, a quiet and reflective man, such as Nick Carraway. Our starting point for analysis is the title itself. Contrary to the title, it will not be the story of a “great” man, but of someone who could even be considered the incarnation of loneliness and unhappiness. The very first time the reader encounters the person of Jay Gatsby, he is presented just as a silhouette looking longingly towards the “green light.” He is a gloomy mystery, one moment you see him, the next you do not.

“[…] But I didn’t call for him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone – he stretched out his arms toward the dark water […], I could have sworn he was trembling.” (Fitzgerald, 2012: 22)

Many critics believe Gatsby and his whole story to be a fictionalized version of the writer’s life experience, as if Fitzgerald were at once both Carraway and Gatsby, seeing and being seen by himself. This hypothesis could indeed be true, mostly due to the fact that each and any writer consciously and unconsciously showers his or her creations with those fundamental events of life that have had a deep influence on them –we have already seen something similar with Salinger. From this premise, I may draw the conclusion that, whether Gatsby and Fitzgerald were and are the same person, they both embody one of the many souls of those years and the writer himself, through one of his most famous characters, has become the embodiment of the loneliness of a “lost” post-war generation.

All this beauty and damnation, the luxuries, and the money cannot, however, buy someone’s love or affection. Gatsby is probably one of the most tragic characters that has ever been portrayed, almost like a romantic hero, who has values from the beginning of the story and retains them until the end. He seeks Daisy’s love and consideration, which she will give him at a certain point of the novel, but only on her terms. Daisy, as most of the other characters, is constructed; she behaves like an actress and makes everybody desire her. She brings the promise of adventure and excitement, therefore Gatsby, who has the need to believe in something and to find a safe environment after being destroyed by war, falls into her web of ephemeral beauty. This will lead to his final destruction, his death, caused by Daisy herself and her actions. The main difference between these two is the absence of values in this woman, who represents the aristocracy of the time, which is devalued to a certain extent by all these newcomers, including Gatsby. She and her husband have no beliefs. They pass over people without even noticing it. When Gatsby dies, all they do is leave their residence and do not even consider attending the funeral. Sadly, nobody will. Gatsby dies alone, isolated in his sparkling world which is meant to hide an underlying nervousness and anxiety. This polished appearance is just a mask, it is fake, as are all the people living within this reality. They are the (in)famous ones often referred to by Holden as “phonies”. The author also gave us on the cover of the book this subtitle:

“The tale of a man who built himself an illusion to live by” (Fitzgerald, 2012: Cover)

Gatsby, alone inside his enormous mansion, attempts to create a reality, which cannot work as such from the very beginning, because it is based on a lie, on ephemeral values and possessions which will not give him or anybody else the desired happiness. Therefore, they drown in alcohol, in the use and abuse of everything that may stave off the loneliness and this sense of not belonging. Even the social status of the protagonist shows this, as he is not part of the aristocracy, but neither is he a part of the working class either anymore. He is in between the two, like the land that separates West Egg from Manhattan. It is a “waste land”, an industrial area, described as

“[…] a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the form of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.” (Fitzgerald, 2012: 23)

A deserted place, sad, lonely, lost, where you have these “blue and gigantic” eyes staring at you from a billboard, the only eyes that witness the truth and can cope with it. Now we know that all the beauty and the wealth and the luxuries surrounding Gatsby were not a source of happiness, due to the fact that material possessions and money will never fulfill a person in an emotional way. Consumerism has created this idea of an infinite sense of need for material goods which we do not actually need, and in this way, has designed the belief that, through the accumulation of objects, through these possessions, we may also acquire other people’s affection. Gatsby’s story proves to us that it can only lead to an unwanted isolation and to exploitation by those who are meaner and more unscrupulous than the rest.

3. A comparison for these kinds of being lost

If we compare Gatsby to Holden or the other aforementioned characters from Salinger, we can see that these men took different paths regarding how to perceive and act to beat their loneliness. Salinger’s characters are uncertain as to whether they want to live this way. They try to do something or at least have the impulse to do so. They are not passive, while Gatsby, on the other hand, is used and abused throughout the whole novel. Others, like Nick Carraway, do not exploit Gatsby, but he is manipulated into doing several things, especially by Daisy. He is subconsciously “drained” until he dies. There is a song by the well-known Irish group U2, “Love Is Blindness” -which was also included in the official soundtrack of Luhrmann’s movie. It compares love to cold steel, and then defines it as blinding. This is exactly, and unfortunately, what happens to our Gatsby.

4. The sense of being lost, in Faulkner

While Fitzgerald’s character is blinded by love, we meet another man in late 1920’s literature, Jason Compson, one of the narrators of The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, who is deprived of his “sight” in a similar way. As Gatsby searches for love, Jason goes on a never-ending pursuit of money, the only thing about which he obsesses. He only cares about profiting from every single action he takes, and, in doing so, he leaves behind his family affections and every single tie he might have had. It is natural, while reading this book, to wonder why Jason is so concerned with obtaining money. He belongs to an old aristocratic family from the southern states, shown and portrayed during their final period of economic decay. Therefore, this could be the reason why his priority is to always “get a penny and a dime” for anything he does. Nevertheless, his obsession goes beyond the practical need for money to sustain a family, mostly because he does not share, but keeps for himself whatever sum he may earn. Jason is extremely ruthless and lacks any possible moral values. Money dominates his world and there is nothing else beside it. All the rest, family included, is just an obstacle on his way to greater wealth. He even gets to the point of stealing from his own sister. He sees the money that she gives him each month -as a guardian of her daughter- as some kind of compensation for him and for all he has endured throughout his life. As well as being extremely selfish and self-centred, Jason is also intensely misogynistic.

He tries to justify the theft throughout the whole story as a reappropriation of a certain kind of money that should only belong to and be controlled by men. His southern roots and even the historic period, unfortunately, “explain” this specific behaviour as an “alpha-male”, who wants to control, even with psychological and sometimes physical violence, the women of the family. As we might say in conversation, “he is a man of his time”, and his logic towards the other sex and, most of all, money, could be framed as typical of the late 20’s, when America was approaching the economic crisis and the Great Depression. However, if we read between the lines we see that Jason has cracks, because he is a terribly stressed and lonely person. He has these continuous severe headaches, which should be seen as an alarm, as a reminder from his body to search for a lifestyle which is less stressful and more fulfilling. Indeed, he has isolated himself within this unstoppable “gold rush”, and is now incapable of any feeling, except for perhaps hatred.

There is just one brief moment in which he seems to be considering the love of a young girl:

“…so he thought about Lorraine. He imagined himself in bed with her, only he was just lying beside her, pleading with her to help him, then he thought of the money again, and that he had been outwitted by a woman, a girl” (Faulkner, 1995: 261)

But, sadly so, he is no longer capable of feeling, so he rejects the thought. His soul is just another “waste land”. He is a lonely and unhappy man, who has convinced himself that the road to satisfaction is made of “paper dollars” and not of belonging or believing in something. Jason is the living proof yet again that wealth will not make a person happy and satisfied, because they will always feel the lack of something. Material possession or just money is too ephemeral, it cannot build the foundations for a stable life. As already mentioned, Jason perfectly represents a man of his time, excessively concerned with the economy rather than with things that could actually give authentic value to his life. In the Compson family we have another interesting example of loneliness offered by his brother Quentin. The author characterizes this one with a different style in respect of Jason. The story of the final day of his life is told in first person narrator with a complex stream of consciousness technique -indeed this is the hardest part of the book to read and comprehend. We have continuous shifts between the narration of the present and of some past events that concerned his sister, and especially the idea of her virginity. As Jason is, also Quentin has an intricate relationship with his sister, more morbid than the one of the younger brother. We meet him during his year as a freshman at Harvard and follow the complicate labyrinth of his mind and thoughts, which will end in his suicide by drowning, a topos of American literature. The reasons of this suicide are not easy to extrapolate but are mostly linked to the impossibility of putting into focus how he feels towards his sister Caddy; he goes to his father to ask for advice regarding these doubts about female purity and virginity but his father gives an unsatisfying answer. Therefore, he is left alone with these enormous question marks and feels as no one can actually understand his situation and the one of Caddy. In his delusional thoughts, we read this passage:

“[…] and i it was to isolate her out of the loud world so that it would have to flee us of necessity […]” (Faulkner, 1995: 150)

and also this one

“[…] but I see now that I have not suffered enough I see now that I must pay for your sins […]” (Faulkner, 1995: 86)

Quentin feels like he has to be the bearer of all the faults and defects of his siblings, he has no kind of support and this solitude brings him more and more to the edge and, subsequently, the tragic end. As his brother Jason, he is also very much attached to Southern principles of masculine superiority and necessary control over others, especially women. However these ideals, without a deeper explanation that Quentin needs and looks for in the reference figure of his father, bring him to this state of psychological desolation that will drive him to depression and suicide. Since also Quentin took his own life, as Salinger’s character Seymour Glass did, it may be easy to draw a parallel between these two as well. However, I find that the reason for these deaths are quite different, because, as I stated before, Seymour killed himself due to his incapacity of creating a lace for him in society, while Quentin ends up being submerged by the culture that surrounds him. He is almost crazily embedded in society, in opposition then to Seymour, and this is the thing that kills him: having an accepted knowledge that cannot be fully explained or related to real life events.

“There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.” (Williams, http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/236635-there-comes-a-time-when-you-look-into-the-mirror/, (16.05.2017) )

Tennessee Williams would say. Maybe the mistake these men made was to look at and inside themselves too much. We can see now that these two brothers are decisively opposite: Jason has the appearance of a strong, self-centred young man, while Quentin is visibly depressed. Nonetheless, both these young men psychologically arrive to the same conclusion: loneliness. It is important to notice through these two characters how people can perceive differently concepts and ideals, because although they come from the same cultural environment this one has a very different impact on them.

5. Conclusion

If we pull together all the threads of these ideas, we have in front of us five characters, all created by authors who differed distinctly from each other in plot, technique, lifestyle and so on. Yet these three authors managed to develop the same theme, of solitude and loss, in very different ways, even within their own work –as we have seen with Salinger. They were able to give several points of view of three brief but intense time periods, while showing one or more facets of their very own. They displayed what lay behind the masks of those eras, walls of hypocrisy erected just to hide a lack of values, a lack of affection not only of one generation, but of several. A continuous succession of more disillusioned people, who cannot find stability in anything and who do not have the ability to establish human relations that can last and that have deep meaning. A particular involution –instead of evolution- of society, some kind of second Victorianism, based on lies and repression. If we think of those years, the images that come to mind are of people smiling in every single situation, while the world is being torn apart by inexplicable wars, economic crisis and so on. These were moments in which men were supposed to cooperate, to stick together and help each other in any way possible, instead of giving themselves up to this irrecoverable isolation. In these times men needed to be “social animals” and instead did the exact opposite, by shutting down communication and turning themselves into secluded creatures. Just as in Gatsby’s enormous mansion, where nothing and nobody can get in, but neither get out. They would end up lost in this world, in a society which could not give them the necessary strength. Not much later would come the solitude, whether it was wanted or not. A famous line from a recent television series, named Lost, recites:

“We have to stop waiting […] We can’t do this. Every man for himself is not gonna work. […] we need to figure out how we’re gonna survive here. […] God knows how long we’re gonna be here. But if we can’t live together…we’re gonna die alone”(Lost, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0636303/quotes/, (16.05.2017) )

Man cannot survive alone, neither physically nor psychologically, and as the ancient philosopher Aristotle understood well, we all need each other to build a life that can be truly defined as a real one.

6. Bibliography

Bauman, Zygmunt. In Search of Politics, Stanford University Press, 1999 

Bauman, Zygmunt. Wasted Lives. Modernity and its Outcasts, Cambridge UP, 2004 Faulkner, William, The Sound and the Fury. London, Vintage, 1995 

Fink, Guido, et al. Storia della letteratura americana, Firenze, Sansoni Editore Nuova, 1991. pp: 231-397 “Tra due guerre (1915-1945)" 

Fitzgerald, Francis Scott, The Great Gatsby, London, Penguin, 2012 

Hemingway, Ernest, A Moveable Feast, http://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20141111 (PDF – tablet), (20.05.2017) 

Salinger, J.D, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour. An Introduction, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1964 

Salinger, J.D, The Catcher in the Rye, London, Penguin Books, 2010 

Salinger, J.D, For Esmé – with Love and Squalor & Other Stories, London, Penguin Books, 2010