The Great Gatsby as an Ironic Comedy

The Great Gatsby shows that Fitzgerald's efforts to reach a deeper understanding oerican Idealism are intertwined with his creative attempts to combine the traditional elements of romance and realism with his elaborate artistic treatments employing irony and comedy. Fitzgerald proves these attempts very effectively in analyzing the double-faced nature of American idealism.. The structure of the novel is largely based on ironic comedy which arises from the balancing of illusion against reality through its scenic construction. The ironic relation between Gatsby's romantic attitude and the American rich is conveyed comically and dramatically, however, by Nick Carraway's satiric tone. The comic elements in Gatsby revealed through Nick Carraway's testimony not arouse only superficial laughters, but appeal to critical visions of life or society itself.Accepting Gatsby's death as the loss of his dream, Nick decides to return his hometown, the Mid-West. Indeed his return reveals a sort of regression in his critique of an American idealism which is corrupted with materialism. In other words, while criticizing an American materialism, he seems only to suggest that an American idealism may be essentially the back side of the shallow materialism rather than the object for overcoming the flaws which are inherent in the idealism. However, this seems to be an irony which Fitzgerald employs as an artistic treatment for seeking a harmonious reality in the conflict of ideal and reality in the life of man, but not a thematic default.