Masculine Identity Crisis in American Fiction. Male Characters' Struggle for Masculine Identity in 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Essay from the year 2022 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,4, University of Leipzig, language: English, abstract: This essay will examine the crisis of masculine identity in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby'. It closely examines the male characters' struggle in search of masculine identity. Furthermore, it will explore the portrayal of the male characters in relation to patriarchy and the demands of the society of being a man. After masculinity was discovered, as a field of study, by sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and psychologists, literary scholars and critics also started to explore the diverse concepts of masculinity crisis in literature since 'literature can reveal aspects of masculinity that might not come out or be visible in daily life or in other types of cultural artifacts' as Reeser states. The masculinity crisis finds its expression in literary works and cultural discourses of the early decades of the twentieth century. In American fiction, the masculine identity crisis appears in many different facets and manifestations. But in the literary works in the 1920s, especially in the works dealing with wealth and social transition, the crisis of masculine identity is almost unanimously portrayed in young men who want to become rich and create a new identity or what is so called so-called the Self-Made Man. The young men who reject the new social values and embrace masculinity; men who try to live up to the ideals of traditional American masculinity.