“His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people-his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself... So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end” Pg 105
This quote mentions Gatsby’s parents who in “his imagination” had never really been his parents at all. This can be seen also in Thing Fall Apart as Okonkwo also wishes he never had his father as a parent. The seventeen-year-old James is reincarnated as Gatsby, this change similarly occurred with Okonkwo as he realized his disgust for his father. This aspect of both stories is identical in the creation of both main characters “ideal man” due to a past from which they needed to separate themselves.
Gatsby and Okonkwo used their ideal personas to achieve their goals and ambitions, each of them had a goal, and they both spent their lives in pursuit of this goal. In a sense both men are the archetype of the self made man. In the case of Gatsby, he is trying to achieve wealth, a sense of mysterious fame, and his false vision of Daisy. Okonkwo spends his life trying to increase the respect and reverence he receives by earning titles, to distance himself from his father. While Gatsby’s story takes place after he gains his tremendous wealth and mysterious fame, many times the story revisits his social climb. Okonkwo story takes place over the entire span of his life and dedicates much time to the rise to his position of respect and power. This part of the story explains the toil Okonkwo went through, having to borrow from fellow yam harvesters because he had the setback of being the son of an Agbala. Here, Achebe describes Okonkwo’s work ethic “Share cropping was a very slow way of building up a barn of one’s own. After all the toil one only got a third of the harvest. But for a young man whose father had no yams, there was no other way.” Pg 22. This passage shows the essence of Okonkwo’s work ethic as it shows how hard he had to work to achieve his goal. Gatsby was very similar in that he was not born into wealth and fame and therefore had to work at it, which is just like what Okonkwo had to do. Fitzgerald briefly explores Gatsby’s journey to wealth and fame, much of Gatsby’s work ethic can be seen in this quote as Fitzgerald writes “For over a year he had been beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam digger and a salmon fisher or in any other capacity that brought him food and bed. His brown, hardening body lived naturally through the half fierce, half lazy work of the bracing days” pg 105. This passage shows that Gatsby infact did toil, much like Okonkwo, in his youth, and even though he was not gaining wealth and fame as a fisherman, he was waiting for his opportunity, which came in the form of Dan Cody. Both characters briefly achieve their goals as Okonkwo commands undivided attention. Unfortunately all their mutual hard work came to a quick end as Okonkwo was banished from his town and then upon his return was at odds with his clan’s values, and Gatsby realizes Daisy will never be able to leave Tom for him.
Okonkwo and Gatsby were both remarkably self-absorbed characters and yet had no self-knowledge as they both had false conceptions. Gatsby loved the idea of Daisy, and Okonkwo had the ideal of fighting the white man, and both of these lead to their deaths. Not only do they both die, but they both die because of their false principles and ideals, which catch up with them in the end. Part of the image Okonkwo creates is that he is a fighter and always acts out physically rather than with words. At the end of Things Fall Apart Okonkwo’s conception of what the values of his society are, is false and this is what eventually leads to his downfall. The same thing occurs to James Gatsby as he realizes that the vision he created of his life with Daisy will never come true. Fitzgerald first illustrates this point when he writes
“I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as t the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years!... He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. Now amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart” p.g103
In a sense it was this false conception that ended up killing Gatsby, directly and indirectly. Daisy indirectly killed Gatsby in that she killed Wilson’s wife who understood Gatsby to be the murderer and then took his revenge by ending Gatsby’s life. Gatsby had given up on his life that day as he realized Daisy was not this perfect specimen he had been working towards all these years, and that was what led him to his downfall into depression which was ended swiftly by Wilson. Okonkwo also was killed by his own false perception, as unknowingly his society’s values were at odds with his own. Okonkwo, due to what his self-creation was, acted out by killing a messenger, an action with which his clan did not agree. Achebe sums up what happened to Okonkwo in the quote “Okonkwo stood looking at the dead man. He knew Umuofia would not go to war.” Pg. 205 These two sentences occur just after Okonkwo kills the white man’s messenger. At this point Okonkwo realized what would happen to him, so he ended up taking his own life. Both Gatsby and Okonkwo’s false perceptions, perhaps their greatest flaws, were what lead them to their deaths.
In conclusion, both authors use these two characters as examples of what not to do to lead a fulfilling life. Beyond both characters’ successes, they did not really enjoy life, as both of their lives were a struggle to achieve their goals. Once these goals were achieved, they both fell from grace in a tragic manner. The main reason their lives were so sad was that they were playing roles they cast themselves in for their entire lives. Playing a role for several decades would make even the strongest miserable. What seems to be the point of both authors portrayed by these characters is that one must choose self-knowledge over self-absorption, to be yourself and not something else.
