"Once more it was pouring, and my irregular lawn, well-shaved by Gatsby's gardner, abounded in small muddy swamps and prehistoric marshes. There was nothing to look at from under the tree except Gatsby's enormous house, so I stared at it, like Kant at his church steeple, for half an hour." (Chapter V of The Great Gatsby)
According to folklore, Kant stared at a church steeple to ready his concentration. Nick Carraway does the same with his mysterious neighbour's house. In Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, infinity appears to the closed eye; form and structure give way to nothingness. To the closed eye, nothingness and infinity are one in the same. By focusing on a perceptible object, one actualizes a corporeal fixedness in the phenomenological realm. Concentration and, also, human thought, as Kant demonstrates by staring at the church steeple, demands that human subjects limit their field of vision. A precise focus on human limits, i.e., what cannot be known absolutely, is the hallmark of critical philosophy since Kant. The church steeple points from the House of God to heavens above; a space beyond mere human contemplation. Kant, purportedly, fixed on the absolute limit of human thought, the possibility and mystery of the eternal, in order to ready his concentration. There is no concentration, or, to be more precise, active thought in closing one's eyes and imagining infinity. He who finds comfort in contemplating infinity attempts to 'transcend' limitations. Limits give life coherence. The confrontation of limits, with an unyielding stare fixed on the church steeple, open the possibility of human action. With closed eyes one sees infinity, or at least infinity envisioned by one. Without limitation, an imagined infinity, a noetic production of the cogito, is at once nothing and everything and where action is impossible. Hence, to close one's eyes and imagine infinity is to avoid action, to refuse human limitations, and to deny the worldliness of human life. Rather than closing his eyes and concocting idle gossip as others who frequented Gatsby's parties did, Nick Carraway stared, with unwavering focus, at that home, in order to understand, however imperfectly, the enigma who resided there. Gatsby, in Chapter V, betrays particular vulnerabilities to Nick Carraway, previously concealed by his 'proper gentleman' visage, frequently punctuated with his ubiquitious 'old sport'. In these moments of vulnerability, we become human; when appearances are destabilized, relationship can begin. Vulnerability, in this sense, is not plastic humility or emotional exhibitionism. It is an affirmation of human limitations. It peels away myth and heresay.
In Chapter IX, Nick Carraway confesses a scornful solidarity between him and Gatsby "against them all", the careless ones like Tom Buchanan and Daisy and the anonymous faces who frequented Gatsby's parties. "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..." Tom and Daisy represent a corrupt individualism: materially abundant yet ethically bankrupt. The contrast with Gatsby is clear and patently obvious to even an uninitiated reader. Gatsby, represented by the 'sacred' schedule carried around by Henry C. Gatz, unwaveringly proud of his son, embodies an extinct American dream. Despite his anger, Nick Carraway shakes hands with Tom, citing that it would be silly not to since he felt that he was talking to a child. Tom embodies the worse kind of immaturity; the one who admits to no fault. He claims, however implicitly, that God is Dead, everything is permitted, and in the universe of money and pearls and cuff buttons, he thinks of himself as God. Delusion deepens for one who refuses to acknowledge his own limitations. Tom mets out what he considers justice by manipulating the widower George Wilson, mourning his wife's infidelity more than her death, into committing an 'irrational' act. Occham's Razor dictated that Wilson was a man 'deranged by grief'. And it rested there. Tom is obviously a repugnant character, who surely is a bigot on top of being philanderer. He judges and 'looks through' Gatsby and naturally without any reflection about his own hypocrisy. His character, however, is a uniform stereotype, as prevalent and uninteresting today as it was back then.
Daisy is an intriguing character. At the start of the story, she is a vibrant character. However, she ends up as a shadow standing briefly by a window, sealing her betrayal with a flick of light switch. Darkness, and we hear no more from her; her absence looms large over Gatsby's demise. There is nothing more to be said about Daisy apart from the image of her and Tom at the conclusion of Chapter VII. She tacitly consents to Gatsby's demise, concedes to cowardice, and unequivocally embraces a future of nihilism - a vacuous, loveless future held together by transient wealth and endless decadence. Jay Gatsby's fate was sealed long before he went to war and became Gatsby; it was inevitable the moment James Gatz laid eyes upon Daisy. Is she a hollow character? Doubtlessly no. Is she merely an object, simply the green light across the bay? Possibly. Objects, as artform - sculptures, paintings, and frescos - has demonstrated on countless occassions, possess depth and quality even beyond human subjectivity. "The object of my affection" poses a limitation to qualitative judgments; objective representation collides haphazardly with the subjective eye. Only as an object is Daisy "real" to anybody in the novel. For Tom, she is Wifey. For Gatsby, she is a green light across the way; his past that recedes with every coming tide. For Myrtle Wilson, she is Jordan Baker. For Jordan Baker, she is the cool older girl. And for Nick Carraway, she is tragedy itself. Fittingly, each pegs her down as parisimonous stereotype. But like Robert Musil's titular "Man without Qualities", Daisy is the modern subject-object, abundant with qualities, but none of which are substantive or qualitatively authentic, artifice constructed by the spectator's eye. Daisy is the object of Gatsby's obsession and, for a lack of a better term, the object of Tom Buchanan's possession. This may be the fulcrum of Daisy's character: tottering between immaterial subjectivity, as an idyllic recollection, or material objectivity, as a beautiful trophy wife. Her lack of fixed qualities adds to her complexity. Fittingly, she is significant through her absence at the novel's end, spectral and immaterial. Absence, so the saying goes, makes the heart grow fonder. For Gatsby, this rang true. For Nick Carraway, her absence punctuates the muted and indifferent tragedy that was the tale of Jay Gatsby. "I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn't sent a message or a flower." But it was Owl-Eyes who summed it up, "Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds...The poor son-of-a-bitch." Dead and forgotten. Six feet under with the maggots, if we're lucky. Those who are alive cling to whatever that can briefly void that inevitable image. The appearance of respectability is a most necessity and facile vanity of life; to live amongst peers is to risk judgment, denunciation, and ridicule.
