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Chapter 6 - The Heat of Modernity: The Great Gatsby as Petrofiction

from Part II - Environmental Genres and Media

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2022

By
Harilaos Stecopoulos
Edited by
Sarah Ensor  and
Susan Scott Parrish
Sarah Ensor
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Susan Scott Parrish
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Summary

This chapter rereads The Great Gatsby as a novel deeply concerned with the temptations and dangers of fossil fuel culture. After providing an overview of the contemporaneous Teapot Dome Scandal, Stecopoulos examines Fitzgerald’s subtle linkage of the novel’s more precarious characters with petro-modernity. By analyzing figural accounts of Gatsby as oil detector, Myrtle Wilson as gusher, and George Wilson as depleted energy field, the chapter offers an ecologically oriented account of a classic American novel.

Keywords

petroleummodernitymodernismFitzgeraldprecarityresource capitalism
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Environment , pp. 81 - 92
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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