Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2001. [Vol. 7.] Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 27)

Studies - Zoltán Simon: The Image of Technology in Selected American Novels of the 1920's

IV. F. Scott Fitzgerald's fiction has frequently been compared to social history, especially in regards to the 1920s, or to use the expression coined by Fitzgerald himself, "the Jazz Age." His 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby is no exception; in fact, this is the novel that manages to capture most effectively the influence of modern technological civilization on the physical and cultural landscape of the United States in the 1920s. Fitzgerald lavishly uses in this novel many new elements of the changing American culture, including technological ones, but the most prominent and most complex technological symbol of The Great Gatsby is undoubtedly the one that was most visible and influential in the 1920: the automobile. The extent as well as the complexity of Fitzgerald's use of automobiles for literary purposes in The Great Gatsby is unprecedented. The automobile is the principal image of modernity and technology, one of Fitzgerald's most effective ways of characterization, as well as a major dramatic device in the novel. For the characters of The Great Gatsby it variably represents a means of transportation, commodity and "medium of exchange," object of desire, status symbol, or means of escape and freedom. Fitzgerald defines his characters partly through their relationship to technology when commenting on the kind of car they drive on the one hand, and the way they drive on the other. The most conspicuous example of the novel's automobile symbolism is obviously Gatsby's "circus wagon" (94). It sums up, as Leo Marx states, the quality of Jife that Gatsby aspires for; and it serves later in the novel as "a murder weapon and the instrument of Gatsby's undoing" (.Machine 358). The function of Gatsby's "splendid" and "gorgeous" automobile keeps changing throughout the text: initially, it is the ultimate status symbol, a mobile version of his mansion, a vulgar display of Gatsby's wealth scorned by Nick (Marx, Pilot 317), only to become by the end of the novel a major dramatic device, as much a killer mechanism as the gun used by Wilson. Tom Buchanan's blue coupé, as shown by O'Meara, also functions in a variety of ways. On one* level, it is seen as a piece of hardware, pure technology, a means of transportation between East Egg and New York. On a second level, similarly to Gatsby's car, the blue coupé also functions as commodity, a status symbol for the