Deflation of American Values: Automobile Symbolism in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

Abstract

This study investigates F. Scott Fitzgerald’s automobile symbolism in his representative American work, The Great Gatsby. The study aims to demonstrate how the traditional American values such as freedom, social mobility, equality of opportunity, progress, as the cornerstones of the distinct American character and collective consciousness, were reified by the automobile, and how the use of automobile deflates these values in the novel.