Narcissists in Literature – Jay Gatsby
29 thoughts on “Narcissists in Literature – Jay Gatsby”
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HG,
Your analysis of Heathcliff has made me re-listen to you narrating each chapter of Wuthering Heights on your Treasure Trove channel.
After contemplating Heathcliff’s narcissism, I’m now more attuned to each character’s personality and the interactions between them. It makes the story even more enjoyable.
Dear HG,
You mentioned this briefly in this series — is my understanding correct that we can include fictional characters in KTNs?
Yes
I have now listened to HG’s second video in this series about the character Heathcliff from Emily Bronte’s ‘Wuthering Heights’.
After listening to HG’s assessments of both characters, I noted that HG emphasised the generally negative aspects of their experiences, psychology, and motivations.
I agreed with HG’s assessments and descriptions and I thought they were accurate and very well-explained. It was very enjoyable to listen to HG’s videos.
When considering my own memory of the novels, the aspects that came to mind also included the characters’ positive experiences. For instance, when Heathcliff and Cathy were growing up, they would go to the moors together and play, just the two of them. They would spend hours playing together, free, undisciplined and happy. The time they spent together on the moors intensified the bond between them. I think the time they spent that way made each of them genuinely happy. (In seeing their relationship at this point in the novel in this way, I don’t think I’m wearing rose-coloured glasses. I think this is a realistic and factual assessment.)
The freedom they shared together changed once Cathy became acquainted with the Lintons, which had the effect of making her more restrained and ‘civilised’ as a result of the Lintons’ refined behaviours in comparison to the Earnshaws. This had the result of weakening and changing her bond with Heathcliff, who became angry and jealous.
While I agree that Heathcliff was a narcissist, the way the novel is written and the story unfolds makes Heathcliff become a narcissist after Cathy’s betrayal and preference for Edgar Linton. In the book, this was the catalyst that spurred Heathcliff to leave and transform his status. I think it changed his personality. From that time onwards, his cruelty and ruthlessness took over.
In respect of Heathcliff’s narcissism, perhaps Cathy was an ‘intervener’ for him rather than a provider of fuel? While they were together playing for hours on the moors, Heathcliff had someone who cared about him and treated him as an equal. This was brought to a crashing halt when he overheard her saying that it would degrade her to marry him. The hurtfulness of what she said about him made him lose a sense of hope and love that she had given him.
Whichever way you regard Heathcliff’s character and the hows and whys of what motivated him, I think it’s a great novel and readers will have a wide variety of opinions about it.
Thanks again, HG, for your great videos about Jay Gatsby and Heathcliff.
Hello Wiser✧🍃 Though I love the romantic idea that Catherine could have been an intervener but given HG’s remarkable analyses nor is it possible, nor does Heathcliff’s narcissism develop after Cathy’s preference for Edgar.
From HG’s analyses:
– Heathcliff finds himself in those formative years in an environment where he is resented by his new siblings. At the very beginning when Mr. Earnshaw brings Heathcliff home, Catherine grins and spits at him and Hindley instantly hates him. Heathcliff does not have any information about his biological mother and father and no mother replacement was made available to him. The first mother figure, Mrs. Earnshaw, rejects him.
– Mr. Earnshaw does try to play mother by bringing Heathcliff to his home and he might be seen as an intervener that could perhaps have arrested the lack of control environment that Heathcliff was subjected to.
Mr. Earnshaw sees him as his favorite and he gives him the name of his dead child, Heathcliff. This puts Heathcliff in an even worse position because he puts him above everything and neglects his own children which only heightens the hate in the household and the lack of control environment towards Heathcliff. In a way Mr. Earnshaw kills Heathcliff metaphorically at least by naming him with the name of the deceased boy.
– Nelly Dean says „Still I couldn’t dot on Heathcliff and I wondered often what my master saw to admire so much in the southern boy who never to my recollection repaid his indulgence by any sign of gratitude, he was not insolent to his benefactor, he was simply insensible.“. Thus despite the fact that Mr. Earnshaw had shown kindness of a sort to Heathcliff, by then it was too late that the nature of his personality was such that he would not respond with gratitude.
– Mr Earnshaw humored Heathcliff’s partiality and that humoring was rich nourishment to the child’s pride and black tempers. Heathcliff finds himself subjected to a lack of control environment by the loss of his biological mother, and then he finds himself thrust into an environment where most people actually hate him including Catherine and Hindley but then in order to compensate for that and to seek favor from Mr. Earnshaw, they start to dot upon him and they humor his partiality, but the problem there is that that simply creates an alternative lack of control environment, because it means that Heathcliff is being given reactions which he’s not actually earned.
– Heathcliff shows a need for Fuel for instance in this quote: „He took a seat opposite Catherine who kept her gaze fixed on him as if she feared he would vanish were she to remove it. He did not raise his to her often, a quick glance now and then sufficed, but it flashed back each time more confidently the undisguised delight he drank from hers“.
– Upon Mr Earnshaw’s death and his inheritance of the estate the spiteful Hindley proceeds to treat Heathcliff as little more than a servant boy and makes him work the fields which compounds the threat of loss of control to Heathcliff and also cements his rage and resentment. Heathcliff is repeatedly humiliated, threatened, subjected to these repeated threats to control. Hindley starts with preventing his education and goes on reducing him to the status of a servant.
– There is a chain of poor parenting that exists throughout the novel.
Wuthering Heights is the story of extremely neglected children who neither have a mother nor a sufficient surrogate. All the mothers die prematurely leaving their children into the hands of insufficient caretakers. Wuthering Heights portrays a world of sadism, violence and cruelty wherein the children, without the protection of their mothers, have to fight for very life against adults who show almost no tenderness, love or mercy. Very much the crucible of a lack of control environment. For Heathcliff with an abandoned mother and no father of parentage unknown he finds himself then thrust into this crucible facing repeated threats to his control.
– Humiliation comes both physically and psychologically for Heathcliff. Parents of this nature frequently criticize their children in a way that makes them worthless, rejected and inferior. Abused in this manner someone like Heathcliff learns to see power as a way to protect himself. He starts to use a means of power to beat the sensation of inferiority and worthlessness and thus his narcissism comes into being.
Hi Jordyguin,
Thank you for your detailed and thorough reply; it is appreciated.
I agree with your points. Everything you have mentioned reinforces HG’s comprehensive analysis, which details Heathcliff’s life and experiences from his early childhood.
From the time Mr Earnshaw brings him home, Heathcliff’s difficult start in life as an abandoned foundling is compounded with Mrs Earnshaw’s rejection and the resentment from Cathy and Hindley. From his early childhood abuse, it’s clear that Heathcliff found himself taken from one lack of control environment only to be thrust into another one. He clearly had an early childhood lacking in any consistent tenderness, kindness or love.
Heathcliff’s narcissism would have already been well-developed by the time Cathy accepted Edgar Linton’s marriage proposal. He probably left after that point because her rejection of him was a major threat to his control.
Jordyguin:
You get an A+! What a brilliant analysis. I loved HG’s YouTube on it. I actually had just started rereading it. When I as young I thought Heathcliff and Catherine had such a passionate, romantic love but I felt something was not quite complete in both of them. I shrugged it off as a story. Now I see the narcissism. I shall enjoy reading it with fresh educated eyes and your analysis and HG’s will resonate! Thanks!
TGG is one of my favourite novels and I’ve always been sympathetic towards Gatsby, but it’s true, he’s very flawed and causes damage in his pursuit of grand plans. I know that thorough character breakdowns like this (with evidence) would not easy or quick to make. Thank-you for creating this one HG.
You are welcome.
This is sooooooo good!!! My brain is on fire. To have it all laid out like this! Wow! Love you, sir! Thank you!!!
You are welcome.
This was excellent, sir. I really enjoyed it, and I know that this is going to be a favourite series.
I think Daisy is a narcissist, too. Nick describes her as a “careless person who smashes things up and then retreats behind her money.” She is indifferent to her child. She lets Gatsby take the blame when she was driving the car. Then she and her husband run away leaving no way to contact them.
I’m looking forward to the next episode already. May we request specific characters/books?
It would be really interesting if you could find notable works by narcissists (self-aware and non-self-aware) and explore the differences in portrayal.
Thank you so much for your time. Much appreciation. Please more of this soon!!
It’s very interesting to consider how characters who are narcissists are described in literature. I think it reflects the author’s awareness of narcissism, and also the clichéd nature of the ‘character arc’ that is taught to writers as the way a story ‘should’ develop.
Thank you, HG, for looking at this aspect of narcissism.
HG says, “From his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty; a threat to his control.”
I think it’s important to define this point in more detail.
Poverty is something that all people are likely to despise, whether the person is a narcissist, narcissistic, normal or empath. The effects of poverty are very difficult on everyone.
There are the immediate effects, which are very real, rather than being considered ‘a threat to control’. Poverty impacts a person’s basic needs – it may be a lack of food, lack of warmth or heating, lack of proper shelter, lack of employment, or lack of opportunity.
Along with these immediate effects – which are a threat to an individual’s survival and security – there are what can be considered secondary social effects. That is, general social scorn, contempt and derision. The social judgement and scorn can be defined as social threats or social shame.
When considering narcissism, I think it’s the social judgement and social shame that is more likely to be ‘a threat to control’ that a narcissist like Jay Gatsby is focused on overcoming.
Also, the word ‘despise’ that HG uses here is interesting too. A normal or empathic person can ‘despise’ a situation like poverty *and* also understand that entering into criminal behaviour like corruption, theft, fraud, etc, is harmful to others and ultimately ineffective.
With regard to Gatsby it means that he despised those who were from poverty or mired in it, in the way that I do, since most people would despise poverty of itself.
With regard to yourself, HG, rather than Jay Gatsby, your reply raises a question for me.
As you have said before – repeatedly – you don’t discriminate in that you despise everyone equally.
I’m wondering if you despise “those who were from poverty or mired in it” in equal proportion to those who were from wealth or mired in it?
One thinks you missed the joke.
You’re right, HG, I did miss the joke. I took your comment at face value and responded with a straightforward question, in kind.
Wiser,
I think you don’t realise it, but you are doing this: HG, you said before that you despise everyone equally, but do you reeeeeealy despise everyone equally?? Aa? Aaa?
__
Poverty doesn’t serve the Prime Aims. Wealth does serve the Prime Aims. What does it have to do with despising everyone equally? Nothing.
Jordy,
It looks like you have focused on the umbrella terms ‘poverty’ and ‘wealth’. By focusing on these ‘labels’ and the black and white contrast between them, you have ignored – or maybe put to one side and out of sight – the words “or mired in it”.
My question was:
“I’m wondering if you despise “those who were from poverty or mired in it” in equal proportion to those who were from wealth or mired in it?”
I’ll explain my thoughts in asking the question in more detail.
HG said that he “despised those who were from poverty or mired in it.”
When I read that, the part of HG’s statement that raised a question for me was the ‘or mired in it’ part.
People can be ‘mired’ in wealth as well, the thing is that being ‘mired’ in wealth is not as obvious a handicap because wealth of itself is considered a ‘positive’ while ‘poverty’ of itself is considered a ‘negative’.
Who wants to be poor, right? Everyone would say they’d rather be rich. Wealth is the reason people get up in the morning to live another day.
Jay Gatsby thought it was the answer to his problems. It was a ‘prime aim’. He became mired in ‘wealth’ as much as he attempted to avoid being ‘mired’ in poverty.
Even though people generally aspire to become wealthy, and narcissists see it as a prime aim, being mired in the concept that wealth is the answer to every problem – or that ever-increasing wealth is a reasonable aim – is an illusion. A way to control in the moment – until the next moment comes along and the previous moment is forgotten.
Those who have wealth and despise (or look down on) those who are not as relatively wealthy are not actually ‘unmired’. They cannot see past the ‘wealth’ they believe is a laudable goal, even though their riches are like dusty relics they need to spend more and more resources on just to keep in their possession.
Being mired in wealth is like a narcissism of itself. It’s a black hole, a facade, that needs to be sustained.
That’s why I asked the question. I wanted to see HG’s response about people being ‘mired’ in wealth as well as being ‘mired’ in poverty.
Wiser, I love your thoughts about people sink into wealth! And I like this term, it’s so adequate.
I am a person who can say with a clear conscience: I don’t want to be rich.
Money destroys people.
Money drives people apart.
I have lived at different financial levels and in different environments. I know how unfavorable changes took place in myself when there was much more money than the people around me had. It’s always good to fall down and gain humility 🙂 It happened to me several times and despite the nerves and stress – I assess these events positively for my personal development.
And no, I don’t get up in the morning to get rich. Money is only a secondary thing, unfortunately necessary to pay bills and have something to fill your belly. I devote about 5% of my attention to money. Annoying that I have to do this! 🙂
I get up for those I love and I get up to do my duties. That’s all.
—–
When the last peer, my grandmother’s friend, died, I knew she would pass away soon, despite his excellent physical health at the age of almost 90. She retreated inside herself and completly lost contact with the human world in one night. Snap. One day it’s there, the next day it’s not. The body followed the mind within a few months.
If you have no one to love, if you are no longer needed, you die.
If you don’t have money. OK, sometimes they are there, sometimes they aren’t. It’s nothing terrible. It’s no big deal.
Thank you, Joa, I’m glad you liked my comment and it makes sense to you.
When someone has had various kinds of experiences with different levels of wealth and he or she can compare the differences, it helps to have a more ‘well-rounded’ approach to money.
Also, relationships and situations with people where money has been a factor can be a learning process too.
“If you have no one to love, if you are no longer needed, you die.”
I’m not so sure about that. There are times I think that if I was no longer needed by certain people, I would actually thrive, haha 🙂
Your grandmother’s friend that you mention had a very long life and even with excellent health for a 90-year-old, I think there would be health issues, tiredness, and a lack of enthusiasm that came with a lack of energy.
Although I agree that a positive and optimistic frame of mind – especially in younger people – certainly does change the motivation to live and strive to do the things that increase happiness (or contentment 🙂).
WN, well done on confirming the accuracy of HG’s response. You remained standing on the same spot.
Joa, nor does money destroy people or drive people apart. It’s something else which does this.
Wealth of any kind is a natural state and money is a neutral force.
Gatsby aimed for a certain kind of wealth because it catered to his Prime Aims, for his type of narcissism. His main driver was Fuel and Control. Wealth was just a tool to get there.
Jordy,
With your latest comment, you have shifted the focus of this thread.
The conversation began with a focus on people (i.e. those who are either from wealth or from poverty). You have now placed the focus on money instead (i.e. “Wealth of any kind is a natural state and money is a neutral force.”)
I agree with you that money is a neutral force. It’s not money itself that makes people mired one way or the other. Money is a very effective tool to use to wield power with, though. Money and wealth enable different attitudes and power dynamics.
My question to HG was about whether he despises those from wealth in equal proportion to those from poverty.
If ‘wealth of any kind is a natural state’, it follows that it would be pointless for someone to attempt to improve their living conditions by studying harder at school. Yet, HG has said about poor people that they should have tried harder at school.
It seems to me that there is a double standard here. Those from poverty are scorned and blamed for not being or becoming wealthy. This is like a projection by the wealthy to deflect from the inequality. The people from poverty are scapegoated as though the inequality is their fault, whereas they are burdened with the ‘sins’ of the wealthy.
WN, my brain hurts from reading your own brain entanglement. You turn on the same spot again and again and nothing can prevent you from doing it. TF
HG’s response „One thinks you missed the joke.“ ― is about this thing which you do and continue to demonstrate.
Either it’s the ’despise thing’ or to state your baseless contrary position on HG’s analysis of Heathcliff, which you were obviously incapable to process, but then simply shifted your position and mirrored back what I pointed out to you, which was from the transcript of the video and you agreed with HG’s primary excellent information after all, but wasted everyone’s time by playing back and forth. As the same with „I wanted to see HG’s response about people being ‚mired‘ in…“ ― it gives you away. You wanted to see HG’s response i.e. his reaction to your inability to pay attention to his analysis, his answers or the information about himself he stated so many times re: despising everyone equally. HG even gave you an answer and it wasn’t enough, you still wanted more attention, by repeating the same thing and accusing the same accusations, you circulated in each further comment.
What is even more astonishing in all of this WN, is that your reasoning and attitude is blabbering about double standards, but actually it’s HG who is reaching, helping and educating more people on such topics as how to become more effective in life, and not you!! Yet you seek to accuse him, criticise him and berate him about what is right and wrong. WN, you are not even capable of following the track and holding mine and Joa’s comments apart, who are the only two alongside your comments in this section, and who of us have mentioned the word money, first. Your choosing of the name Wiser is a mystery to me.
Mired is generally a term used for stuck or lacking the skills or ability to remove oneself, so it seems appropriate to poverty but a bit incongruous when applied to wealth. Not many despise the prospect of wealth or are trying to escape that shit haha.
H.G. … not all narcs… can’t wait for our consult!
I do not understand this.
I really don’t understand it.
Poverty is just a state of affairs. Every person can find themselves in it. Many brilliant writers, great painters, and professors who were super-intelligent in a given field died in poverty. Among today’s homeless, you will sometimes also find yesterday’s multimillionaires.
Poverty is just a state of affairs. How can you despise this? I do not understand this.
—–
I despise the cult of money.
I despise mental ignorance.
The two are often related to each other.
—–
I admire people who rise, bloom and show their values, starting from the lowest levels.
I admire people who, using slightly better resources (acquired by birth, without their own participation), can use them wisely to support their talents, build themselves and learn.
If you are stuck at the same level, you are not developing as a human being – regardless of whether you are poor or rich – you are not contributing anything to this world. Your life is unproductive.
And yes:
I will admire this fat, neglected woman who manages to raise children well, in modest circumstances, and with a husband who hinders more than helps.
I will admire this boy, whose dreams do not fade away, who goes step by step in the chosen direction, even though he comes from poverty and feels sweat, blood and tears firsthand.
I will despise any expression of contempt for poverty (including the shadows within me when it happens to me).
I will disregard any person, who bases their self-esteem on material resources.
I also consider it pointless to accumulate excess, that will never be used.
—–
I read this book once. This is one of the books, that falls into my gray area of bland books whose plot I can’t remember in detail.
Although now I’m intrigued as to why HG chose this book. But not enough to reach for it again. The thing about gray zone books is that they were classified as uninteresting and I couldn’t get return to them. For the same reasons, I didn’t watch the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio.